Values and Ethos

Our Vision

Our vision, our distinction, is to succeed in ‘Changing Lives through Learning’ by providing an education for each child that will give them a preparation for life that is excelled by no other institution in the country. Our focus will always be on securing purposeful progress towards that distinction, having developed, and continually developing, our model for school improvement that is focussed on creating a collaborative pedagogical model to have a transformational effect on children’s life chances within very quick timescales.

Our Commitment

WLMAT academies are to work closely with each other as a ‘family of schools’. The Trust is not a separate body or group of people but rather one single organisation made up of all our academies with the one single vision and shared set of values. Together we all work to ensure that all children, irrespective of their starting points, receive an education that is excelled by no other institution in the land. We cherish being part of the local communities in which we work. We pride ourselves in meeting the needs of all children in our care. All our students are our singular and unwavering priority and we work closely with parents/carers in helping to raise their children’s achievement and attainment, resilience and self-esteem. We understand that by significantly raising attainment, instilling high standards of behaviour within a caring and safe environment that we will improve social mobility and provide children with life-choices and life-chances. We are committed to helping our students go on to achieve meaningful employment. We have always had excellent working relationships with our Sponsors and other professional bodies and these partnerships have reinforced our operational disciplines. We would never do anything that would be detrimental to any child, member of staff or academy in the wider community. Importantly, we care as much about the results and outcomes of children in our newest academies as we do for those in West Lakes Academy. In order to effect a sustainable transformation for the communities we serve we will always seek to work with other local education providers and in particular the primary schools which feed in to our secondary academies as these are critical to the long-term success of our students.

Aims

The trust will:

  • Significantly raise educational standards above local and national levels.
  • Raise student aspirations and launch them into their next stage of education or onto career paths that will exceed expectations.
  • Promote and nurture community cohesion.
  • Involve and work in collaboration with key stakeholders, partners and the community.
  • Ensure that key stakeholder groups are represented on the local Governing Boards, including parents/carers and staff.
  • Ensure that all employees contribute to academy activities by being positive role models for students.
  • Provide a programme of high continual quality professional development (CPD) and training for all members of staff to underpin and sustain improvements in the core functions of the trust.

Values

The trust will seek to promote the following values:

  • Hard work
  • Honesty
  • Respect for people and property
  • Self-discipline
  • Trust and fairness
  • Tolerance and compassion
  • Politeness and courtesy
  • Independence and resourcefulness
  • Caring for others
  • Caring for the environment

Our Principles for Action

  1. Everything we do, no matter how small, has to help change lives through learning; we are utterly obsessed with each child’s outcomes and growth in order to change each child’s life.
  2. We aspire to be modestly, but steadfastly, the most respected Trust rather than the largest.
  3. Our staff are experts in their fields and through West Lakes Teaching School Alliance we will constantly aim to recruit, retain, develop and deploy both our own staff and help to develop the education system as a whole; in particular, supporting the development of other schools and academies, to the best of our ability;
  4. We want to transform the life-chances of our children by focussing on raising standards, particularly in the skills of literacy and numeracy as well as in employability skills so that our students have the best possible start in life;
  5. We believe that local children should attend local schools and will grow our offers to accommodate those children.
  6. We expect to play our full role in local behaviour partnerships/hard to place protocols;
  7. We follow the guiding principles of School Teachers Pay & Conditions and National Joint Council conditions of service and want to work positively with professional associations and actively involve them in our decision making;
  8. We always put collaboration before competition and will never do anything detrimental to a young person, member of staff, school or college in a neighbouring community;
  9. We believe in the implementation of a systematic model for transformation and improvement across our multi-academy trust that enables every individual academy and all our academies collectively, to raise standards significantly and change lives through learning. Individual academies are encouraged to retain and develop their own unique local community links and character while adopting our values and transformational model; and
  10. We will aim to create ‘capacity in advance of need’ at every level of the organisation. Decisions to support new schools will be driven by the capacity available and in our confidence that our existing academies continue to perform. It would be unacceptable if standards in our existing academies declined.

Our Principles in Action

Delivering the following interdependent actions concurrently, transformation is required to occur at pace:

  1. A vision and set of values which hold us all to account – developing consistency while respecting identity;
  2. A model for development planning and improvement which is both systematic, consistent and collaborative across our Trust – distributing, deploying and building system leadership;
  3. Leadership with vision and efficacy;
  4. Quality in the classroom – nothing other than the highest standards every day can be acceptable – strategic focus on teaching and pedagogy will always be greater than autonomy and identity.
  5. Curriculum design – fit for purpose both academically and financially;
  6. Monitoring and intervention – knowing our academies and holding them to account
  7. Systems and policies – we all work within accountability frameworks e.g. Scheme of Delegation, Academies Financial Handbook, National Schools Commissioner/ Regional Schools Commissioners, Ofsted, Department for Education, Education Skills Funding Agency etc. and that we must we adhere to the highest standards of public office;
  8. Targeted professional development
  9. Praise culture for staff and students
  10. Academy Leadership Groups and staff are relieved of the myriad of distractions in order to manage and focus their workload on the children.