What NCL does - draft - 23 May 2024

Who we are

Newham Community Learning is a family of 6 schools in the west of the London borough of Newham, which exists to provide an excellent education for all young people in our community. Our schools educate over 5,500 children and young people from 2-16 years old, offering access to excellent teaching, pastoral care and opportunities for personal development across all phases of education The schools are physically close together - all of them are within a fifteen minute cycle ride of the trust offices at Eastlea School Because of the close geographical proximity of all the schools, it is easy for staff in all types of roles to work together.

Our schools are rooted in, and responsive to, their local communities. Partnership is key to our operation as a group of schools As a trust based solely in Newham, we have strong relationships with our local authority and other local partners, ensuring that we are able to secure the best possible provision for every child and young person While our focus remains local, our outlook is global, with our school curricula designed to reflect the broad range of perspectives that our hugely diverse student body brings.

NCL’s Core Purpose

To provide an excellent education for all young people in our community

The education we provide will be:

Ambitious - for our young people, encouraging and supporting them to excel

Caring - where all members of the community treat each other with kindness and respect

Inclusive - meeting the needs and aspirations of all young people

Broad-ranging - giving access to a broad and rich range of experiences to prepare students for an active role in the next stage of their education or life after school

Our schools

Each school retains its own distinct identity and ethos, and has its own local governing body, while being an integral part of the wider trust.

Newham Community Learning is also the lead school improvement partner for Carpenters Primary School, a local maintained school with which we have a strong link, and Carpenters colleagues participate in a wide selection of the trust’s activities.

Eastlea Lister Portway Rokeby Sarah Bonnell Selwyn

Support for school leaders

Summary of current trust school improvement activity

Headteachers play a critical role focus on standards, and the fort group provides headteachers an with the opportunity to review cu discuss where schools can cont from, support

Headteachers also receive support from the central team through a fortnightly meeting in school with one of the trust’s executive leaders (all of whom are both former headteachers and current or former Ofsted/HM inspectors), which provides a valuable opportunity to talk through any school issues

Termly meetings of joint leadership teams are an opportunity to support the development and engagement of senior leaders, and the trust has opportunities for experienced trust staff to take on a temporary role as a trust associate leader, leading a school improvement project

School Improvement Boards - a collegiate and rigorous approach to support and challenge

After being early adopters of whole school peer reviews, and having also carried out thematic reviews in recent years, from September 2024 we plan to expand the programme of school improvement Boards (SIB), a model previously applied in our predecessor primary trust.

In this model, at each school in the trust, the director of education will chair the SIB, made up of the chair of governors and headteacher of the school, plus at least one other senior leader from that school, a trustee, and the headteacher of another school in the trust, to review school improvement performance indicators, to hear a presentation from a senior leader in the school on one of the school improvement priorities, and to complete learning walks and pupil discussions in that area The outcomes of the SIB are fed back to the LGB and to the Standards and Community Committee of the Trust Board.

The Trust Board

The trust board, with its three main Committees (Standards and Community, Finance and Resources, and Audit, Risk and Development), maintains oversight and is ultimately accountable for standards, finance, safeguarding, estates and health and safety. Ensuring strong governance in all these areas is also a key part of the board’s responsibilities.

Our community focus extends to working in close partnership with other local organisations. We work closely and constructively with the London Borough of Newham, with our CEO sitting on the Newham Education Partnership Board and SEND Executive Board, and the headteacher of Eastlea on the Newham Youth Safety Board

Safeguarding

Safeguarding is a constant focus for trustees and school leaders, and is now informed by the trust’s regular safeguarding audit, conducted every two years by a different external organisation, to ensure that we never become complacent in this area Our designated safeguarding lead (DSL) network has established a calendar for school training to ensure that the full range of safeguarding concerns are regularly addressed in training, and the network also helps to share expertise and provide support for staff who may sometimes be supporting young people in very sensitive and complex situations.

The School Improvement Team

The Operations Team

Inclusion

All schools in the trust are proud of their track record in inclusion - we have three resource provisions in the trust, and Lister also hosts an ASD annex of a special school from Learning in Harmony Trust (LiHT), another Newham based trust. Our SENDCos are supported by an expert SEND advisor, supplied by LiHT, and through the trust SENDCo network have commissioned additional education psychology support in some schools. They are currently exploring commissioning speech and language therapy. Our partners, South East Psychology, have also provided bespoke training for our staff including most recently a session on Emotionally Based School Avoidance

Staff support

We have a newly established Staff Equalities Working Party, and a Staff Wellbeing Group, in addition to our Joint Consultative Committee with the Newham unions. The trust Central Team also monitor and provide support for schools in addressing parental complaints and any appeals, helping to ensure that these processes are both rigorous and fair.

Maintaining our estate

The trust has introduced rigorous surveys of the condition of our premises in order to ensure the most effective use of the substantial school condition allocation funding which we receive as a six school academy trust We have also introduced the use of a common software system, iAM Compliant, helping us to identify any issues with the maintenance of our buildings.

Measuring impact

As a trust focused on our local community, we believe it is essential to listen to all kinds of stakeholders The annual trust survey achieves a high level of response from parents, students and staff and is carefully considered

Summary of current school improvement activity

Summary of current trust school improvement activity

Our core focus as a trust is always on how we can work together to improve the quality of teaching across all our schools, in order to provide the best possible educational outcomes for all our children and young people.

We regularly bring together subject leaders, with a particularly strong focus on literacy and mathematics. Building on our primaries’ expertise in phonics, this year we have trained 30 staff in the Read Write Inc Fresh Start Phonics programme, bringing major improvements to the early reading skills of many new arrivals in our secondary schools. We also work in partnership with HfL who deliver ongoing training to the literacy group to support the development of pathways to fluency

The Year 5 to 8 maths project, in partnership with the North East London Maths Hub, brings together the expertise of primary and secondary mathematics teachers to ensure continuity and high challenge in the transition from primary to secondary mathematics In addition, we work with the Mulberry Schools Trust in enhancing the design and delivery of mathematics curricula in the trust

In the last year the trust’s continuous professional development (CPD) group, led by the director of staff development and communications, has coordinated our cross-trust programme for ECTs, supported the delivery of a range of NPQs, and laid the groundwork for the introduction of the Newham Community Learning SCITT, established to encourage more members of our local community to come into teaching, particularly some of our outstanding alumni.

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Summary of current trust school improvement activity Opportunities for our students

As part of our commitment to a broad and rich range of experiences for our students, the trust and individual schools provide a huge array of enrichment opportunities. This includes cross-trust competitions and events in music, debating and Poetry by Heart, as well as a programme to deliver instrumental tuition in primary schools as part of a partnership between Lister School and the Music in Secondary Schools Trust

The trust and their schools maintain a wide range of key partnerships, including with Greenhouse Sports, Place2Be, and the livery companies.

Curricular and co-curricular development across all phases of education is further enhanced through the sharing of our excellent in-school facilities with students attending any of our schools. For example, students from other schools can use Eastlea’s fantastic sports field for their sports day

Highlights of activities in schools recently have included:

A visit to Rokeby School by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, to see the excellent Philosophy4Children programme in action.

Sarah Bonnell School was awarded the Team for Life Award by Greenhouse Tennis at the Sport Gives Back Awards 2024

Two of Selwyn’s Head Girls, Ameerah and Kimberley, along with Mehreen from Y5, had the pleasure of visiting Buckingham Palace to mark the end of the ‘Women of the World Festival’ hosted by Queen Camilla

Portway students journeyed to south Devon to visit Nethercott Farm (Michael Morpurgo’s estate for city children) Children became young farmers throughout the week-long residential.

Eastlea delivered their 5th annual "Girls of the World" event

These events bring together girls from multiple local primary schools, creating a vibrant space for learning and empowerment.

Lister students transformed their school into a West End theatre with a fantastic production of Oliver