Voyage Annual Report 2022

Welcome To Our Trust

It is a privilege to introduce the Voyage Education Partnership’s Annual Report for the academic year 2021-22.

The Voyage Education Partnership is a charitable Multi-Academy Trust (MAT), working in Lincolnshire to educate just under 4,000 learners from the ages of 3-16. We currently have 9 academies in our family and work in a small geographical area around Boston and Spalding - with each academy no more than 30 minutes from each other. This is essential to how our MAT operates and enables us to be able to give immediate support when needed, and for our academies to collaborate and work closely together.

Voyage is an inclusive and learner-centred MAT which values and promotes excellence in learning. Our commitment as a Trust is to educate, empower and champion all learners. We work closely with the families and communities we serve to ensure that all young people meet their full potential. We are exceptionally proud that learners in our MAT speak 32 different languagesand that 50% of our young people are bilingual, multilingual, or use English as an additional language.

I would like to thank everyone who is part of our Voyage community for their

continued support, hard work and commitment throughout 2021/22 for our fabulous young people. We have a determined, strong and resilient culture at Voyage, and in all of our academies, which has enabled us to have a successful and productive year of which we are very proud. Our Trust is relentlessly focused on improvement, and we continue to celebrate and build on our shared successes as demonstrated in this report.

This Annual Report has been produced to be read in conjunction with our Trust Annual Accounts, which are published every January.

Thank you for taking the time to read our report and I hope that you enjoy hearing about our work during the last academic year - and our plans for the year ahead.

Emma Hadley, Chief Executive Officer

- Nelson Mandela

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

Our Mission, Values, And Strategic Aims

Our Voyage mission: ‘To create centres of excellence within, and for, the communities we serve which raise the aspirations and achievements of all – a Trust which provides care, support, guidance, challenge and empowerment for all’.

Voyage has four clear and important strategic aims which continue to encompass our vision and ambition for 2020-23:

• Every Learner in Voyage is educated in a ‘Good’ academy - where the quality of education reflects the highest standards and where behaviour, attitudes, and outcomes are exemplary and consistent from everyone within the school community. We want every learner to enjoy their learning journey in our academies and have real choices for the future. We have a shared mission to deliver excellent teaching and learning every day.

• Voyage is ‘The Trust of parental choice’ – a leading educational organisation in our local communities that gives parents and communities confidence. We want to be parents’ ‘first choice’ in the communities we serve, and for our academies to be full or growing, vibrant places to learn. We believe every learner should have access to the best education. (cont.)

Our Mission, Values, And Strategic Aims

• Voyage is ‘The employer of choice’ – a family of academies and a Central Team that are great places to work. We want our staff development to be first class and to enable staff that are ambitious to grow their careers with us. We want to ensure our CPD networks offer our staff significant professional development opportunities, and want to recruit and retain the best people.

• Voyage is ‘The partnership of choice’ – an outward facing, collaborative and innovative learning-focused organisation. We want external agencies and strategic partners to seek to work with us, and for us to have excellent capacity to support others. Our reputation should reflect our strategic aims and priorities, and attract like-minded thinkers and innovators.

Voyage’s strategic aim for Trust growth is to improve the lives and life chances of more young people.

We can meet this aim in several ways, and these include:

* Improving the performance of our current academies.

* Providing training and support for ITT trainees and contributing to the regional supply of new Early Career Teachers entering the teaching profession.

* Embracing opportunities to be system leaders through strategic partnerships including as a delivery partner for both Lincolnshire’s LEAD Teaching School Hub and SCITT - and offering traded services to other MATs and schools.

* New schools joining Voyage.

What Sort Of MAT Does Voyage Want To Be?

We want to be a learning organisation that is continually improving and is ambitious for our learners, staff teams - and the communities we serve.

We want to find and implement the best moral and ethical ways to support and educate our learners.

We want to create an equitable Trust where every academy, and every learner, thrives.

We want to be purposefully ‘connected’ and outward-facing, working in collaboration with a wide range of external bodies and strategic partners on a local, countywide, and national level.

We want to regularly evaluate our actions so that we can measure the impact we are having for our learners.

We want to positively affect the lives of all those educated with us.

We want to be a Trust which focuses on sustainability, long-term planning, and a legacy mindset.

We want to manage risk rather than avoid it - so we can innovate, develop, and be a leading MAT in Lincolnshire.

We want to use digital technology to help us become more effective and efficient as an organisation, and to support our employees’ wellbeing and work-life balance.

We want to ensure that all available resources are delivered to academies to benefit our learners.

We want to enable improvement and innovation as an organisational habit.

We want to be an organisation where leaders at all levels are strong, effective, and authentic - and develop a pipeline of excellent future leaders.

We want to ensure that every child has access to good quality teaching and learning every day within a safe, stimulating, and well-resourced learning environment.

Our ContextStatistics For The Academic Year 2021/22

3,682 Learners 476 Staff Team Members

10 Sites In The Boston And Spalding Areas

8 Academies, Educating Learners

From 3-16 Years Of Age

We are delighted that Old Leake Primary School decided to join our Voyage Education Partnership family in 2022.

This year we began working with the school, and started to get to know the staff team and community, in preparation for them joining Voyage as our 9th academy in the Autumn Term of 2022.

We are also welcoming our first Trust Partnership school in 2022 who will be working with us on an informal basis and accessing our Central Services and support.

Our Academies

Lincolnshire’s first Free School has secured its reputation in the centre of Boston for striving for the highest standards for all learners in academic progress, attitude and behavior. In 2021/22 the academy continued to focus on its ‘REACH’ values after the disruption of the Covid pandemic and worked hard to catch up on the previous loss of learning. Boston Pioneers continues to successfully prioritise pastoral care and safeguarding, while igniting every child with a lifelong love of learning.

Situated in the heart of the Boston community, which it is so proud to serve. This is a large two form entry primary academy with a great building and outdoor learning spaces, available to all learners. In 2021/22 the academy invested in a significant refresh to its Nursery and Reception areas, which are a delight to see. Carlton Road Academy also welcomed experienced Headteacher Clare Coyle in January 2022. She is leading the academy onto the next stage of its improvement journey with a committed and enthusiastic staff team.

Our smallest academy lives its ‘Small School, Big Heart, Great Start’ motto every day, and prides itself on its family feel and personalised learning opportunities. 2021/22 saw the academy have a fantastic brand-new hall built. Both children and staff have loved this new addition, which they use to come together and enhance learning opportunities. This year the academy has grown in number and continues to achieve good outcomes for all learners.

A happy and successful village primary academy which knows and serves its families and community extremely well. Staff work closely together and form an impressive team. In 2021/22 the academy continued its focus to enable all children to learn life skills, to be good citizens, to confidently voice opinions, look after the environment, and respect others. Outcomes at the end of Year 6 following SATs were high, and well above national averages.

This continues to be a popular and oversubscribed Boston secondary academy, serving nearly 1,400 learners across two sites. Throughout 2021/22 it continued to maintain its outcome standards, reflective of the high expectations and ambition the academy holds for all learners. This year the academy continued to build on its impressive focus and offer for Personal Development, including extensive extracurricular activities and the establishment of a 3G sports pitch on its grounds.

Park Academy built on its Good Ofsted rating in 2020 with even more improvements and leaning opportunities in 2021/22. Park saw a significant growth in numbers this academic year as more families from across the Boston area recognised how all staff value learning and all learners there - and importantly how they celebrate difference and respect everyone’s cultures and traditions. A great new Early Years outdoor area was built in 2021 and the academy appointed Kris Radford as Headteacher at the end of the academic year.

Our Academies (cont.)

Our largest primary academy is incredibly proud of its welcoming and inclusive ethos for all learners and families. Staniland Academy promotes its ‘RESPECT’ values wholeheartedly and consistently throughout the curriculum, and every school day, and lives and breathes the ethos ‘All different, equal, achieving and smiling’. In 2021/22 leaders continued to develop the curriculum offer for all learners and focused particularly on the further development of the Early Years provision and environment - which is now another significant strength of the academy.

This academy continues to be an oversubscribed, popular, primary school in Spalding. Throughout 2021-22 Wygate Park Academy continued to face demands for growth, as more and more families requested a place there. The academy has agreed to support the local authority by taking an additional Reception class in 2022/23. The school is proud of its reading rich curriculum and environment, and continued to develop its reading and library facilities this year in exciting ways. Outcomes for all learners were good in 2021/22. The stable and strong leadership team at Wygate Park were able to look outwards in 2022 - supporting other schools and academies in the region as system leaders.

Governance

Members

The Voyage Education Partnership has a Board of Members who are the guardians of the governance of the Trust. They must ensure Voyage carries out its charitable objectives and company duties.

Trustees

Voyage is governed by a Board of Trustees who devolve some responsibilities to the Standards and Curriculum, Finance and Audit, People and Estates, and Infrastructure, Sub-committees.

Voyage’s Trustees are responsible for carrying out the following:

• Ensuring clarity of the vision, ethos and strategic direction

• Holding the Executive Leaders to account for the educational performance of the academies and their pupils, and the effective and efficient performance management of staff

• Overseeing the financial performance of the academies

The Chair of the Trust Board in the academic year 2021-22 was Mr Chris Penney. The Vice Chair was Dr Jo Barkham.

Academy Council

Each of our academies also has an Academy Council made up of community

representatives, parents, and staff to provide local and community accountability.

Academy Council members have three key roles:

- To advise and act as a critical friend to the Headteacher of the Academy and to advise the Board of Trustees about local issues they need to consider that affect the academy

- To represent the interests of the community, and to represent the academy in its community

- To provide support to the Headteacher in undertaking certain procedures, such as complaints and exclusion procedures if the Board of Trustees have delegated these responsibilities

Trust Development During 2021/22

Some challenges arising from the Covid pandemic continued in 2021/22, however all leaders within the Trust were committed to ensuring that each setting remained safe to be open for quality educational on-site provision - as well as providing quality remote education, if required, to continue to serve the needs of the local community.

For those learners who were not in attendance within the year, due to selfisolation guidelines or through class closures, each academy provided learners with carefully planned remote education provision - as well as supporting the wellbeing and pastoral needs of learners and their families.

All academies continued to adopt a blended approach to suit the individual contextual needs of their learner communities, and further adapted this to individual learners. Headteachers and their teams were affected by large staff absences, particularly at the end of the Autumn term and across the Spring term when adhering to self-isolation guidelines, and resorted to extreme lengths to ensure consistent delivery of educational provision. This included self-isolating teachers teaching classes from their homes via Teams, or one teacher teaching larger groups of learners from the school hall or other large space. Regular assessment and evaluation of learners returning from absence by Senior Leaders ensured that Covid Catch-up grants were

spent on interventions, programmes and initiatives designed to continue learners’ knowledge journeys - and fill gaps with learning where these were appropriately identified for individuals. This enabled learners to enter September 2022 confidently and ready to learn, and to work towards agerelated expectation and statutory assessment for the end of year 2023.

Despite the continual interruption faced, learners in Early Years and Key stage 1 achieved performances that mirrored the national picture, with the most vulnerable learners ending the academic year working towards the expected standards. Achievement at the end of Key stage 2 was in line with the national picture. Achievement at the end of Key stage 4 remained stable with previous statutory assessment. The rigorous assessment systems for transition that academy leaders engaged in meant that all learners transitioning into their new Key stages entered with teachers forensically knowing which learners may still have had gaps in knowledge or key skills as a result of a 2-year challenge to continuous educational provision. It also meant that learners were able to continue their journey to expected standards by the end of their next Key stage. No MAT data was published for 2021/22.

Trust Development During 2021/22

(cont.)

Ofsted Inspections

There was 1 Monitoring inspection during the academic year 2021/22.

In 2021 we had 2 academies with a historic Ofsted Outstanding grade, 4 Good, and 2 Requires Improvement.

Other notable improvement work that took place across Voyage in 2021/22 included improvements to our buildings and estates.

Our Trust built a brand new hall for Fishtoft Academy, which was extremely well-received by learners, staff, families and the local community.

A new state-of-the-art community sports facility was also opened at Haven High Academy, costing £900,000, following significant and grateful contributions from Boston Town Deal’s accelerated funding, the Football Foundation, and the Medlock Trust.

Park Academy also benefitted from newly transformed Early Years Outdoor areas, while elsewhere significant estates work improvements included the redevelopment of the old Trust offices to convert them back into two large classrooms and curriculum lead offices at Haven High Academy.

Our Trust Digital Strategy also made great progress, supporting learners in classrooms and staff team members to work more effectively and efficiently - most notably through implementation of the GEN2 network, ensuring equal access to the internet across the Trust while gaining assurance of our cyber security preparedness through achieving Cyber Essentials accreditation.

The Voyage Catering Team, working from 3 kitchens on our academy sites, produced an incredible 357,738 meals for our learners in 2021/22 too!

System Leadership And Connected Organisations 2021-22

Train To Teach

The Voyage Education Partnership is committed to offering comprehensive support and training to its teachers and support staff at every step of their careers.

From the decision to train with us, we offer tailored support through quality career development for individuals - from ITT into school leadership. We believe that our teachers and support staff are integral to our success, and those delivering outstanding current classroom practice are best placed to train the teachers of the future.

Our training, delivered by outstanding teachers and specialist leaders, has been designed to ensure that individuals have access to professional and tailored training and development - enabling them to improve their practice at any point in their career.

We are proud to work as a delivery partner for Lincolnshire SCITT to provide a high-quality teacher training experience for student teachers in our region. Our trainee teachers join a team of staff who are fully committed to delivering the highest quality teaching and learning to children in Lincolnshire.

Our experienced team:

- Works with providers to deliver an exciting and effective programme which gives confidence and provides high-quality entrants into the teaching profession.

- Negotiates placements throughout our school partners for trainees, liaising with schools to ensure trainees, schools and children enjoy a rewarding

experience.

- Mentors and supports each individual trainee throughout their programme to ensure they have quality and tailored training - and emerge as quality practitioners, ready for a successful career in the profession.

- Supports trainees with their next step of securing a permanent classroom position and fulfilling their ambitions at the beginning of their teaching career. In 2021/22, 16 trainees were recruited to start the programme - with 16 successfully completing the training and being granted Qualified Teacher Status (QTS).

Supporting Early Careers Teachers In Our Region

Voyage began its partnership with the LEAD Teaching School Hub via the Early Career Framework (ECF) Partnership Agreement in September 2021, as an appropriate delivery partner for the ECF and to facilitate development of a Lincolnshire-based Early Careers Teachers (ECTs) region.

The partnership work includes:

- Monitoring of support – checking that ECTs are receiving their statutory entitlements and that regard is had to the statutory guidance. Also, to provide ECF fidelity checks - ensuring schools are supported to provide ECTs with an ECF-based induction.

- Monitoring of assessment – making the final decision as to whether the ECT has satisfactorily met the Teachers’ Standards 5, based on the headteacher’s recommendation. (cont.)

System Leadership And Connected Organisations 2021-22

(cont.)

By the end of the 2021/22 academic year, Voyage had successfully supported, monitored, and assessed 39 ECTs across the allocated region of schoolsworking with school-based mentors and induction tutors as to their roles and responsibilities.

Partnership working with the LEAD Teaching School Hub expands wider than the ECF delivery - with Voyage academies accessing the CPD pathway.

Partnerships

A number of informal partnerships and collaborations with other MultiAcademy Trusts were also formed across 2021/22 to support joint working, to seek new and innovative practice, and to enhance our development opportunities.

One such collaboration was with the Horncastle Education Trust - using joint system leaders to support the delivery of the ECF modules, as well as joint delivery of the new Middle Leadership Programme. Twenty middle leaders across the two Trusts (15 from Voyage) engaged in a new year-long programme designed to support middle leaders (across the wider region) with their roles and responsibilities, and to understand leadership - forging a pathway of succession.

To support the delivery of Voyage’s Education Strategy 2021/22, Voyage formed partnerships with PiXL - working closely with the Regional Lead to provide four main services, namely leadership networking, development, events, and strategies. Academies also took advantage of the specialist

associate, who is dedicated to helping leaders to navigate all that PiXL has to offer for maximum impact.

A partnership with Nicola Ellwood Master Coach, Communication and Leadership Specialist, to facilitate the Voyage Coaching Leaders Programme saw 12 coaching leaders graduate in July 2022.

Other partners the Trust engaged with to support delivery with the Education Strategy included The Priory Federation of Academies Trust, B11 Education, the Confederation of Schools Trust, Chris Whitney Consultancy, Chris Pumfrey NLE and Boston College.

Planned Development For 2022/23

We are ambitious and excited about the academic year ahead, and remain focused on our journey of improvement.

Each of our academies has its own Academy Improvement Plan (AIP), clearly detailing bespoke priorities, plans, monitoring, and evaluation for the year ahead for that academy.

Each AIP is written by, and is the responsibility of, the Headteacher and Senior Leaders of each academy.

The Trust also has a number of ambitions and improvement priorities for the year ahead, including:

- To further improve outcomes and provision for all learners. Our 2022/23 Voyage Education Framework focuses particularly on assessment, including the combined strategy, reduction of Persistence Absenteeism, attainment, support, and ambition for our EAL learners in writing and challenge.

- To meet the ambitious targets outlined in our Voyage Green Promise.

- To raise awareness, challenge stereotypes, and develop a shared understanding of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion throughout the organisation.

- To develop business continuity practices and central services in our growing Trust.

- To guide the Trust carefully through the national cost of living and energy crisis, and support our staff and families facing difficulties as appropriate.

- To continue to develop a whole MAT coaching culture, and consistently train leaders to use coaching as a vehicle for improvement and behaviours (Voyage

Coaching Leaders Cohort 2).

- To ensure that Old Leake Primary Academy is fully assimilated into the Trust and that the Trust is adding clear value to its learners, staff, families and community.

- To further develop middle leaders across the Trust to understand leadership, their role, subject intent, and curriculum design - and how they can be effective as a leader.

- To further strengthen governance and local accountability by recruiting more stakeholders, including community members and parents to some Academy Councils.

- To increase the number of Trustees from 8 to 13, and recruit new Trustees based on skill analysis and need.

- To introduce a new MIS across the Trust for the benefit of academies.

- To embed the Managed HR Service across the Trust to support leaders in developing the workforce, and supporting employees through the employee life cycle.

- To further develop our role and opportunities as a System Leader, and develop mutually beneficial MAT-to-MAT partner working.

- Continue to regularly evaluate, and improve, the effectiveness of our Central Services to ensure there is transparency and accountability at all levels.

- To ensure that Headteachers have transparency of services and are confident they are receiving good value for money from Central Services at all times.

Academy Improvement Model And Professional Development

In 2021/22 our Academy Improvement Offer continued to develop, and be shaped by, the needs of the academies we serve.

As a MAT we are best placed to improve practice through sharing our expertise. We are able to invest in our workforce and provide professional development across the whole academy group. Our Education Strategy and Framework includes activities focusing on supporting academy development, planning and delivery, effective academy self-evaluation - and recognises that the prime responsibility and driver for effective academy improvement comes from academy leaders.

Specific professional development programmes and projects are designed and offered to meet the needs of academies where evaluation of KPIs, analysis of performance indicators, feedback from Headteachers, and national priorities identify trends across the academies that require whole Trust strategies to support improvement. These are led by the Central Education Team, expertise from within the system (or externally-led), or could be research learning communities-led from within the Trust.

A huge strength of our academy improvement offer is our professional networks and moderation events, and feedback in this academic year tells us that these are greatly valued and appreciated by staff team members.

Building these professional learning networks for colleagues working together

in specific year groups, or leading in specific subject areas, ensures that subject-specific expertise and pedagogical understanding is developed through a range of collaborative approaches.

Our Voyage Improvement Offer in 2021/22 included:

- Assurance visits and bespoke reviews as requested by Headteachers in areas such as curriculum, attendance, safeguarding, teaching and learning, Early Years, and phonics

- Termly assurance schedule of activity, including core annual reviews and agreement trialling

- Leadership development days

- Year-long focused development programmes for teachers - such as challenge, middle leadership, and Year 1 and 3 strategies

- Development of coaching culture through trust-wide coaching projects, including external expertise

At Voyage, improvement is seen as a collective responsibility across the organisation, underpinned by strong systems and structures that support all academies at different stages of their improvement journey.

Our Voyage Central Services

At the Voyage Education Partnership we have a well-developed Central Team, who oversee and offer technical expertise and leadership in many operational areas.

Having these professional services provided centrally enables our Headteachers to focus on leading learning in their own academies - knowing they can rely on the partnerships with the operational managers to help them achieve their individual strategic aims.

Our Trust offers the following Central Services to all of our academies:

Academy Improvement

Inclusion

(including safeguarding, attendance and SEND support)

Finance

Health and Safety

Human Resources

Estates Management

Operational Management

Marketing and Communications

Catering

Risk Management

Data/GDPR Management

Governance

Finance

Impact Of Our Finance Work

- All ESFA financial returns have been submitted on time and accepted by ESFA without any queries.

- Our annual accounts to 31st August, 2021, were submitted in time to ESFA with no exceptions reported by the auditors.

- The School Condition Allocation grant is delivering real improvements to school buildings and estates - and for staff and learners.

- An experienced and highly skilled central Finance Team comprised of 5 experts.

- The Trust remains in a strong financial position, with good reserves.

Why Join The Voyage Education Partnership?

Support – Collaboration – Challenge – Guidance – Cooperation –Opportunity. The Voyage Education Partnership is a MAT committed to ‘working in partnership to raise achievement for all’.

Our Trust currently has 9 academies and educates nearly 4,000 young people in Lincolnshire, from ages 3-16. Our learners are at the heart of everything we do.

We take great pride in being an educational charity and a learning organisation that is continually improving. At Voyage we are a family of academies who work together and collaborate to ensure that all of our learners and staff teams have the chance to reach their potential.

Some of the benefits of being part of the Voyage Education Partnership include:

- Shared ethos, values and standards. Each Headteacher is part of our Senior Leadership Team and contributes to the strategic direction and vision of our Trust.

- Autonomy for Headteachers and leaders, and no ‘one size fits all’ centralised model.

- Professional support from a well-established Central Team, including Governance, Finance, HR, Estates, Health and Safety, IT, and Marketing and Communication. These central professional services provide academies with expertise and are good value for money.

- A clear, and agreed, education strategy and framework which has the right balance of support for development and challenge for quality assurance and improvement.

Why Join The Voyage Education Partnership?

(cont.)

- Support from a Central Education Team with expertise in Teaching, Learning and Assessment, Early Teacher Development, and Inclusion (which includes Safeguarding, Attendance and SEND).

- Shared expertise and support in common areas of need, such as safeguarding, SEND, attendance, admissions and wellbeing.

- Opportunities to share and co-develop best practice for the benefit of all.

- Access to CPD and Leadership networks that offer our staff significant professional development opportunities.

- Economies and efficiencies of scale, and a MAT with good financial health and management. We do not pool funds across the organisation, and each academy maintains their own budget and reserves.

- Opportunities to contribute as a system leader through supporting Initial Teacher Training and Early Careers framework through our strategic partnerships with the LEAD Teaching School Hub and Lincolnshire SCITT.

- An experienced conversions team, enabling a smooth transition for schools joining the Voyage Education Partnership.

How To Find Out More

We are always very happy to hear from those who wish to join our Voyage family, or who simply want to learn a little more about us and what we do.

Please contact our CEO for an informal discussion by emailing: Emma.Hadley@voyage-education.org

We are approved for growth by the DfE and are looking to expand and grow our Trust.

We would be happy to set up visits to our current academies, and meetings with our Headteachers, for an open conversation.

“Individually, we are a drop. Together, we are an ocean.”

- Ryunosuke Satoro