School Improvement Intent

  • Our core values of Ambition, Teamwork and Honesty underpin our approach to everything at TTCT, including School Improvement.
  • We want to empower the leaders in our schools to lead and improve the areas they are responsible and accountable for to achieve our mission. We both add and then build capacity, using data intelligently and professional wisdom.
  • We know that we can all get better; feedback is a gift.
  • The Central team will support, challenge and support leaders in schools to drive improvements.
  • TTCT Empowered to Lead Model ensures that all leaders are research-informed and focussed on what will make a difference. Decisions are made by those with the most expertise from across the organisational structure.
  • We run healthy and efficient central services to ensure school leaders can focus on school improvement in their schools.
  • Our aim is to deliver a simple, rigorous, and unpretentious approach. School Improvement is not glamorous, it demands hard work and determination.
  • Securing sustainable transformation takes time; schools transform sequentially and in phases.
  • As schools transform, they should move from being capacity takers to capacity givers, then lead transformation across our Trust and the wider system.
  • School transformation is the product of high-quality leadership, so understanding the phases of the transformation journey is important for getting the right leaders in place.
  • School transformation can be judged through the lens of results and Ofsted inspections but not exclusively. For TTCT, attainment and attendance are key measures.

Central Operational Services

  • We fully believe that school leaders should focus on school improvement in terms of quality of education and developing a culture of learning for students and staff. To support schools, TTCT provides high-quality services in the following areas:
    • Data
    • Estates
    • Finance
    • Governance Services
    • Health and Safety
    • Human Resources
    • IT
    • Marketing and Communications
    • Payroll
    • Procurement

Compelling Culture

Headteachers (Behaviour and Attitudes) who are overseen and deployed by the relevant Executive Headteachers.
The pastoral team provides input and training to our senior leaders across our family of schools on how to develop compelling school cultures, particularly for those who are nationally less likely to be successful in securing outcomes in line with their peers.
The pastoral team are focused on ensuring:

  • Safeguarding is effective in all schools.
  • Attendance is better than national.
  • Behaviour systems are focused on a compelling school culture, so suspensions and exclusions are at least in line with national.
  • Priority students benefit from quality-first teaching and achieve outcomes in line with their peers.

High-Value Curriculum

The central curriculum team is led by our Curriculum Director and overseen by the Executive Headteacher responsible for the quality of education. Our focus is on ensuring all the students are taught a body of ‘powerful’ knowledge that will enable them to be successful in public examinations but also in life more generally.

The Curriculum Director provides input and training to our senior leaders across our family of schools on whole-school curriculum development.

  1. The Curriculum Director leads our Senior Trust Leaders, who spend two days a week developing the curriculum provision across our subjects. Senior Trust Leaders spend their time on four key areas in line with our commitment to prevention before intervention:
  2. Keeping abreast of the latest research and thinking.
  3. Developing long-term plans and resources to support the agreed body of knowledge.
  4. Coaching middle leaders to develop their school curriculum including the subject induction of new middle leaders.
  5. Increasing the percentage of Y11 students achieving at least a grade 5 in formal examinations.

People First

Exceptional schools need and demand exceptional leaders and a talented body of staff.

All our leaders, regardless of their role, are exposed and expected to engage in the latest research as part of our Empowered to Lead Model and improvement sprints.

Headteachers and senior leaders receive coaching and training from wider members of the Executive Team as needed.

Senior Trust Leaders for different subjects meet with the relevant leaders across the Trust to ensure that our middle leaders are the engine room for school improvement within each of our schools. Each of these school improvement teams share best practice and implement set active ingredients and relevant toolkits.

The Trust can provide additional capacity to support schools where needed, for example, Deputy and Assistant Headteachers.

All staff craft a Professional Learning Plan to help them develop and achieve their professional ambitions.

The Professional Learning Academy activates the professional learning that is needed Trust-wide. Professional Learning leads in each school craft and sequence school-level learning.

Empowered to Lead

  • Successful organisations develop real clarity about their mission and operating procedures to ensure that key performance indicators are met. We regularly remind ourselves, and each other, of our shared mission, vision and values to ensure that all decisions are made in the best interest of the students we serve.
  • In order to develop healthy, efficient and politics-free change management, we have a clear methodology of how change occurs through our Empowered to Lead model. This model is activated when there is a burning platform for change.

 

  • We always defer to the brilliance of others and listen deeply to those who from the ‘front – line’.
  • When any change is implemented we have three design principles which frame the work we do to ensure change is successful

School Improvement Cycle

1. Data & Insights

  • To ensure that leaders are intervening where it matters the most, we have created and continue to create data dashboards to present key school improvement data, especially around attendance and attainment.
  • We know that getting better, faster is closely linked to the intelligent use of data so that capacity is directed to where it will make the most difference.

2. Diagnose & Prioritise

  • We know that great organisations continually evaluate their performance, and the impact actions have had to date.
  • We have crafted a School Improvement Strategy tracker to ensure that leaders have a detailed picture of how the school is performing and what the key next steps are to improve the educational offer to students.
  • School Improvement trackers are reviewed at least once a Semester by each senior team and verified on a study tour each Semester.

3. Support & Challenge

  • In order to provide schools with both support and challenge, schools are reviewed twice a year at the start of a semester through a study tour.
  • In addition to the study tour, schools can also benefit from a spotlight on a key area of focus as well as external audits.

4. Capacity Building

  • In line with our design principles, we build capacity in schools and across the Trust to ensure that leaders can make informed evidence-based decisions.
  • This is our universal offer for all schools. This is achieved through our shared toolkits, shared curriculum and high-quality professional learning; all of which are curated by domain specialists.

Schools hold innovation events to share their best practice internally and we hold external study tours to some of the highest-performing schools in the country to ensure that we remain outward facing.

5. Capacity Adding

  • At times, teams need additional capacity on the ground to improve an area of the school, especially when implementing change.
  • At TTCT, the central team staff provide additional expertise and support to accelerate school improvement.
  • When in school, coaching plans are co-constructed to ensure that improvement is sequenced and sustainable.
  • We have intentionally built a central team of domain specialists with all executive leaders having a particular named expertise.

6. Monitoring & Evaluation

  • To ensure there is an equal balance of support and challenge we have a consistent approach to monitoring school improvement and performance. All leaders are clear on how and when success will be measured.
  • CEO visits and EHT coaching enable leaders to discuss current successes and next steps during a semester and ensure the school is continually improving. This involves reviewing the data from continuous evaluation.