BWT schools begin NAHT Aspire programme
Principals from across the Trust Schools met for the first phase of the NAHT Aspire Programme, an initiative to drive up performance in schools. The scheme develops key aspects of school life and achievement, particularly across multi-academy trusts, helping them to share best practice and achieve measurable impact.
Ian Rawstorne from Edison Learning, led the first session. He said: ‘Today is the first leadership network day where we bring the Principals of all the schools together to start off the three-year programme. We have already carried out a school review process in eight of the schools when two advisers visited to work with the respective leadership teams.
‘We look at schools through the Aspire model which has features of highly effective schools to see how well the schools got these features in place. From that, across the Trust, we see if there are any common development areas and that becomes the focus.
‘Aspire has been running since 2012 and there was an initial pilot of 30 schools across the country in five regions. Since then the programme has been rolled out across the country as the NAHT can see the impact of the initial pilot and now good and outstanding schools are joining the programme as well.
‘As well as leadership the model has other strands; pedagogy, curriculum and assessment for learning. We will have a similar day to this with key leads from all the schools and another one on learning environment and student support. It is a wrap-around approach for schools.’