DEMAT Magazine December 2023

www.demat.org.uk | December | 2023

We are DEMAT

To learn. To know. To lead out.

We are DEMAT

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We are DEMAT

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Contents Message from the Chair

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Welcome from the CEO

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Working Together

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Update from HR

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Success in EYFS

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Helen Jackson

Adrian Ball

Catherine Lock

Helen Rothwell

Transforming spaces at Farcet

10-11

Thoughts from the classroom

12-13

KS2 team at St John’s C of E Primary School

Latin Conference

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Saints in schools rugby tournament

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Our school communities

16-19

Welcome to Little Thetford

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DEMAT Together

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DEMAT Carol Service 2023

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Message from the Chair Helen Jackson

I am delighted to welcome to you to the second edition of our Trust magazine!

One of the pleasures of being a Trustee is the opportunity to visit schools across DEMAT. This term colleagues have enjoyed visits to our newest addition to DEMAT, Little Thetford, as well as Stanground St John’s, but several more visits will have taken place by the time you read this.

Yesterday I enjoyed a visit to Pathfinder. The children arrived for collective worship quietly and calmly, and yet a few minutes later, burst happily into “free form” dancing, led with great enthusiasm by Rev Stephen. The children were equally willing to comment thoughtfully and with remarkable insight on why we wear poppies. DEMAT has high expectations, and our children never fail to impress with their combination of self-discipline, high energy and the breadth and depth of their engagement in whatever is put before them in school.

Trustees have been looking at the role of governors in DEMAT. We hope to be able to share something on this in the coming weeks. It has been a pleasure to talk with governors over the past few months - these conversations have brought home to us how much we owe to and rely on the support of this quiet army of volunteers who know our schools much better than we ever can.

I wish all of you a very happy and blessed Christmas.

To learn. To know. To lead out.

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Welcome from the CEO Adrian Ball

Welcome to the second edition of We are DEMAT, our Trust magazine, which celebrates our family of schools and the great work going on in each one of them. This month we saw our inaugural DEMAT Carol concert take place at Ely Cathedral where over 700 children representing each of our 40 schools came together in a festive celebration.

The carol concert is just one part of our emerging DEMAT Together programme which was established to provide our children with a greater range of opportunities and experiences made possible through being part of the larger Trust.

The other DEMAT Together event that started this term was our Impossible Questions lecture series with author Isabel Thomas. The series is based around the idea that there is no such thing as an impossible question in science, culminating in each child writing a short piece of writing in response to their own ‘impossible question’. These will be compiled into an anthology which will be presented to the children at a special event in June.

This term we have received visits from Ofsted at four of our schools and a visit from SIAMs at one. I am pleased to report that in each of the visits our schools have been rated as Good.

Congratulations to Holme, Oakington, Norman, and William de Yaxley for Ofsted, and to Duchy of Lancaster for their Good from SIAMs. As a Trust we are now well ahead of the national trend in the number of our schools rated as Good or better

by Ofsted, testament to the hard work of our entire Trust family in making sure our schools offer a great education to the children in our care. In the 2023 exam period, our schools performed well and improved further compared to 2022 securing the Trust’s best ever outcomes in every published measure further demonstrating that the effort of our teams is resulting in improved outcomes for children in our schools.

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Working Together Catherine Lock

Our vision, ‘To learn. To know. To lead out.’ underpinned

by Philippians 4:13, guides our actions and decisions which makes it pleasing to see so many positive examples of learning, knowing, and leading out within this edition of We are DEMAT. Thank you for all the support that you show to the Trust, and I look forward to sharing more success throughout the year.

The best part about my role is working with our really dedicated school leaders as we constantly strive to work out how best to serve our children and staff. This is something we are all passionate about, which is fantastic, but it does mean we can get drawn into that cycle of improvement where we forget to pause and reflect on where we are; to take stock of what has gone well as well as what hasn’t.

Adrian Ball

When I was a headteacher, I was able to make the best decisions to move forward when I actively sought the thoughts and opinions of the school team. It is no different in my role as Director of Education here at DEMAT. Centrally, we want to be more intentional about hearing from all members of our DEMAT community so that we can develop as a team and learn how to best support the incredible work that is taking place in our schools.

Chief Executive

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To that end, we are thinking about ways in which we can learn more from everyone in the organisation. This will mean some more surveys, but even more importantly, we are also planning to get central support staff spending more time in schools to build that understanding of school life which is intrinsically important in helping us fulfil our roles to the best of our ability.

I look forward to seeing the results of our strengthening partnerships and visiting lots of schools myself throughout the rest of the academic year.

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Success in EYFS Mirrors and Windows: a look at Early Years Provisions within our Trust

Update from HR Helen Rothwell, Head of HR

Supporting

In the last magazine we shared our People Strategy and what this means to our staff and stakeholders. In this edition, we are looking at one of the core pillars in our People Strategy: how we create a strong reputation for supporting and developing our people at all levels.

Our Trust Curriculum Lead, Tricia Moss, highlights ongoing support for teaching staff ‘Our Trust Principles of Curriculum and Teaching place a strong emphasis on continual professional development. Ambitious outcomes for all pupils are predicated on staff having strong subject knowledge, so we ensure our subject leaders are developed to become subject experts in their discipline in order to support colleagues across their schools and the Trust.’

Valuing It is important our staff feel valued at work; therefore, this forms an intrinsic part of our people strategy.

We are developing open communication channels throughout the academic year to increase the opportunities we have to hear back from our colleagues across all functions and roles within the Trust. We want our staff to feel enabled to play a part in shaping the future of DEMAT.

We have developed ‘second in command’ days for our deputy and assistant headteachers which have proved to be successful ways of supporting our middle leaders and developing a strong network of people that they can rely on.

Our office staff, all of whom form a vital component within our Trust, have been asked to complete a school office survey to identify ways of developing their role and sharing best practice. We will also be looking at how the Central Team can offer support to our office administrators across the Trust.

Developing There is always lots on offer for CPD and this year’s steps will be taken in line with our People Strategy commitment to enhance accessible relevant CPD for all job roles across the DEMAT family. It is important to us that there are clear career pathways within our Trust and that our staff are developed to move through these pathways as they continue to work with us.

To learn, on an ongoing basis, is critical regardless of the roles we undertake across the Trust.

We challenge ourselves on an ongoing basis to know our work, our areas of specialism & expertise and know and understand those we support and work alongside.

Here Claire Gray, our trust lead for Early Years, discusses some of the progress that has been made in provision for the youngest children in our trust. Guyhirn and St. Martin’s share the work they’ve been doing to provide the strongest start for the children attending EYFS in their schools.

Over the last three years, we have worked hard as a Trust to create a community of like-minded early years practitioners and leaders that are aligned in our core aims and principles.

We have thought carefully about our curriculum and pedagogy, and how we can successfully teach foundational knowledge from the moment a child enters any of our schools.

We focus on strengthening language and vocabulary development, emphasising the importance of conversation and prioritising high-quality interaction within every one of our early years’ settings. We work hard to ensure that our environments are text and language rich, supplementing our children’s home experiences using our trust reading canon and core curriculum texts.

Early years is the bedrock of all our primary schools and our teams of early years practitioners and leaders receive bespoke professional development to enable them to develop as experienced early years professionals in order to give our children the best provision possible.

We often talk about creating mirrors and windows.

Mirrors to reflect the lived experiences of each child, so they see themselves represented within their learning and their education setting. Windows, to show our children the world beyond their lived experiences, expanding their horizons and maximising their learning opportunities.

Our schools provide rich, welcoming environments where children understand that learning has no limits, everyone is valued and that their future is full of possibilities. We know there is still work to be done, but we are excited by what we see taking place in our early years settings and remain committed to providing the absolute best provision for our youngest children within our trust.

They deserve it.

As part of our ongoing professionalism, we lead out to others within our departments, our academies, hubs and outside of our Trust.

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Success in EYFS

Success in EYFS

Outdoor learning for Early Years at St Martin at Shouldham C of E Primary School

Situated in a rural village near King’s Lynn, St Martin at Shouldham C of E Primary is a popular one-form entry school with a small Nursery. Headteacher, Katherine Howe, and EYFS lead, Jo Sandford, share some of the work they’ve been doing to increase the outdoor provision for early years at their school.

Physical activity is vital in children’s all-round development.

Gross and fine motor experiences develop incrementally throughout early childhood through developing a child’s core strength, stability, balance, coordination and positional awareness. Gross motor skills build the foundations for developing healthy bodies and, social and emotional well-being. Fine motor development provides precision and control which is later linked to early literacy.

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EYFS at Guyhirn – setting the foundation for success.

Headteacher, Karen Milnthorpe and EYFS Lead, Bev Cawston

In light of this, we wanted to make sure that our outdoor learning environment had the same quality of experience and provision as the indoor environment, ensuring it was carefully planned for, language rich, with provision that further embeds or facilitates core curriculum learning and physical development.

As a result, one of our recent projects has been to refurbish a large outdoor area that was looking tired and wasn’t being used to its full potential. With the help of a dedicated group of parents and our caretaker we are now at the point of beginning to see the space transformed. Children are becoming more engaged with the space, enjoying the provision independently and in a group. It now has a range of surfaces, places and materials for digging and filling, lots of things to lift, carry and transport around, quiet spaces and areas to imagine and create. With engaged children our staff are now able to interact, support and develop the learning taking place.

Guyhirn is a small school located in the fenland village of Guyhirn. Our school is an intrinsic part of community life and we have found engagement with our local community has become increasingly important as local amenities have diminished over the last few years.

We feel it is important to offer provision to children as young as two upwards as we know the benefits of immersing our youngest children in a learning community. We are proud of the sequenced, knowledge rich curriculum that we offer our youngest pupils.

We are proud of our approach to EYFS at Guyhirn and are excited to see the benefits as our children transition through the school, becoming social, resilient, and critical thinkers who learn, know and lead out.

We balance our curriculum teaching with child-initiated activities and highly resourced provision, meaning that we give our children the very best foundation on which to build their primary education. Our children succeed as readers and mathematicians and leave our school well prepared for transition to secondary school. This doesn’t happen by chance; we continually check the impact of our provision and make changes where necessary to meet the needs of individuals.

We realise the importance of working with families to support our children and organise regular workshops for our EYFS parents and carers, with a keen focus on reading, writing and maths. Recently, we have seen an increase in paternal attendance at these workshops and have enjoyed some really interesting discussions. Stay and play sessions are also available, giving us the opportunity to model activities and vocabulary that can be used to support children in their homes.

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Transforming spaces at Farcet C of E. Primary Emma Slade, headteacher Farcet C of E. Primary school in Peterborough is a mixed-year group school with just over one hundred pupils on roll. Classrooms are generally large, but the shared spaces around school are small, were cluttered with many years’ worth of unused resources and were in poor decoration. Over the summer, leaders considered how to best use every space to benefit the children and increase opportunities for purposeful learning. Being a mixed-year group setting, it was vital that spaces were developed for teaching in single year groups for lessons such as Sounds-Write and Maths. We also identified a lack of spaces for reflection and needed warm, nurturing spaces for our pastoral support.

Our wraparound provision desperately needed space as our breakfast and after-school clubs were being held in various classrooms and in the hall. By making some small structural changes, we created a bespoke area for wraparound care with easy access to the kitchen for snacks, and storage for continued access to games and crafts. Now our children enjoy breakfast around the table and can easily assist in serving and washing up family style. The space encourages children to read by offering comfortable spaces with a range of texts available for them to enjoy as part of their after-school activities. Children also have access to the big screen so they can enjoy the odd movie night!

School leaders have also developed ‘Live-Link’ spaces. These are located at various points across the school where pupils can access their learning via an online link. The spaces have a dual purpose. They are used as internal seclusion spaces for children that require an educational consequence. But they are also used by identified pupils that can sometimes focus more easily when given the opportunity to learn outside their classroom for short periods. A sign on the table indicates if the space is being used as an educational consequence or as a choice – conveying to staff what role they play in communicating and supporting the pupil.

All our classes and offices have been renamed after inspirational people like Earhart, Luther King, Hawking, Tolkien and Mozart, so it made sense to have a library of the Little People, Big Dreams books. Our pupils are enthralled by the story of our class names and respect the way in which these incredible people overcame different challenges.

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Our entrance area needed to be a place of pride and somewhere welcoming and informative for our guests.

We think carefully about signing in, access to safeguarding and fire procedures, but it is important that our visitors feel welcome and comfortable whilst waiting. Our visitors are invited to admire the two Royal replies that Earhart Class have received over the last few years; we are very fortunate to have received responses from the late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II and His Majesty, King Charles III. Trophies are on display to celebrate the success of our pupils and much attention is generated by the display of our Canon of Literature; visitors delight in recalling the classic texts that they fondly remember reading as children.

We have done a lot already, but our school improvements will not end here! We have secured a donation to renovate an area of our land that was once known as The Secret Garden.

This space used to be beautifully maintained, and we have captured footage of deer, foxes and hedgehogs in the area.

Sadly, it has been vandalised, with the little pathways broken, fences ripped down, bird tables destroyed, and the pond overgrown and filled with rubbish. The land is now unsafe to use and is in total disrepair. However, in Spring, we will pull together landscaping plans and invite our local community to join us in restoring The Secret Garden’s resplendence and glory. We look forward to sharing our progress! Please get in touch if you or anyone you know can help us with this project – any support will be gratefully received.

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Thoughts from the classroom Leanne Hase, Dan Buddle, Abigail Hall and Ryan Hall from St John’s C of E Primary School share their approach to achieving success for their year 6 pupils.

Here at St John’s, we run marathons, not sprints.

The above isn’t just about how we reach our end of KS2 results, but how we have developed ourselves over the past few years across the school. The journey St John’s has been on has resulted in our most recent end of KS2 results being above national in all areas. We are all aware of how difficult it can be to get children successfully through the end of KS2 assessments and here we are at the beginning of this journey once again, but when does this journey really start?

The simple answer is: from the minute they set foot in reception.

But reception doesn’t feed into end of KS2, right? Wrong!

The youngest members of our St John’s family support the rest of the school by learning how to SLANT beautifully on and off the carpet, soak in our school values and start KS1 assessments (yes, that early!) to help bridge those gaps between EYFS and year 1. They do this all in the first year of school! We provide our children with the best possible start by being rigorous with our approach and only ever expecting and accepting the best. Every teacher looks ahead and thinks carefully about how they are supporting the next year group with the end goal always in mind.

‘Team’ and ‘team work’ are probably words we’re all guilty of overusing in an educational context, but the journey we have been on at St John’s exemplifies how being a team is not to be taken lightly, and here at St John’s, we are more than a team- we are a family. Our successes academically across the school reflect how closely we have worked together. Our most recent family activity is our instructional coaching - each week we get together and work on a shared goal. Like a family, we’ve celebrated our successes together, built each other back up when things haven’t gone to plan and supported each other. All of this can be seen through our team teaching, group planning and open door approach: we are always happy to see our fellow colleagues (family members)!

A huge part of making schooling a marathon and not a sprint is accountability. We work relentlessly to hold children to account and ensure they engage in their learning. Trust us, it’s not always easy and it can be exhausting – but we reap the benefits as the year moves on. All through the school we cold call our children and expect them to have been actively listening and we also expect an answer; no opt out.

Children soon learn there is no escaping the learning: engage and they will succeed!

So looking at how our year has started, we can say the cohorts we are receiving in upper KS2 are positively engaged children, who love to learn, thrive academically and personally, and who are able to focus much more on their progress rather than hammering these expectations and routines into them.

Looking forward at the years to come, our hope is that, as we continue to hold the children and each other to account, we will find that the children arriving in our classes each September are increasingly secure in their knowledge, more engaged and ready to learn. We can then focus on not letting gaps open in the first place rather than chasing to close them.

What once was a lonely sprint becomes more like a marathon run as a team when we work together.

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Saints in schools rugby tournament Ermine Street, along with ten other schools from across our Trust, have recently partnered with the Northampton Saints by joining their Saints in schools programme. This programme boasts a whole host of benefits, including coaching sessions, player appearances and reward days.

The KS2 children at Ermine Street who have been taking part in the programme said ‘the lessons helped us improve our skills’ and that ‘doing tag rugby has helped us with teamwork and has built our confidence over the weeks’. All the children taking part felt that the partnership with Northampton Saints should continue to enable other children in the school to benefit from the coaches and training.

In September Northampton Saints hosted a tag rugby tournament for primary schools. Our very own Ermine Street Church Academy took part and won the tournament after winning all their matches.

Primary Latin Conference

Huge congratulations to the whole team, we look forward to seeing more DEMAT schools taking part next year and maybe challenging Ermine Street for the title!

While Classics students were preparing for the start of the academic year, at the University of Cambridge, language leads from across our Trust shared their lecture theatre and seminar rooms for the inaugural Primary Latin Conference. We ran this event in association with Classics for All and welcomed colleagues from Trusts and schools across the region.

After a warm welcome from Professor James Warren, chair of the Faculty Board of Classics, the conference was opened with a session led by DEMAT colleagues. Tricia Moss, our Trust Curriculum Lead, shared why and how we have introduced Latin as our foreign language taught in KS2. Karen Milnethorpe (headteacher) and Heidi Raine (KS2 teacher) explained how they had introduced Latin to their mixed-year group classes at Guyhirn Primary. They shared a video of their Y6 pupils speaking articulately, enthusiastically, and confidently about the benefits of learning Latin. Nicky Noble (language lead) completed the session taking us through her implementation plan and the subject knowledge training staff have received at St Botolph’s via grants from Classics for All. 14 We are DEMAT | December 23

We hope to arrange more sporting events for schools across our Trust through our DEMAT Together programme.

If you are part of a sports team who might like to support us with this, please get in touch. We would very much like to work with more partners to expand the sports provision that we offer to our children.

There was a wide range of workshops and guided museum tours for delegates to attend and plenty of opportunities for networking.

We were joined by Dr Rosanna Omitowoju from the Faculty of Classics for the final session, and the day ended with a round table summary of the workshops chaired by Angela Dix from Classics for All. Speaking to colleagues, the video of Guyhirn pupils sharing their love of learning Latin was definitely the highlight of the day for many – as well as the opportunity to network with colleagues within and beyond the Trust and meet the team behind the Latin programmes that we teach from in our schools.

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New running track at

Highlights from our school communities

We are very excited by the recent installation of our new running track around the perimeter of our school field. This new facility gives children the opportunity to complete laps either walking or running at break times keeping fit and healthy through active play. The 1.2m wide rubber track is suitable for use all year, giving us more space in the winter months when the field is unavailable. The children have thoroughly enjoyed using it every day and challenging themselves to complete more laps or improve their lap times.

Anthony Curton get a visit from James Dasaolu

Our Year 3 teacher at Anthony Curton, Lauren Wiles, organised for James Dasaolu to visit the school.

He is a British track and field athlete who specialised in 100m.

He was 100m European Champion in 2014 and is currently the second fastest Briton of all time, running the 100m in 9.91 seconds! James led the children through an intense workout and circuit training and shared his medals with them at a special assembly.

A World Champion at Farcet!

Anthony Curton Birthday party planning on a budget

Year 5 pupils from Anthony Curton were visited by employees of Nat West bank. They were given the task of organising a birthday party within a set budget and had to make key decisions on venue, number of guests and entertainment based upon the costs for each component. The children also gained an understanding of what it was like to work for a bank.

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At Farcet C. of E. Primary School we are incredibly proud of our very own World Champion!

Jaxon has now qualified to fight in the Unified World Championships in Italy in October and has now secured a sponsor which means he could potentially be competing around the world! Recently, Jaxon has been offered a place on the ICO England Squad Team and he will begin training and competing for them next year at a national and international level.

Jaxon started at Inspired Martial Arts in Hampton when he was just 3 years old. He now trains in a mixture of kick-boxing, sports karate and weapons training. In this time, he has been so dedicated that he is currently purple belt and working towards his brown belt. Jaxon currently trains 5-6 times every week!

Jaxon has won multiple trophies, a cask prize, three Bronze medals, 6 silver medals and 5 gold medals. Jaxon currently holds the title for the 2023 European Champion in light continuous aged 7-8 years and is the Open World Champion in Ken-do 7-8 years. He is currently in the top position in the points fighting category in the Peterborough Championship league.

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Fundraising at Thriplow

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St Peter’s Reverend Landall Retirement On Thursday 28th September 2023, St Peter’s Junior School celebrated a historic moment in the life of the school.

Reverend Allan Landall retired from his role at All Saints Church and in that, from being a valued and committed member of the St Peter’s governing body. He has supported St Peter’s Junior School for over 20 years, being the longest serving Governor in DEMAT history.

Last academic year, the children decided that they would like to raise money to help people with diabetes as we have a child with Type 1 diabetes in school, Leo. The children decided they would like to do a sponsored Fun Run. Together we decided that we would expand this and gave the children the choice to run, walk, hop, skip or dance round the cricket field. They were given half an hour to do as many laps as they could. Leo gave a talk to the whole school explaining what it is like to live with diabetes. As a school, the children did 1138 laps of the cricket field (389.196km – the equivalent of the journey from Thriplow to Paris as the crow flies!)

Reverend Landall arrived for his half termly collective worship, thinking that he would be leading his last ever service to our school community.

On arrival, he was met by members of the school worship council and our actual intentions were revealed to a surprised and overwhelmed Rev; he was to be the subject of the service.

Adrian Ball, CEO of DEMAT attended the celebration and shared our collective thanks for all that Rev. Landall has done for the school. Children and staff recalled events and statistics from across the 21 years, with one child saying, ‘I have always loved his stories at Church.’

DEMAT 10th anniversary logo As part of our celebrations for DEMAT’s 10th anniversary we launched a trust-wide competition for the children to design a 10th anniversary logo that we could use across our communication channels. Hundreds of children took part and after much deliberation Ada, a year 6 pupil from Oakington, was chosen as the winner. We worked with DACS design to turn her wonderful drawing into a digital logo which is now used on all emails from the DEMAT Central Team.

On 24 November, our CEO, Adrian Ball, visited Oakington to present Ada with a special certificate to celebrate her achievement.

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He has supported 10 Headteachers to drive forward improvements at St Peter’s.

1380+ children have been at the school since you began.

He has led over 100 church visits to All Saints for the whole school.

60+ Governors meetings.

Nola King, Year 6 pupil, shared an emotional retirement poem, before the Reverend took to the stage with well wishes and thanks for community support over the years. He revealed that in retirement he will be luxuriating in more of his hobbies, in particular his love of modelling. He told the children he has aspirations to build a ‘Millenium Falcon.’

Our vision is that we are ‘a rock for the community’ and build strong learning foundations for all our children to build a successful future. St Peter himself was given the keys to heaven and we feel that the Reverend has gone a long way in supporting us to unlock this vision and embody our values.

Thank you, we really appreciate everything you have done.

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DEMAT Together DEMAT Together is a newly developed Trust-wide programme of events for children across our Trust.

The programme has been designed to maximise the opportunities for our children to discover new passions, develop their talents and explore their areas of interest beyond their school walls.

Creating opportunities for us to come together as a Trust is a intrinsically important part of the DEMAT Together programme.

We aspire to use our events to strengthen the family ethos of our Trust, build a legacy of proud traditions and create long lasting special memories for our children. We believe that together, we are greater than the sum of our parts and are excited to see this realised through our events throughout the academic year.

Welcome Little Thetford to DEMAT On 1 September 2023 Little Thetford Church of England Primary School became the 40th school to join our Trust.

Here Sarah Durrant, Headteacher, and Dan Disney, Assistant Headteacher, tell us a little bit about their school and how they are looking forward to working with the rest of the DEMAT family.

Little Thetford is a family orientated school where every pupil is known as an individual. It is a small school, but it plays a big part in the local community. Our Christian distinctiveness is important to us, and we work hard to ensure that Christian values of Respect, Care and Tolerance are promoted throughout the whole school.

The staff here are amazing and go above and beyond for the pupils, setting high expectations for all our children and preparing them to be the leaders and changemakers that our future needs. We are very fortunate to have a supportive parent body who play an intrinsic role in the school community. Regular fundraising events have become proud traditions within the school calendar and are well attended by the wider community.

The school is surrounded by fields and has lots of regular wildlife visitors. Our classes have been named after some of the local wildlife that can often be seen in our school grounds. The children also benefit from their own gated access to the local church.

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We have recently introduced Sounds-Write and have seen huge developments in the children’s understanding of phonics.

It has been exciting to see their progress and to witness lots of ‘light bulb’ moments. We are also implementing a knowledge rich curriculum across the school.

It is an ambitious and coherent curriculum that is also intrinsically inclusive. It has been wonderful to see our children fully embracing it and enjoying learning powerful knowledge across the different subject disciplines.

We are looking forward to working with the Trust and developing relationships with other schools in the DEMAT family. It is exciting to be part of something bigger and to benefit from the wealth of CDP and networking opportunities that are available. We are also looking forward to joining in with the trust-wide events and are hoping to take part in the DEMAT Together football tournament coming up in Spring 24.

This year the following events will be taking place: Impossible Questions lecture series with award-winning and bestselling author, Isabel Thomas A six-part lecture series based around the idea that there is no such thing as an impossible question in science. Isabel will guide the children to think of their own ‘impossible questions’ and help them to find ways to research and investigate the answers. The children will be encouraged to write a short piece in response to their ‘impossible question’.

The best of these will be compiled into an anthology which will be presented to the children at our Impossible Questions symposium to be held in Cambridge in June 2024.

Trust-wide Carol service at Ely Cathedral Around 700 children from across our Trust took part in a traditional carol service at Ely Cathedral in Decemeber.

Ely St Mary’s Junior School choir performed a selection of carols alongside choir members from Ely Cathedral.

December 2023 was the first event in what we hope will become an annual tradition for our Trust.

DEMAT Football tournament

Easter assembly A story of hope - a trust-wide Easter assembly, live-streamed to all 7000 children across our trust. Pupils will share the story of Easter and the hope that it brings to each of us.

Little Thetford Church of England Primary School will host the assembly which will take place in March next year.

A celebration of art An exhibition showcasing some of the best artwork from children across the trust. The exhibition will take place at St Mary’s Church, Ely in Summer 2024. The work will be displayed in a digital gallery too, to enable those unable to attend the exhibition in person to see the wonderful work that the children have created.

To learn. To know. To lead out. awards ceremony The final event of the academic year celebrates the students who exemplify the DEMAT vision. Selected children from each of our schools will be invited to attend a special award ceremony where we will celebrate their remarkable achievements from the past academic year.

Over 30 of our schools will compete to be crowned DEMAT football champions! The tournament will take place in the second half of Spring 24. We are looking to develop more trust-wide sporting events for the next academic year.

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Carol Service 2023 On 4 December 2023 over 720 children from across our Trust arrived at the magnificent Ely Cathedral for our first ever Trust-wide carol service.

They were joined by staff from our central team along with governors, trustees, and invited guests.

The opening lines of Hark! The herald angels sing were sung by around 900 voices, each one a valued and special part of the DEMAT family.

The service took the form of seven lessons in carols, with each lesson telling a different part of the Christmas story. Children from Oakington, Anthony Curton, Farcet and Ely St Mary’s performed readings and the Ely St Mary’s choir, joined by choir members from the Cathedral, led the singing beautifully throughout the service.

This event was the first of what we hope will become an annual DEMAT tradition. We are very thankful to everyone at Ely Cathedral who worked with us to put together our carol service, we look forward to working with them on future events and inviting more of our children to experience the awe and wonder of being in such an incredible space.

22 We are DEMAT | December 23

We are DEMAT

December 23

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01353 656760 www.demat.org.uk The Diocese of Ely Multi-Academy Trust (DEMAT) DEMAT Office Address: Grace Building, 8 High Street Ely, Cambridgeshire, CB7 4JU December | 2023

To learn. To know. To lead out.

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