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.