Marches Multi-Academy Trust Parent Newsletter 2018

Issue 8

Marches Academy Trust Vision and Values Vision: ‘Achievement through caring’ Mission: We believe: Successful, creative, lifelong learners participate in a journey of self-discovery.

They know how to learn and acquire skills to be happy and thrive in a changing world with confidence and courage.

Values: Excellence - striving always for mastery and personal success Integrity - consistently acting with honesty, compassion and respect Empathy - embracing and supporting the uniqueness of every individual Creativity - inspiring and challenging through invention, experimentation and exploration Equality - ensuring fair opportunity for all

A message from the CEO Welcome to the Marches Academy Trust Winter Newsletter.

I have been reflecting on 2018 as we approach the beginning of a new year. For the Marches Trust, 2018 has been an exciting year; we held a tremendous education conference with international speakers such as Sir William Atkinson, Ross McGill, Vic Goddard and people came from all over the UK to be involved.

We welcomed our first primary school, Tilstock, and developed our trust board to become a mixed multiacademy trust; we are a trust compromising community and church schools. This has led to Reverend Judy Hunt becoming a member of our Trust board and once again we have seen our ideas grow as we work together on our shared vision and values. When Tilstock came into the Trust on December 1st 2017 it had 32 children; it has since grown to 56. This is testament to the hard work of the staff, governors and parents who have believed in the school and supported all aspects of growth and change. 1st December 2018 saw the conversion of Grove School into the Trust; leaders at the Grove chose to join as they felt that the vision and values mirrored their own and they felt that the Trust’s collaborative style was the way forward for them.

The Marches Trust seeks to develop a trust that ensures that the children in our communities receive the best education and learning experiences through a culture of creativity and curiosity. We are currently working with Lower Heath Primary School who have applied to join the Trust in April 2019. We are delighted to be working closely with an invigorating leadership team who put the children at the centre of all that they do.

Schools across the Trust have made a tremendous start to the academic year. With Christmas around the corner I have enjoyed watching the Nativity performance at Tilstock, the sense of excitement as staff and students at The Marches prepare for the annual Carol Concert, experiencing Winter Wonder Land at The Grove and celebrating with staff, students and parents at Sir John Talbot’s School at their Presentation Evening.

The Trust is defined by our vision ‘Achievement Through Caring’ which underpins our values. The strength of our learning communities can be seen in all that have glittered throughout 2018.

I hope you all have a happy and peaceful Christmas.

CEO The Marches Academy Trust

Trust Members and Trustees The Marches Academy Trust is governed through the Board of Trustees.

This Board is made up of some Trustees appointed by the Members and representation from the following: • Trustees from Academies (Chairs of Local Governors Bodies from individual Academies) • Chief Executive Officer of the Trust on an ex officio basis • Other Trustees appointed by the Board of Trustees

Members

Arthur Walpole Arthur Walpole Chair Chair

Bob Pearson

David Griffiths

Robert Forrester Robert Forrester

Trustees

Arthur Arthur Walpole Walpole Chair Chair

Bob Pearson Associate Trustee

Judy Hunt

Alex Fry

David Griffiths

Sarah Longville

Mark Liquorish

Anna Burgess

A message from the Chair of Trustees The end of the year approaches rapidly and here we are looking back over the Autumn term of a new school year.

During this Autumn term very significant progress was made in discussions with two schools interested in joining our Trust; as a consequence Grove School, Market Drayton, has just joined our Trust on the 1st December and a close relationship has been developed with Lower Heath Primary School with the intention that they are seeking to join on the 1st April next year, subject to consultation. For a school to join our Trust is not a simple matter, it requires extensive discussion and commitment of resources, a thorough “due diligence” process must be undertaken to ensure that all implications are fully understood and formal agreement and permission has to be gained from the Regional School Commissioner (RSC) at the Department for Education. Gaining this permission also required us to provide the RSC’s office with detailed information on the performance of our Trust and each of our three existing schools. We also needed to demonstrate the robustness of the Governance structure of our Trust, its finances and its strategy. Sarah and her team have a very good established relationship with the team at the RSC’s office, but nevertheless, it was necessary to demonstrate that we met their very stringent criteria before they would give permission; this final stage of which required Sarah and myself to attend a meeting at their office and be interrogated! It is a credit to all involved that the RSC representatives were fully satisfied and that we have a very strong Trust.

Whilst we are very pleased with the steady and controlled growth of our Trust it is of paramount importance that this does not put our existing schools at risk. Furthermore, the growth of the Trust must provide additional benefits for all our schools, benefits that are felt by the students in the classroom and or at the many interfaces between the students and the teachers and support staff. This consideration must always be at the top of our Agenda.

Thank you all, for the critical contribution that you are making to the lives of our young people.

May I take this opportunity to wish you all and those close to you a very Happy Christmas and that you enjoy a well-earned break.

Mr. Arthur Walpole Member and Chair of the Board of Trustees The Marches Academy Trust

Arthur Walpole Chair

Mrs Kate Campion

It is with deep sadness and regret that we announce that Mrs. Kate Campion, a Member of the Marches Academy Trust passed away on Wednesday 5th December.

Kate began teaching in 1974 and subsequently worked as an education adviser and Secondary Head for both Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin Councils. In 2006 Kate became Assistant Director for Children’s Services in Bristol with responsibility for School Improvement in secondary education. Kate was then appointed Director for regional working of College Associates at The National College for School Leadership in 2009 working with Leaders from all phases of education to improve and sustain leadership in Schools.

Kate Campion

Kate was a great supporter of the Marches Academy Trust, firstly in her capacity as a trustee. She was then appointed as a member on 1st November 2017.

Mrs. Sarah Longville, CEO of the Marches Academy Trust, commented: “We are sad to hear the news that Kate has passed away. She had a long career in the education sector in influential roles helping to shape the leadership in schools. Kate will forever be in our hearts and we would like to send Kate’s family all of our love at this very sad time”.

Key Leaders Marches School

Alison Pearson Associate Headteacher

Hugh Jackson

Sally Wilmot

Tim Stonall

Claire Boyes

Joanne Jones

Deputy Headteacher

Deputy Headteacher

Senior Deputy Headteacher

Assistant Headteacher Head of Sixth Form

Business Manager

Richard Brookes

Jo Phillips

Sarah Peacock

James Tout

Jeremy Tudor

Associate Assistant Headteacher

Associate Assistant Headteacher

Associate Assistant Headteacher

Associate Assistant Headteacher

Associate Assistant Headteacher

Sir John Talbot’s School

David O’Toole Headteacher

Claire Dawson Deputy Headteacher

Pauline Roberts

Julie Johnson

Michelle Jones

Helen Apperley

Joanne Jones

Assistant Headteacher / Raising Standards Leader / Maths / Numeracy

Assistant Headteacher / SEND / Safeguarding

Associate Assistant Headteacher / Head of Sixth Form / Transition / MFL

Director of Upper School / Years 10 and 11 Lead / Science

Business Manager

Grove School

Sonia Taylor Headteacher

Pauline Brown

Darryn Robinson

Deputy Headteacher (Until January 2019)

Deputy Headteacher (From January 2019)

Tom Kinnersley

Laura Townsend

Amy Chevin

James Pledger

Sue Tattersal

Assistant Headteacher

Leader of Data and Curriculum

Assistant Headteacher

Assistant Headteacher

Business Director

Tilstock C of E Primary School and Nursery

James Spicer Head of School

Rowena Kaminski

Joanne Jones

Deputy Headteacher

Business Manager

Grove School, Market Drayton The Grove School, based in Market Drayton, has become part of the Marches Academy Trust.

Following extensive consultation and overwhelming support from the school community, Grove School in Market Drayton has joined the Marches Academy Trust with effect from 1st December 2018.

The consultation involved key stakeholders, staff, students, parents, prospective parents and trustees. The consultation generated an overwhelming level of support for the school’s plans to join the Marches Academy Trust.

Mrs Sarah Longville, CEO of The Marches Academy Trust, commented: “This is an exciting time as there is a drive nationally towards collaboration between schools and, with Grove School joining, it complements our family of schools in North Shropshire.

The Trust has a common aim of giving the children a first-class education and ensuring Grove School is the school of choice in Market Drayton.

Mrs Sonia Taylor, Headteacher at the Grove School, added: “I am absolutely delighted to be part of the Trust and the exciting opportunities it will bring for the staff, students and wider community in Market Drayton”.

IT Project During the summer, we updated the IT across the whole trust.

The first task we started was to upgrade all of the desktop and laptop computers to Windows 10 which will bring them up-to-date making them as secure as possible; this was across the whole trust, which totals over a thousand machines. We also upgraded any servers that were on old systems to make sure our desktops and servers were all up-to-date and secure.

We moved all of our e-mail services across the trust from an old Microsoft server for the Marches and Google at Sir John Talbot’s School to one unified office 365 setup meaning e-mailing and collaborating on work and sharing resources is much easier now.

The Marches printer fleet has been upgraded to newer printers after an extensive survey, now ensuring that the printers are located around site match the needs and requirements of the departments that use them.

We setup and configured 140 2 in 1 Dell laptops for staff across the trust to use, ensuring they were all up-todate and ready for the first week of term, for staff to start using them and utilising the new features they have to offer.

One of our biggest ventures during this time was to unify the domain across the trust meaning that everyone only has and needs one login no matter which school they are in. This was to try and improve cross-trust collaboration and make it easy to login and access work regardless of which site staff are at. This was a big task as it meant recreating all the policies and user permissions from all trust sites onto one domain and replicating any settings that each site had to ensure a smooth transition to the new system.

Christmas Card Competitions Winners Marches Academy Trust

First: Mica Mason Year 7 Sir John Talbot’s School

Second: Alesha Aktar Year 7 Marches School

Third: Kayle Matthews Talbot Class Tilstock Primary School

Marches School

First: Sophie Williams Year 10

Second: Olivia Luke Year 8

Third: Fourth: Fifth: Jessica Daszkowska Willow Casey-Jones Ella Davies-Carr Year 7 Year 9 Year 8

Sir John Talbot’s School

First: Charlotte Perkins Year 8

Second: Ella Foster Year 10

Third: Mica Mason Year 7

Fourth: Molly Fry Year 9

Fifth: Zara Leary Year 10

Tilstock C of E Primary School and Nursery

First: Kayle Matthews Talbot Class

Second: Declan Rimmer Owen Class

Third: Kaitlyn Reaney-Phillips Talbot Class

Fourth: Carly Simcox Talbot Class

Fifth: Sophie Edwards Talbot Class

Conference 2019

The Alliance of Leading Learning Conference each year is driven by our intent to support the school-led system and secure firm foundations in a rapidly changing educational landscape for “ALL Leaders of Learning”.

The ALL Leaders of Learning Conference 2019 is your opportunity to: ● Be inspired by speakers who will challenge your thinking and reignite your drive to ensure every student can access quality learning and cope with the demands of a wide-ranging and challenging curriculum. ● Be at the very forefront of new thinking in education and gain insight and understanding of cognition and neuroscience to enhance child learning. ● Network with thought leaders, and learn from the best in the field in building the resilience of all learners and help close achievement gaps.

Guest speakers to include: Ian Wright He brings radiance to his appearances as a TV and radio pundit and after-dinner speaker, Ian Wright has an electric personality and he will leave you believing you have known him for years.

He scored 387 goals for seven clubs in 581 league matches, his speed and shooting power devastated many defences. He is a legend at Arsenal, with whom he scored a record of 128 league goals in 221 games. The lethal striker also netted another 9 goals in 33 appearances for England.

Wright has tales about his playing days and fascinating chronicles relating to his experience in front of and behind the television camera and radio microphone. He has been awarded an MBE for his services to football and charities.

Afua Hirsch To challenge our thinking on the wider issues enveloping education we have the author, journalist and broadcaster Afua Hirsch. Afua is a journalist and presenter at Sky News. She can currently be seen presenting Sky News World News, on Sunrise, and as Social Affairs Editor, reporting on issues ranging from radicalisation to immigration.

She previously wrote for the Guardian Newspaper, both in the UK and as a Foreign Correspondent, establishing the paper’s West African bureau and covering the war in Mali. She came to journalism from the legal profession where she was a barrister practising human rights law.

She regularly writes for the Guardian and Observer newspapers, hosts awards ceremonies and events.

Covering issues ranging from radicalisation to immigration she will speak widely on diversity, social justice and the media. She is the author of ‘Brit(ish)’ – a narrative non-fiction book about identity, published by Jonathan Cape. Afua has an authored documentary coming soon on Channel 4.

Paul Howard-Jones Paul Howard-Jones earned his degree at the Graduate School of Education at Bristol University. He has published many papers with his latest being ‘Ideational Productivity, Focus of Attention and Context.’ He spends his time doing experiments exploring creativity, and applying cognition and neuroscience to better understand child and adult learning.

European Day of Languages Pupils from Tilstock C of E Primary School and other primary schools local to the Whitchurch area visited Sir John Talbot’s School for a day of learning languages which included French, Welsh, Latin, German and Spanish.

It was such a fantastic and enjoyable experience for the children that Tilstock C. of E. Primary School began offering Welsh lessons to their pupils.

Multi Cultural Day Year 4 pupils from Tilstock C of E Primary School and other primary schools visited the Marches School in Oswestry to take part in a variety of multi-cultural workshops. This included: drumming, dancing and drama.

The Frantic Assembly Theatre Company Fifty GCSE and A Level Drama students from the Marches School and Sir John Talbot’s School have taken part in workshops with world renowned Theatre Company, Frantic Assembly. The students were fantastic and even learnt how to fly!

The workshops have inspired the students to take creative risks with their Devised examination pieces. It was nice to see students and staff from both schools having a fun and creative workshop.

This has been a wonderful experience for the students and we look forward to seeing how they apply it to their Devised pieces.

Learning Methods Pupils are encouraged to work and behave independently from a very early age.

This is demonstrated through interactive class signing in and out methods and through well organised classroom equipment and resources.

The interactive prayer tree provides opportunities for pupils to express their beliefs and thoughts and to display their understanding of the school's Christian foundations.

Art, craft work and designing are strong features of the classroom environments.

There are extension walls, mindset displays, and reading rocket home-reading logs in every classroom.

Pupils are reminded of the key characteristics and habits of good learners through eight agreed strands. The class that displays these strands the best receives Olly the Octopus as a class visitor for the following week. Pupils have recently been designing their school super-hero Brilly-Tilly who has learning super powers.

At Tilstock School there is a rich culture of reward and celebration that promotes good learning behaviour and engages pupils in journeys of discovery. Seeing such young children operating independently, cooperatively and confidently is impressive and gives us food for thought for developing approaches at key stage three.

Sir John Talbot’s Whitchurch 10K Run Following the huge success of Whitchurch 10K in its first and second years in 2017 and 2018, the 2019 10K has been announced and launched for 2019, with Sir John Talbot’s School and headline sponsors Grocontinental joining forces once again to bring the road race to life.

The 10K road race takes place on Sunday 7th April around the market town of Whitchurch.

In April more than 750 runners participated in the inaugural road race starting and finishing at the school and taking competitors on a route around the historic market town, showcasing shops, parks and local amenities.

Organisers are now hoping the event will welcome more than 1000 entries in 2019.

Headteacher Mr David O’Toole said, “It is wonderful that the Whitchurch 10K is now firmly established as one of the calendar’s annual races. We had a wonderful warm reception and level of support for Whitchurch’s first 10K run, which was then improved again during 2018. We cannot wait for the Sir John Talbot’s School Whitchurch 10K 2019 event”

New York Trip During the October half-term, students and staff from both the Marches School and Sir John Talbot’s School crossed the Atlantic to participate in an educational trip to New York.

The students ‘crossed the pond’ on their week-long trip and visited a variety of places including Times Square, the World Trade Centre memorial, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and a visit to the Brooklyn Bridge.

It was completely worthwhile for the students as they witnessed first-hand the locations of much of their topics of study, whilst being able to listen to an NYPD Officer’s memories of 9/11 at the World Trade Centre Memorial, which was a very poignant and sobering talk.

The visit to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island allowed students to gather a knowledge of the history of the country, which is highly beneficial to them and their studies.

County Cross Country Congratulations to the seventeen students from the Marches Academy Trust who were selected to represent North Shropshire at the School Games Shropshire Cross Country Championships.

Marches students Charlie White-Jones, Jack Tinney, James Nuttall, Poppy Kendrick, Seren Roberts, Jess Steel, Chloe Downes, Massimo Wyatt, Ben Rothera, Rhys Jenkins, Demi Williams and Mia Wyatt and Sir John Talbot's students Henry Appleby, Chester Romei, Nell Warner, Prue Noss and Michal Kozlowski all represented North Shropshire in their age groups and did exceptionally well in a very competitive field.

Poppy Kendrick came third in the Year 7 Girls’ race, with the Year 7 Boys winning their team race, the Year 8 Boys won their team race and the boys won the Overall Boys’ Competition.

E. admin@mmat.co.uk T. 01691 664400 W. www.marchesacademytrust.co.uk