HC 269 Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by The Brigshaw Co-operative Trust
My name is Peter Laurence. I am the Development Director of The Brigshaw Co-operative Trust, a partnership of seven primary schools, a high school and two children centres, who with our partners, including Leeds City College, Leeds City Council, Leeds Metropolitan University, CapeUK and The Co-operative Group, serve over 4,000 children, young people and their families across former mining communities in outer east Leeds. As a former high school headteacher, and more recently a regional adviser with the National College for Teaching and Leadership, I am aware of the importance of strong school collaborations in achieving better outcomes for young people, particularly when underpinned by genuinely co-operative values. Our Trust was established in April 2010, building on the work of the Brigshaw Federation of schools.
As a Co-operative Trust, we have expanded the support for vulnerable children and young people, extended the work done with families and the wider community, and have achieved a great deal to improve the quality of teaching, learning and curriculum enrichment across our schools. We believe that everybody’s aspirations and potential can be fulfilled much more effectively by working together, a view reinforced by the very favourable comments about the work of the Trust in schools’ Ofsted inspection reports, and the positive impact indicators across a very wide range of our work.
For the Trust to work effectively, we have developed an annual development planning process overseen by our Trust Board and implemented through a number of Trust committees which have strong school and community representation. The Headteachers’ Group ensures that our shared priorities meet the needs of all of the schools, while other groups including a Leading Teaching and Learning group, the Guidance & Support/Multi-Agency Partnership group, Community Services and Children’s Group, and Resource Management Group are responsible for the five key strands of Trust activity:
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Practical outcomes include the development of a “0–19” approach which helps to ensure consistency and continuity for children at each stage of their education; provision of enrichment activities within and beyond the curriculum, for example supporting the 2012 Olympic Project, involving all of our pupils and over 200 young people from partner schools across the world. We run curriculum projects—eg “Murderous Maths” and additional support for numeracy and literacy, sports activities, and creative arts projects. We are currently establishing “hub” schools across the partnership to lead on specific areas, eg, Early Years, STEM, Literacy, Sports and so on.
We enable sharing expertise and experience in teaching and learning, arranging joint training, support for newly qualified teachers, and creating career opportunities. There is a mutual support network for headteachers, and we offer a range of leadership development opportunities, for example through the Trust DHT and AHT network, and our Middle Leaders Development Programme.
We arrange Chairs of Governors meetings to share and learn from each other and develop stronger mutual support, have introduced an Annual Governors Conference, and are able to create greater possibilities for local, bespoke governor training which is relevant to our schools.
At a time when schools are expected to work ever more closely together, it is encouraging to see so many other schools in Leeds and across the region developing similar models to our own, and the Brigshaw Trust has been very much involved in working collaboratively and co-operatively with many schools across our region.
October 2013