Autumn Newsletter

Trust News

Autumn 2022 Edition

Anita Ghidotti-Gibson Chief Executive O cer

Welcome back to Pendle Education Trust news – I am hoping you had the chance to read our bumper Summer edition!

So, now is the time to grab a brew (and maybe a mince pie!) and take five minutes to sit down and enjoy reading about everything that’s been going on in our Trust family of schools since September!

So many di erent activities, experiences and celebrations to share including the long-awaited confirmation for Casterton Primary of a fantastic first Ofsted inspection in our Trust family – recognising the di erence we make to our children day-in-day-out.

In our core Trust team we have taken some time this term to try and pull together all the things that make our family special and why we do what we do. We’ve also written to our local schools with this information in case it helps in thinking about the future. If you would like to take a look at what this looks like just click on this link.

We are immensely proud of everyone in our family – children, parents and sta and look forward to 2023 which will see us further develop our well-established close links with our communities and ensure our children have the very best opportunities available to them.

I wish you and your families a very happy, peaceful Christmas-time together.

‘Every child should only be a short walk away from a world class school.'

Children shine at Casterton Primary Academy

Casterton Primary Academy’s first Ofsted inspection as part of the Pendle Education Trust family has led to the school being judged Good in all areas.

Inspectors commented that children arrive at school each morning happy, looking forward to the day ahead and that everyone is welcome in the school family. They also said that sta have strong, positive relationships with parents and carers, helping them to provide personalised support which is highly valued by families.

The inspectors also found that teachers have high expectations of what pupils, including pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) can achieve. They commented that the school has created an environment in which pupils are eager to learn and achieve well, living up to expectations and being able to shine.

Paul Whaling, Principal at Casterton Primary Academy, said: “We are absolutely delighted with the positive report following our inspection in October. The inspectors praised our well thought out and aspirational curriculum for all pupils and how we teach our children about the world of work and the importance of working hard and attending school every day.

“Along with the other schools in the Pendle Education Trust family, we have a big focus on developing a love of reading amongst all children and it was great that the inspectors commented that children are proud to take their reading books home and that they are exposed to a rich and varied selection of books which helps to foster a real love of reading across the school.”

Casterton Primary Academy became the fifth school to join the Pendle Education Trust family in 2018 and has since benefitted from collaborating with the Trust’s other schools and leaders, especially its primaries, Pendle Primary Academy and Castercli Primary Academy.

Anita Ghidotti, Chief Executive of Pendle Education Trust, added: “We are really pleased with Casterton’s first Ofsted report since its conversion in 2018. There is so much in the report to make all of our sta and families beam with pride“The inspectors praised the inclusivity of the school and how it prepares our children for life after school, including encouraging them to take on a range of roles to develop their responsibilities such as class ambassadors, physical education ambassadors, librarians and buddies for younger pupils.

“It is especially pleasing that they recognised the work we have put in to sta wellbeing, ensuring sta feel valued and appreciated and that they are proud to work at the school. “A huge well done to all of the team at Casterton, we are looking forward to watching you continue to grow and develop as part of our Trust family.”

Leaders have designed a well-though-out and aspirational curriculum for all pupils.

Pendle Primary Academy recognised as one of England’s leading schools for oracy

Pendle Primary Academy, part of the Pendle Education Trust family of schools, has been selected by Voice 21, the national oracy education charity, as one of its first 7 Oracy Centres of Excellence. This accreditation certifies and celebrates schools that are leading the way in providing a high-quality oracy education for their students.

To become a Voice 21 Oracy Centre of Excellence, Pendle Primary Academy had to demonstrate the quality of oracy education being provided across five areas of school life: the school’s vision, culture, curriculum, learning and impact on students.

As a Voice 21 Oracy Centre of Excellence, Pendle Primary Academy will act as a beacon of good practice for oracy across the school system. It will support other schools in developing their students’ oracy skills, showcasing how explicit and purposeful oracy teaching can be so transformational for students’ learning and life chances.

Amy Gaunt, Director of Learning and Impact at Voice 21, said: “I’d like to congratulate Pendle Primary Academy on becoming one of Voice 21’s first Oracy Centres of Excellence. It’s a testament to the innovative and inspirational oracy teaching by sta across school. This is already having significant impacts on students’ learning, and will be of huge benefit to them as they progress throughout school and in future education and employment opportunities.”

Simon Thompson, Principal at Pendle Primary Academy, said: “We are thrilled to be recognised as one of the leading centres of oracy in the country. We are committed to o ering all children the very best education, and our commitment to developing their spoken language is a core part of this. This accreditation is a huge credit to all of the sta , in particular our oracy leader and champions, for the work they do every day in ensuring that every child’s voice is heard and valued.”

Pendle Primary Academy has been accredited in the context of an increasing focus on oracy within the education sector. Earlier this year, then Schools Minister Robin Walker emphasised the importance of spoken language development in his mission to make England a world-leader in literacy. Polling in 2021 found that two thirds of teachers believe that oracy is now high-priority as schools re-opened after pandemic-induced closures. More than 500 schools have registered to work with Voice 21 and improve their oracy provision from September – Pendle Primary Academy will be working with Voice 21 and these schools to support their oracy provision.

Day

Award-winning storyteller, writer and educator, Ursula Holden-Gill helped Year 7 students at West Craven High School celebrate International Literacy Day with a series of storytelling workshops.

Ursula, a former Best Newcomer at the British Awards for Storytelling Excellence, has previously played the roles of Carol in Channel 4’s comedy drama Teachers, Alice Dingle in ITV’s Emmerdale and Miss Fitzgerald in CBBC’s Wolfblood.

International Literacy Day aims to spread global awareness of the importance of literacy. With this global focus in mind, Ursula enthralled Year 7 students with her tales from around the world including her enthralling experiences in Scotland, Germany and Japan. West Craven High School English Lead Practitioner, Mrs Woodward, said: “Our students loved every second of their lessons with Ursula.

“She captured their imaginations with her stories from around the world. She has a fantastic talent for making her audiences feel like they are part of her stories and the range of answers to her questions o ered by our students showed just how much they were enjoying being transported to di erent eras and lands.

“As a reading academy, we think it is hugely important that all of our students develop a lifelong love of reading. The experiences our students had with Ursula are a fantastic way of showing them just how much fun reading and stories can be.”

Award-winning actress Ursula Holden-Gill inspires students on International Literacy

Trust schools celebrate a love of poetry Co ee & cake raise valuable funds for Macmillan

Children, parents and sta from Pendle Education Trust’s family of schools came together over co ee and cake to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Research. All five schools in the Pendle Education Trust family took part in the annual Macmillan Co ee Morning and for the first time since 2019, families were able to join their children in school for their fundraisers.

Sta and children across the Trust marked this year’s National Poetry Day with a range of competitions, guest speakers and activities. The theme of this year’s celebration event – The Environment – ties in with the Trust’s focus on sustainability in schools.

Parents, grandparents and younger siblings filled the school halls of Castercli Primary Academy, Casterton Primary Academy and Pendle Primary Academy with laughter and chatter as they joined their children for a drink and slice of cake. At Pendle Primary Academy, a chocolate lover’s dream cake was also the prize in a ra e to raise more money for the charity.

In addition to parents joining in the fundraiser at West Craven High School, members of the Church of St Mary le Ghyll, who kindly hosted West Craven students during a sponsored walk last term, were invited to be the judges of a student baking competition.

And at Colne Primet Academy, the Macmillan Co ee Fundraiser was combined with European Day of Languages. Sta and students were challenged to enter a country themed baking masterpiece into a baking competition with entries featuring designs from around the world.

Students in years 8 and 9 at West Craven High School also took part in a Zoom call with poet and freestyle rap world champion, Rob Bradley. Rob gave an entertaining talk to the students online and inspired them to think about writing their own poems.

Colne Primet Academy’s English Lead Practitioner, Mr Woodward shared his own poem on the theme of The Environment and hosted a poetry slam event. Students from all year groups met in the school library to share their poetry and listen to the poetry of others. The themes covered a range of topics including marriage, identity, modern day slavery, childhood memories and memories of school.

Children at Casterton Primary Academy were set the challenge of learning and reciting a poem of their choice. Many of the children chose to read their own poems. The winners visited WH Smith in Burnley to choose a new book each and enjoyed reading them with a hot chocolate at Quick Crepes in Burnley.

Anita Ghidotti, Chief Executive of Pendle Education Trust, said: “Our schools are all reading academies, so we do all we can to promote a love of reading all genres, including poetry to our children. Days like National Poetry Day give us a fantastic excuse to celebrate our love of reading and it was brilliant to see so many of our children and sta sharing poems with each other and being inspired by them.”

Anita Ghidotti, Chief Executive of Pendle Education Trust, said: “We are so pleased that we have been able to welcome our families back into our schools to celebrate this annual event in our fundraising calendar. It was wonderful to see so many family members taking the time to support their children and our fundraisers.

“As part of our Pendle Education Trust pledge, we encourage all of our children, from the very youngest in EYFS through to our GCSE students, to get involved in fundraising activities and they’ve got o to a fantastic start with this first Trust wide fundraising activity of the year.”

Casterton’s sporting superstars celebrate prestigious Platinum Award

Children and sta at Casterton Primary Academy are celebrating sweet success having become one of only six Burnley primary schools to achieve the prestigious School Games Platinum Mark Award this year.

The Platinum Award is a government-led scheme which launched in 2012, facilitated by the Youth Sport Trust to reward and recognise schools’ engagement (provision and uptake) in the School Games against a national benchmark and to celebrate keeping young people active.

Having previously held the Gold Mark for four years, Casterton Primary Academy is delighted to have been recognised with the highest level of award.

Casterton’s PE lead, Mark Dutton, said: “We’re honoured to have received this special award. “Over 90% of our children attend a physical activity club and all of our children achieve 30 minutes of high activity each school day.

“We are extremely proud of our children for their dedication to all aspects of physical activity and school sport.”

Key Stage 2 Leader, Sinead Travis, added: “We believe in the power of physical activity and school sport and give our children a wide range of opportunities as a participant, leader, o cial or volunteer.

“We are committed to using the School Games to try and engage those young people who haven’t previously been active or represented our school and to try and ensure that all our children have a positive experience and want to try out new activities beyond school in our community.

“As part of our application, we were asked to fulfil criteria in the areas linked to the five School Games outcomes and we are delighted that the hard work of everyone at our school has been rewarded this year and that we now hold this special award for the next two school years.”

Sport provision at Casterton Primary Academy is supported by a wide range of community organisations including Getin2, Burnley Sports Partnership, Burnley RUFC, Burnley Tennis Club and

Schools go spotty for Children in Need

Pendle Education Trust’s schools supported the annual Children in Need fundraiser with a range of activities from a co ee afternoon to wearing pyjamas to school day.

Miss Beverley, Castercli Primary Academy’s Family Liaison Lead, and a team of volunteers organised a fantastically well attended co ee afternoon at the school while at West Craven High School, sta and students joined in the SPOTacular theme by wearing a spotty accessory or item of clothing.

Children at Casterton Primary Academy chose to have a pyjama and comfy clothes day to raise money for Children in Need – we love this fabulous picture of children and sta in their pyjamas.

Thank you and well done to everyone who contributed to our fundraising activities.

wheelchair sports coach Andy Atkinson.

Planet League Cup!

Our schools are also taking part in Burnley Football Club’s national sustainability tournament ‘Planet League’. This fantastic initiative is a five-week competition to encourage schools, sta , students and families to take action on climate change. This is a nationwide battle to be the greenest in a virtual tournament – The Planet League Cup. This tournament is aimed to engage football fans and schools in taking personal climate action through football.

Burnley FC in the Community (BFCitC) are working closely with our schools by delivering six weeks of free lessons based around sustainability, promoting social action and including a one-o workshop themed around football and sustainability.

During this virtual competition there were great incentives and prizes that rewarded our students who participate in the tournament included branded merchandise and free game tickets. Our students and sta scored many goals for Burnley FC ensuring they climbed the league table. They scored goals for the club by taking a series of simple actions which are good for the planet. There were over 100 activities from walking to school, litter-picking, screen-free evenings to meat-free meals.

The Planet League platform collated our results and the positive impact our schools have had on the planet in CO2e emissions saved!

Best wishes to Julie Burnside

This Christmas, we’re saying a big thank you to one of our Trust’s most influential family members who has taken the decision to retire.

Julie Burnside has been part of the Trust since 2013 when Walter Street Primary joined our family and became Pendle Primary Academy. She has gone on to become the Trust’s Executive Principal for Primary Education, overseeing operations at Pendle Primary, Castercli Primary and Casterton Primary.

Julie embodies everything our family is about and her commitment to the children in our schools and in her previous schools has been incredible and impacted the lives of thousands over her teaching and leadership career.

While we are taking the opportunity to say thank you to Julie for everything she has done in her Executive Principal role, she won’t be a stranger to us in her retirement as she will be returning on a part-time basis to become our external primary lead for quality assurance whilst also enjoying lots of family times and well-deserved holidays.

Trust committed to reduce carbon footprint

Here at Pendle Education Trust we know the importance of reducing our carbon footprint across all our schools. Our newly-recruited Sustainability Forum have set six main aims to take action against climate change.

All of our schools have now set up designated ‘Green Teams’ - a group of students and sta who are taking action to ensure they are working towards a net zero goal. The Green Teams have signed up to the national schools’ initiative ‘Lets Go Zero’ and are using their online pack of resources to generate ideas and to raise awareness about climate change with their students and across the community.

Jude Evetts, Pendle Education Trust’s Marketing Manager, said: “There’s so many fantastic projects going on from planting trees, installing compost bins, ‘Switch it o ’ campaigns – aimed at saving electricity – as well as numerous recycling projects. It’s great to see how passionate our students are about climate change and wanting to make a di erence.”

We have also been working closely with Taylor Shaw - who provide school lunches across all our schools – and they have now removed all single-use plastics from being sold at any of our sites. The Trust is also helping to encourage sta and students to use refillable containers as a more sustainable alternative, with the aim to becoming single-use plastic free.

Pendle Recycling Hub

We are working with our sponsor, Nelson and Colne College, to support better recycling and waste management within our Trust. Nelson and Colne have set up a Pendle Recycling hub and have signed up to Terracycle, aimed at reducing waste across all of their sites. They have also introduced specialised bins for collecting hard-to-recycle materials. The Trust have decided to start collecting old writing instruments including pens, highlighters and permanent markers to recycle. Each of our schools will dispose of these and they will be collected and recycled each month by Nelson and Colne College, who will then send to Terracycle.

Think before you print

Pendle Education Trust has recently launched a new marketing campaign to reduce the amount of paper that is being used within their schools each academic year.

All sta are being asked to think before they print on a bid to save paper, save money and save trees!

New Trust Enterprise Forum aims to engage exciting business partnerships

Our newly-formed Careers and Enterprise Forum met at Colne Primet Academy for the first time this term. Attendees included careers leaders from all our schools, the Trust board’s link to enterprise, local business representatives, Nelson and Colne College sta and our Inspira Enterprise Co-ordinator.

At this meeting they discussed careers activities and planned events for this year for our children including mock interviews, Work Experience week, Young Enterprise and careers talks. There were discussions on how the careers leaders can work closer with Nelson and Colne College to support the careers information available to our children and how we can encourage employers to work in partnership with the Trust and our five schools.

The Trust has now launched a marketing campaign to encourage employers to work with our students, to help inspire the next generation into the world of work. This marketing campaign has been promoted across the Trust’s Twitter and LinkedIn channels to create a database of employer contacts to utilise when our careers leaders are looking for work experience opportunities, masterclasses, live projects, interview skills and business mentors.

Careers Day 2023

The second Pendle Education Trust Careers Day will take place at Colne Primet Academy on 4th May, 2023. Once again, children from all five of our schools will have the opportunity to attend the event, given them the chance to meet a wide range of employers, universities and representatives of di erent curriculum areas at Nelson and Colne College.

If you would like to attend this day please contact marketing@pendleeducationtrust.co.uk

Mock interviews prepare students for future careers

A wide range of local businesses have supported two days of mock interviews to help Colne Primet Academy’s Year 11 students prepare for life after school.

Representatives from Nelson and Colne College’s Apprenticeship team, Burnley FC in the Community, Pendle Leisure Trust, Lanlee, Hydrock, Crow Wood, North Lancs Training Group, Studio Retail, the University of Central Lancashire, Fort Vale, BAE, Barnfield Construction and Johnson & Johnson gave up their time to ensure that every student was given a 30-minute mock interview to prepare them for college, university and employment.

Ms Carr, Primet’s Careers Adviser and recent winner of the East Lancashire Education Awards’ Career Aspiration Award, said: “It’s really important to us that our students get real-life experiences to support their future career ambitions, we’d like to say a huge thank you to all of the employers who supported us over the mock interview days and hope they found it as valuable as our students did.”

Sta Champions take a lead on

Vivup launched!

All Pendle Education Trust employees are entitled to the fantastic money saving benefits on the bespoke 'Vivup' platform.

These include lifestyle savings, discount codes for well-known high street shops and restaurants, gift cards, cycle to work scheme and support and wellbeing information.

Following the rising costs of living the Trust has collated some extra practical information and guidance that may be of some support over the coming months to their teachers and support sta , these include… • Debt Management • Debt Advice • Ask Bill - Impartial Financial Support • Martin Lewis money saving website

Pendle Elite

Star students’ achievements celebrated

For the first time since the Covid pandemic, Colne Primet Academy and West Craven High School’s Star Awards have returned to Colne Municipal Hall.

During the two events, awards were presented to students for their academic, sporting and extra-curricular achievements and last year’s GCSE students returned to collect subject and achievement prizes as well as their GCSE certificates.

Students, sta and parents at Colne Primet Academy’s Star Awards were joined by former Primet student and CEO and Founder of supply chain and logistics consultancy, Hatmill while at West Craven’s event, Angela Moran, Environment Social Governance Director at Silentnight Group, Lianne Bradford, Education Manager at Burnley FC in the Community and MP Andrew Stephenson were amongst the special guests.

Award winners at both events featured star students from the Class of 2022 including West Craven’s Paige Anderson who is now studying A Levels in Environmental Science, Biology, Geography, and Geology at Burnley College and Primet’s Heidi Al Haji who is now studying A Levels in Biology, Chemistry and Mathematics at Nelson and Colne College.

Guests at both events were entertained by a variety of student performances including solo keyboard and cello playing and a dance piece choreographed by Helen Green Dance Academy.

Mrs Blomley, Pendle Education Executive Principal for Secondary Education, said: “We recognise and reward our students’ achievements all the time in school, but our annual Star Awards event is about going over and above to celebrate our students who also do just that – go over and above to earn themselves significant achievements.

“Our class of 2022 completed their time at secondary school with the added challenges caused by the covid pandemic, missing time in school at the end of their Year 9 and the Spring Term of Year 10, as well as the uncertainty of changes to how they would be examined and how grades would be calculated.

“The resilience they developed throughout this experience will be one of the key things they take with them as they move on to their next steps in education or employment.

“It was fantastic to be able to give so many of our current and former students the recognition they deserve for their achievements and to celebrate why we are so proud of them.”

Cards for kindness spread festive cheer

Cards designed as part of our Trust’s annual Christmas card competition have helped to spread festive cheer to residents across Lancashire as part of a cards for kindness initiative.

Children from our five schools were asked to design a card on the theme of festive joy. Over 80 entries were received to the competition, with two finalists being chosen from each school.

Every design that was submitted was printed as a card and a hand-written message was included in each. They were then distributed at care homes across the county as part of the Healthier Lancashire and South Cumbria Cards for Kindness initiative which the Trust supports each year along with our sponsor, Nelson and Colne College.

We’d like to wish all of our colleagues and communities a wonderful and restful break.