The formation of The Leigh Institute has enabled each component member to thrive. The four organisations under this umbrella - KMT, Thames Gateway TSH, Kent and Medway Maths Hub and LAT Apprenticeships - each have much to celebrate. 

These four inaugural members are joined under the common aim of ‘becoming the leading provider of training, professional development qualifications and apprenticeships in Kent and Medway. Providing a comprehensive offer, which makes the biggest difference possible for schools and partner organisations.’

This shared aim is becoming realised through the hundreds of hours of quality delivery, working with thousands of teachers, leaders, apprentices and delegates, from hundreds of schools and partner organisations, stretching across the whole of the South East and beyond. 

We are delighted to provide an update on each of their areas of delivery.

We are delighted to have started this academic year with over 400 schools across the county working with us to support and challenge staff and leaders.  We are fortunate to have strong relationships and partnerships across Medway, Gravesham and Dartford and wider Kent so that we can continue to provide high quality training and support and challenge from initial teacher training right through to executive leadership. 

In November our year two ECT annual conference, held at Detling showground, welcomed 300 second year teachers to a day filled with opportunities to reflect on their current practice, receive high quality professional development and network with teachers from across the region. 

We had the pleasure of welcoming Claire Grimes, author of ‘Rosenshine’s Principles in Action - The Workbook’ as our keynote speaker. Delegates were quick to praise the quality of the facilitation, and recognised the unique experience of being able to reflect on their progress and have time to plan the next steps of their development together.

This season has been a period of exciting and rapid growth for LAT Apprenticeships. This month we reported 107 learners, seeing expansion across our programmes. 

We are proud of our superb engineering programme, and as a number of learners approach the end of their programmes, new inductions are planned for early 2024.  Our roofing offer is also growing with practical evidence of learner skills evident throughout our training centre.

Our particular focus across the Autumn has been the alignment of a number of our programmes to serve the specific needs of our own academies, and the partner organisations of the Leigh Institute. Our education brochure outlines the benefits to schools and academies in using the apprenticeship programme to train their staff. As well as teacher apprenticeships and teaching assistant apprenticeships, we also offer programmes for  property maintenance operatives,  ICT technicians, and for administrative and support staff through our business administrator programme. 

We are delighted that our network of partnerships across the educational sector and beyond is growing and are refining our systems to ensure our quality and bespoke service continues to deliver superb outcomes for all those who choose to work with us. 

The start of the academic year has been a busy one for the Recruitment Team as we continue to recruit for a range of roles across our 31 academies: support, teaching, middle leadership and senior leadership. It remains that 20% of our appointments so far have been offered internally, which demonstrates how the Trust provides career development opportunities for our highly valued members of staff. 

All our employees can view our current vacancies by clicking here which is accessed via LATOne.

Our team is the biggest it has ever been as we now have 6 members, which is a reflection of the growth of LAT and the scope of job opportunities across our academies. 

We would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to our new Recruitment Administrator Francesca MacKenzie:  

'I joined Leigh Academies Trust in 2020 as an apprentice at The Hundred of Hoo Academy. I was quickly promoted into an administration position and gained a lot of education specific experience. I have recently joined the Talent Team to experience the education sector from a different perspective. I am excited to support our academies to find the best teachers and support staff to ensure that all students receive an education that shapes their future.'

We would also like to remind you of our Employee Referral Scheme whereby all LAT employees are eligible to receive a reward for a successful referral for teachers and selected support positions. To fill out our form, visit our Employee Referral Scheme on our Trust Careers website or click here. 

A notable accomplishment is the substantial increase in staff training completions. In the initial module of this academic year, we have exceeded the total number of staff training completions recorded in the entire preceding academic year. This achievement underscores our staff's dedication to continuous learning and professional development.

Looking forward, the Learning and Development Team is actively engaged in collaborative efforts with curriculum advisors to enrich the THRIVE experience. Our primary objective is to introduce curriculum-specific pathways that will be accessible to all members of the LAT workforce. These specialised pathways will provide customised learning experiences, tailored to the distinct requirements and aspirations of our staff members across the Trust.

Another aim for 2024 is to launch our very own development programme for line managers to ensure that all managers across the trust have the skills and qualities needed to get the best from their staff and to drive engagement. 

Contact L&D: learning@latrust.org.uk

On 15th November, the first of three MYP training sessions was hosted at Wilmington Academy focusing on Approaches to Learning.  The session was facilitated by Dianne Blackburn and attended by about 40 staff from across the Trust including primary colleagues and curriculum advisors.

The  session focused specifically on thinking and communication skills and Dianne helpfully shared a padlet of resources and ideas for everyone to take back to their academies. Delegates explored ways to teach these skills in classrooms and practised these in small groups. 

The session provided a space for people to share what works as well as an opportunity for reflection about how to develop ATLs further in academies. Ways to explicitly and implicitly teach these skills and what this might look like in each subject were also discussed. 

Dianne’s workshop engaged, enthused and really got people thinking about the next step in their ATL journey. A Trust Approaches to Learning microsite will be created so that best practice and resources can be shared. 

There have been some significant software developments over the last two months at LAT. We move to Google Workspace for Education Plus, meaning we get enhanced teaching and learning,  security and admin features. Most noticeably you may see some new features appear in your Google Classrooms - noticeably Practise Sets, Classroom Analytics and unlimited Originality Reports.

In October we rolled out Canva to all staff and students. This is a great design tool that integrates some AI elements to support creation and innovation.  We are continuing to see how to utilise this tool to best effect.

Behind the scenes we are continuing to develop our Artificial Intelligence strategy and options. It is an ever changing world, with many tools being developed. Our aim is to ensure we promote the most effective and compliant tools for our staff and students. We will be notifying staff in Module 3 of more developments in this area and tools that we can all use. As part of this, in the coming weeks, we will be partnering with Google on a trial of Duet AI.

It has been great for me to visit the majority of our academies in M1&2. It is encouraging to see how the use of digital tools is becoming increasingly seamless in many classrooms. The sign of good IT is when you hardly notice it, yet it is being used effectively. Our LAT Digital Leads were also able to meet and observe lessons at Dartford Primary Academy (primary) and Sir Joseph Williamson Math School (secondary). This was a great opportunity to reflect on different practices and collaborate on ideas to help our academies move forward.

Leigh Academy Tonbridge 

On Wednesday 10th October, 45 Years 10 and 11 students from Leigh Academy Tonbridge, set off for the sunny city of Barcelona for three days to increase their knowledge of Spanish culture as well as to give them the opportunity to practise the Spanish they are working so hard to learn.

We were very lucky to have beautiful 25 degree weather every day which allowed us to explore the city to the max which we certainly did, covering on average 19km a day! Some of our highlights were strolling down Las Ramblas, a wide boulevard full of street performers and souvenir stalls, getting an insight into Spanish architecture through exploring Pueblo Español, not to mention taking the cable car to Montjuic and taking in the panoramic views of the city. Students were also able to try Spanish cuisine with an evening of tapas (the paella was a particular hit) in addition to broadening their knowledge of art with visits to both the MNAC and the Picasso Museum leading to some interesting discussions as to whether the students were more able artists than Picasso himself!

We hope that all students had a great time and that this trip has encouraged a love for the Spanish culture and language that will boost them throughout their Spanish GCSE and on into A Level.

We ran a fantastic reward trip on Tuesday 28 November for 49 students in years 7-10, to experience a live football match at the Valley between Charlton Athletic and Cheltenham Town.

The match lived up to the students' expectations and finished 2-1 to Charlton Athletic! We would like to thank the staff who gave up their evenings to support the trip and also to the families for encouraging the students to attend. Our pupil’s behaviour was impeccable and we received several very nice comments about the group from the regular Charlton Athletic fans, who were interested in which school they attended and how we look to reward our students. In particular they commented on the behaviour and enthusiasm that the students showed.

We have held a number of attendance reward events for pupil’s to celebrate their remarkable achievement of 100% attendance. Our Attendance Officer made time for pupils to have a delicious hot chocolate treat. 

We are looking forward to the festive events that we have coming up. We are holding a Christmas Fair, a festive feast and Christmas jumper day, as well as our Christmas Concert. We have a drama piece, a dance duet, and the amazing Brook Street Band leading the pupils in some Christmas songs - it is going to be a brilliant way to end the term! 

The Leigh UTC visits the German link school -
Geschwister-Scholl-Gymnasium 

45 UTC students and staff had an action packed 4 day programme to practise their German speaking skills and learn about German Christmas traditions.

Apart from seeing the famous Cathedral in Cologne, a tour of the Lindt Schokoladenmuseum where they learned how chocolate is made, they also went to the traditional Christmas markets in Cologne and Aachen. Other highlights of the trip were an afternoon at the Christmas themed Phantasialand theme park where many indulged in some ice-skating.

The group also visited the German link school as part of their annual trip to Germany. During the school day students attended lessons and took part in various workshops. We are now looking forward to welcoming the German school party at the Leigh UTC in April 2024.

Languagenut

Languagenut is a digital language learning resource designed to support teachers and students along their language learning journey. Suitable for specialists and non-specialists, Languagenut covers 25 learning languages, including French, German, Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic and EAL (English as an Additional Language) with 38 support languages. 

All of our Trust secondary academies are now subscribers to Languagenut. Teachers can either set work from Languagenut resources or add their own, bespoke exercises. The learning platform has a variety of different learning methods such as the vocabulary trainer, the sentence builder, exam skills section as well as phonics and grammar based activities. All activities are marked automatically and the class teacher can see student progress immediately. 

Languagenut is promoting a sense of competition in academies and across the trust. There is also a national and a world leader board. We look forward to seeing Leigh Academies Trust academies adding their names to the rankings!