Leigh Academies Trust

NEWS

Summer 2023   |   Issue 27

Contents

A message from the Chief Executive

Eleven LAT academies are now judged outstanding overall. This is 38% of the total inspected so far, more than twice the national average. In this year alone, of the eleven inspections that have taken place of our academies, six have ended with an outstanding overall judgement, more than 50% of the total. LAT now has at least one outstanding academy in every school type. This success is testament to the superb work and dedication of our excellent staff and pupils.

In one of our most recently published reports, Wilmington Academy was judged outstanding in all areas. It is the only non-selective, fully-established secondary in the South-East judged outstanding by Ofsted under its current Handbook. You can find a link to the inspection report here.

Eight of our eleven outstanding academies have now been accredited as International Baccalaureate (IB) World Schools, demonstrating the power and quality of these curriculum programmes. LAT is now the biggest IB community in Europe. In recent weeks, Leigh Academy Blackheath, another outstanding LAT secondary, hosted a conference for IB schools throughout the UK in collaboration with the IB Schools and Colleges Association (IBSCA). Feedback from delegates was exceptionally positive.

A group of delegates standing in front of a projector at the IB Conference.

We were delighted to receive our provisional KS2 primary results recently. Performance in LAT primaries is about ten percentage points above national averages with high progress scores for all subjects. Amongst many standout performances, at Oaks Primary Academy, 92% of pupils achieved the national standard for reading, writing and maths. A full summary can be found below.

A table explaining the expected standards and progress scores, comparing LAT and the National Average.

The Leigh UTC was the first secondary school in the region to offer T Levels with successful programmes already in place for Engineering and Digital Production, Design and Development. LAT is leading the way with its T Level offer and from September, five more LAT academies will be offering T Levels as part of their post-16 programme of study as shown underneath. We anticipate more will follow in future years.

At the end of this academic year, we say goodbye to Steve Avis, our Chief Financial Officer, after eight years in post. Steve is taking retirement and we wish him and his family all happiness and success for the future. Taking over from Steve as CFO from September is Faye Reizopoulou, currently Steve’s deputy.

It’s been another very busy and successful year in LAT. I hope you enjoy a restful summer holiday and look forward to seeing you in late-August when the new school year begins.

With my very best wishes,

Simon Beamish signature

Simon Beamish, 

Chief Executive

The Leigh Institute logo.

We are delighted to announce the formation of The Leigh Institute.  

This new umbrella organisation joins together the work of four, high performing, LAT-led organisations. Each one is already serving our own academies, and our wider communities, providing high quality professional development opportunities. The common strand across all four is a shared commitment to supporting our staff, recognizing that their success is vital to the success of our schools and businesses.

The founding members of The Leigh Institute are:

We aim to provide our partner schools with a full suite of opportunities supporting teacher development from the first steps of employment, into teacher training and throughout a long and fulfilling career. Alongside these many and varied pathways, through our apprenticeship programmes, we are able to provide high quality training for colleagues working in IT, Business Administration, Premises Support and as Teaching Assistants. 

We are proud to introduce our inaugural executive team. Esther Cook, Director is joined by Deputy Directors, Polly Butterfield-Tracey (Head of KMT)  and Faye McGill (Head of TGTSH).  Faye and Polly join Janine Allen (Maths Hub Lead) and Laura Stratton and Stuart Russell (LAT Apprenticeships). Together we are implementing shared plans to provide comprehensive access to superb development opportunities.

Please keep up to date with The Leigh Institute through our new website (theleighinstitute.org.uk).   

Registration for our Schools Direct programmes, ECF programme, Appropriate Body offer, NPQ programmes, Maths Hub Work Groups as well as our apprenticeship offer is open now.

A photograph of Esther Cook, Director of The Leigh Institute.

Esther Cook, Director of The Leigh Institute.

We are delighted to be celebrating with nearly 200 associate teachers, who this week have been awarded Qualified Teacher Status, beginning their careers across our partner schools. It has been our pleasure to work with them, and their training settings, to ensure that they have received the very best start to their career journeys. 

As we look towards the coming academic year, we are delighted to be welcoming another cohort, of well over 220 colleagues. Recruitment for next academic year is still open and we would strongly encourage all those considering a career in education to get in touch via our website.

These colleagues will be entering their ITT year at an incredibly exciting phase of our own journey. With reaccreditation secured, and a fantastic Ofsted inspection confirmed, we are embedding all the changes required to ensure that the KMT curriculum, leads the way in implementing best practice in initial teacher education. 

Our subject curriculum will be supported by a growing team of faculty leads, while the work of our mentoring continues to be a huge focus. Our Assessment Only programme has also continued to be a real benefit to schools across our partnership. Added to our offer from the summer is also the opportunity for colleagues to complete a Teacher Apprenticeship. 

We look forward to continuing to work with you, and to continuing to grow our partnership with schools across the region and beyond.

Thames Gateway Teaching School Hub logo

As we reach the end of our second year of delivery we are delighted to be able to reflect on another year of successful supporting the teachers and leaders of Medway, Gravesham and Dartford and the wider Kent communities we serve.

We continue to be the Teaching School of choice, with over 800 Early Career Teachers studying with us this year, and 750 listed with our Appropriate Body services. In addition to this we have recruited and supported 580 delegates to access our full suite of NPQs, taking our overall figure of NPQ participants to over 1200 since we began delivery in 2021. We are proud to have maintained a  pass rate of 99% or above for all of the NPQ courses.

Our most recent satisfaction survey reported that 95% agree or completely agree that training delivered by TGTSH has been of a high quality and equally 95% would recommend working with Thames Gateway to another school or colleague. One response from a school leader said, ‘The work TGTSH has done to support us and our ECT has been superb, and we couldn’t ask for better.’

Looking forward to next year, you can apply for NPQs and find out more about our ECF and AB services on our website. 

We look forward to continuing to work with you in 2023/24, and wish you a restful summer break.

The Kent and Medway Maths Hub is currently in the process of reviewing the vast offer we have shared with schools over the 23/24 academic year. Our flagship ‘Teaching for Mastery’ programmes have grown in scale and depth, as schools have worked together to embed the pedagogical changes presented by the key elements of our delivery. Our secondary programme sees our largest ever cohort of schools beginning their journey and moving into the next phases of their pathway. 

Central to our work is the fantastic work of our Local Leaders of Maths Education. These leaders have worked tirelessly to support learning in their own settings, and across our partnerships and communities.

Together we have deepened our understanding of what excellence in the teaching of mathematics looks like, as well as focusing on how to ensure professional development sees the impact we plan for, through our increased focus on quality assurance and evaluation. 

The full details of next year’s offer can be found on our website in the ‘Work Group’ section. You will see that this offer comprises over 80 individual programmes. It has a particular focus on our SKTM (Subject Knowledge in the Teaching of Mathematics) suite of programmes. These are appropriate for  a wide range of teaching and support staff colleagues and have been appreciated by hundreds of partner schools and colleagues.  

Please stay in touch for further opportunities.

LAT Recruitment Team

This year has been particularly active for the Recruitment Team. We are on course to recruit 390 teachers, which is a testament to the team’s dedication and efficiency. This number reflects one of the busiest years for the team, and we are committed to ensuring that each appointment is aligned with the Trust’s values and vision. As always we strive to recruit the highest calibre of candidates so we can keep getting better as a Trust. 

Improved Candidate Experience

We recognise the importance of a streamlined and positive experience for our candidates. To this end, we have made significant improvements to the application process. Our focus has been on ensuring clarity, efficiency, and responsiveness, which are crucial in attracting talented professionals. The new application process is quicker and easier to complete than ever and we will be making more improvements over the summer.

Onboarding Improvements

Over the summer, we will be working on enhancing the onboarding experience for new recruits. Our aim is to develop a centralised onboarding portal, which will serve as a single point of access for all necessary resources and information. This will facilitate a smoother transition for candidates joining the Trust.

Introducing the Leigh Offer

We are also pleased to announce that we are in the final stages of developing the Leigh Offer, which will be our new benefits package for all staff. The Leigh Offer is designed to recognise and reward the hard work and commitment of our staff. We are looking forward to launching this in September.

Sharing is Caring! 

We’re still actively pushing our social media channels to attract potential candidates, so please ‘like’, share and follow us on the following platforms:

LAT Learn & Grow

We are excited to share an important update from the Learning and Development department. As part of our ongoing commitment to fostering a culture of continuous learning and growth, we are thrilled to announce the upcoming launch of our new Learning Experience Platform, Thrive.

What is Thrive?

Thrive is an innovative learning experience platform that has been designed to centralise and streamline the learning and development process for all staff within the Trust. Set to launch in September, Thrive will serve as a one-stop hub for core training materials and resources. However, Thrive will also be a social learning platform and we will be encouraging content experts across the Trust to submit their own courses to the platform to share knowledge and help us improve further. 

Over time, Thrive will evolve to include a range of learning pathways that cover all aspects of professional and personal development. 

These pathways will be tailored to meet the diverse needs and aspirations of our staff, ensuring that everyone has the tools and resources they need to excel in their roles and contribute positively to their academy and the wider Trust.

Launch Events

To celebrate the launch of Thrive, we will be hosting a series of events early in the new academic year. These events will provide staff with an opportunity to explore the platform, understand its features, and learn how it can be used for personal and professional growth.

We are confident that Thrive will play a pivotal role in enhancing the learning and development experience for all staff, and we look forward to seeing the positive impact it will have on culture across the Trust.

In the meantime we have put together this short trailer to show you what you can expect from Thrive in the future.

A screenshot of the Thrive website.
LAT Apprenticeships Logo

It has been a busy term for the LAT Apprenticeships team. We are pleased to welcome Stuart Russell to the interim leadership of the organisation, as well as becoming one of the inaugural members of the Leigh Institute. 

We are delighted to share with you our first Ofsted report. This showcases the excellent work of our team and the impact of our provision. It was a pleasure to work with the inspection team, and to have the opportunity to share the strength of our programmes, and the impact they are having on the work of our wider partners and our fantastic learners. 

As we plan for the 2023/2024 academic year, we are excited to offer these opportunities to a wider market across the educational landscape.  It is our hope that these opportunities will support both the development of staff and the career aspirations of young people. Programmes are available for Business Administrators, Property Maintenance (premises teams), IT Support and Teaching Assistants. Further details can be found here with some fantastic opportunities to embed training programmes in a school setting.

PYP

We are thrilled to announce the remarkable achievements of our primary academies who have delivered the IB Primary Years Programme in the past academic year. We are proud to share that all of our primary academies have obtained full authorisation as IB world schools, marking a significant milestone in our commitment to providing an international education.

 Furthermore, Milestone Academy has become a candidacy school and is actively working on developing a groundbreaking framework for specialist provisions, which will be a pioneering initiative within the IB community. 

At the beginning of the academic year, our dedicated primary teachers participated in Category 1, 2, and 3 workshops across the Trust, fostering a collaborative environment to enhance their professional practice in vital areas such as pupil agency and concept-based learning.

We were fortunate to welcome Guillermo Duff, who joined us in the middle of the academic year from The Hague, bringing invaluable expertise to support all primary academies in understanding Programme Development Plans. In an ongoing effort to strengthen our IB programmes, the first wave of candidates have embarked on IBEN training, focusing on workshop facilitators, programme leaders, and evaluation leaders. 

The International Baccalaureate PYP Logo.

We will continue to work with PYP coordinators and academies to support all practitioners who would like to embark on this journey of being IBEN trainers. Additionally, all Year 6 pupils enthusiastically participated in the Exhibition during Module 6, showcasing their outstanding learning experiences. We eagerly await the completion of all Exhibitions, and we cannot wait to share the remarkable achievements of our students with the wider community.

Modern Foreign Languages

Did you know?

All of our secondary academies offer at least one of the 3 most common GCSE languages, French, German and Spanish but do you know how many different languages are spoken by our students across the LAT? The answer is 127! The top three are Polish, Romanian and Yoruba. 

If it is available through a UK exam board our secondary academies will make every effort to ensure that a student can take a GCSE or A level in their home language.

In the summer 2023 series, as well as French, German and Spanish, GCSE and A level exams were taken in the following languages:

Arabic, Chinese Mandarin, Chinese Cantonese, Greek, Punjabi, Urdu, Italian, Portuguese, Turkish, Russian and Polish. We are looking forward to seeing the results when they arrive in school in August.

The Leigh Academy Spelling Bee

Following the elimination rounds, the final of the Y7 French spelling bee took place at the end of module 6, week 4.  There were four finalists who had each learnt a word list of 40 words, using the French alphabet. From this list, 25 were chosen at random for students to spell in 2 minutes. The competition was judged by the Principal, Mrs Collins, Director of Learning for MFL, Mr Hurth and LAT Curriculum Advisor for MFL, Mr Dearsley. All 4 students achieved personal bests. The winner, spelling all 25 words with near perfect accuracy in 1.44 minutes was Amily from Mandela College. Mr Hurth and Mr Dearsley plan to involve more LAT academies next year. 

Students pose with goody bags.

The winners of the Leigh Academy Spelling Bee.

French play at The Leigh Academy

A French play was enjoyed by students at The Leigh Academy.  The tale of two people who moved into a haunted house, with a criminal with supernatural powers on the loose, proved to be absorbing viewing!

One student commented, “I was happy I was able to go to watch the play so I could see if I understood real French speakers talk and to see if my French classes have resulted in any good! I didn't understand everything in the play but the body language, the intonation and the props helped me understand what was happening. I was pleased that I understood so much. The play was about an hour long but I was intrigued all the way through!”

We hope to hold a similar event for those studying Spanish in the next academic year.

An auditorium of students watch a play.

SJW British Film Institute Francophone Workshop

On 24th April KS4 pupils at Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School visited the British Film Institute in London. They took part in an educational workshop, exploring Francophone identity and culture through short film, which was delivered almost entirely in French.

Although this was a little daunting at first, pupils were delighted with how much French they understood - several pupils even plucked up the courage to volunteer answers in French in front of a big auditorium of pupils from many different schools!

Pupils watched and analysed short films from various Francophone countries (Dubois' Madagascar: Carnet de Voyage, Chadha's Quais de Seine and Corre & Phung's Les lèvres gercées) and watched the feature length film Les intouchables by Nakache & Toledano. The pupils loved the comedy-drama Les Intouchables in particular thanks to its humour, excellent writing and fantastic acting. Their listening, speaking and analytical skills were truly put to the test; the pupils certainly rose to the challenge and did themselves proud.

Wilmington Academy Trip to Paris

On Monday 24th April 2023, 40 students from Years 9 and 10, along with 4 members of staff departed from Wilmington Academy at 4:30am! After a ferry journey and then a coach ride, we arrived at L'Arc de Triomphe in Paris.  

Day two kicked off with a wonderful tour around the Parc des Princes stadium, home to the famous football team, Paris St Germain. We then spent the afternoon admiring the Eiffel Tower and enjoying the sights on a cruise down the river Seine.

Day three held the chance to see more of Paris' famous sights, including the dizzying heights of the tallest building in Paris, Tour Montparnasse, where students were able to take in panoramic views of the city. In the afternoon, students widened their cultural knowledge with a visit to the popular Musée d'Orsay. 

Students awoke early on our fourth day to enjoy a full day at Parc Astérix. As well as the thrilling rides, many students enjoyed the shows that were put on in French around the park. As Friday arrived, we packed up the coach and headed for the coast, where students enjoyed a walk through the town of Boulogne-sur-mer before heading to the ferry port and then on to home. 

LAT Sports Day

Primary

On Friday 7th July, after a break of three years, the LAT Primary Sports Day finally took place with 15 primary academies participating.

The teams arrived, gazebos were put up and sun cream applied. The event began with the traditional obstacle race with both boys and girls taking part.  Once complete, the boys moved to the field events, enjoying the high stepper, vortex howler, speed bounce, chest push and standing long jump while the girls competed against each other in the 50m races and the 50+50m relay race. An early lunch was taken and some dancing took place on the track before the boys and girls swapped events and it all started again. The finale of the day, the Paarlauf relay, unfortunately had to be slightly amended due to the heat but was still as exciting as ever.

As always, the students competed with determination and commitment and the staff looked on with pride. What a fantastic event to celebrate and showcase our talented athletes from all 15 academies, collaborating with support from sports leaders from Longfield Academy. Truly an event of excellence.

Secondary

On Monday 10th July the Year 7 and 8 LAT Sports Day took place at Dartford Harriers Athletics Club in Central Park, Dartford. Seventeen academies from across Leigh Academies Trust took part in all athletics track events ranging from 100m to the 1500m and also in the long jump, high jump, shot put and javelin. After day 1 the scores were very close, with The Leigh Academy leading narrowly over Leigh Academy Rainham in the girls competition and in the boys event Sir Joseph Williamson’s Mathematical School finishing the day in first place.

As the competition entered day 2 with the Year 9 and 10s competing, the high standard of athletics continued with some outstanding performances throughout. The positions in the overall team event changed throughout the day but by the end of the final event (the relays) it was The Leigh Academy that secured victory for the girls and Sir Joseph Williamson’s Mathematical school for the boys.

Well done to all athletes that represented their respective academies; please see the overall results:

Girls' Results

Boys' Results

A student running a relay race.
Students sprinting down a race track.
Two students celebrating after winning the relay.

Primary Sports Day video

Secondary Sports Day video

View more pictures of the LAT Sports Day here: Primary  |  Secondary

LAT Awards

On Thursday 13th July 2023, Leigh Academies Trust held its fifth annual staff awards evening at Strood Academy. The event was generously sponsored by 13 of the Trust's closest partners, and attended by the Trust’s executive team, academy Principals and award nominees.

The opening address was given by Frank Green, Chair of Leigh Academies Trust and the evening was expertly compèred by Claire Shaw-Kew from Mascalls Academy. Impact Food Group were ably supported in serving the evening’s three course meal by students from Strood Academy.

There were a number of outstanding performances given by students throughout the evening:

Singer: Tom, The Hundred of Hoo Secondary Academy

Choir: Tree Tops Primary Academy

LAT Awards winners stand on a stage decorated with balloons.

Winners

Primary Teacher Award

Highly Commended: 

Winners:

Secondary Teacher Award

Highly Commended: 

Winners: 

Support Staff (Operations) Award

Central Services Award

Early Career Teacher (Primary) Award

Early Career Teacher (Secondary) Award

Support Staff (Teaching) Award

Trainee Teacher Award

Innovation Award

Team Award

Leadership Award for Support Services

Leadership Award for Quality of Education

Winners:

Special Recognition Award

Congratulations to all of this year’s winners and highly commended.

LAT Cricket Event

A student bowls a ball at a cricket match.
A student prepares to hit a ball at a cricket match.

For the first time, the annual LAT Primary Cricket festival took place at SJWMS and we were not disappointed. We were spoiled for space, there was plenty of shade and the four pitches were set up ready for the fifteen primaries to commence the competition. 

With squads of up to ten,  schools played eight, six ball overs with all students given the opportunity of bowling, batting and fielding. The students performed some great skills and the adults looked on with pride. A nail biting final took place between Paddock Wood and High Halstow, with Paddock Wood winning by eight runs.  

We were very fortunate that Callum Macleod was able to escape PE lessons to come and share some inspiration and experiences from his career playing for Scotland, with the pinnacle of his career bring the 2015 World Cup and 2016 World Twenty20. 

We are already looking forward to next year’s event.