A collective dedication

Last week my son told me that without doubt Max Verstappen is the greatest driver of all time. I disagreed and discussed with him intricate teamwork behind a Formula 1 racing team. Success on the track isn't just about the driver; it’s the combined effort of every mechanic, engineer, and strategist. Red Bull is a great team and because of that he is in the best position to achieve success.

Similarly, in our school, while teachers may be at the forefront, it’s the collective dedication of the caretakers, admin teams, LSAs, teachers and canteen staff that truly drives our success.

Every role, no matter how visible, is crucial. The support staff ensures our environment is conducive to learning, maintaining our facilities and providing essential services that allow our students to focus on their studies. The administrative team keeps everything running smoothly, managing the myriad of details that go into daily school operations. LSAs provide critical support in the classroom, helping to tailor learning experiences to individual student needs. The canteen staff ensure that our students are well-nourished and ready to tackle their day.

Our teachers create lessons and resources that cater to the unique needs of each student, ensuring every child can progress and achieve their full potential. Just as in Formula 1, where the sharing of ideas and innovations keeps the team at the cutting edge, our collaboration and exchange of best practices propel us forward. When we share ideas and collaborate, we emulate a well-oiled racing team, continuously improving and pushing boundaries. This collaboration is the reason we as a school wanted to join Learning Partners to enable us to collaborate with staff in other great schools to enhance the provision for our young people. Each of us brings unique strengths and perspectives that, when combined, create a powerful force for student achievement.

In our busy lives, it's easy to forget about the positive things that happen and we deliver and focus on the negatives. Every member of our team plays a vital part in this journey. Thank you for your unwavering dedication and for the many roles you play in making our schools successful.

Russell Mitchell, Headteacher, Glebelands School

Department for Education: School Workforce Statistics

Institute for Fiscal Studies:

The state of education:what awaits the next government?

NFER expert Jack Worth provided a summary of the key issues, which you may have seen on twitter:

• A slight fall in the teacher leaving rate, but it remains higher than just before the pandemic and there are other signs that the recruitment and retention crisis is biting
• The overall leaving rate is down slightly, but the number of working-age leavers hit a new high. This is offset by the continuous fall in retirements, now just 0.7%.
  
• There are other signs of the teacher supply crisis biting in schools. Unfilled vacancies and temp-filled posts are up to record highs. %s are low because few schools have vacancies in November, but all the more a signal of difficulties filling vacancies
  
• The % of lessons taught by specialists (measured by post A level qualifications) is on the slide across a range of key subjects, both in the last year and since before the pandemic
  
• The number of newly-qualified entrants in 2023 was the lowest since 2010 by a long way. That reflected poor ITT recruitment in 2022, which has continued in the two years since. Offset a little by slight rises in returners and other new entrants
  

Key findings:

• England is one of the best-performing countries in terms of school-age attainment
• The COVID-19 pandemic has reduced performance – reversing a decade of progress in reading
• There are significant inequalities at all stages of education
• There has been virtually no change in the gap between children from more and less disadvantaged backgrounds in GCSE attainment over the past 20 years.
• The number of children on an Education, Health and Care plan – the highest tier of support for special educational needs – has risen by 60% since 2016.
• Since the COVID-19 pandemic, absenteeism has increased by almost two-thirds and 37% of disadvantaged pupils are now recorded as ‘persistently absent’.
• The COVID-19 pandemic also drove a substantial worsening in girls’ mental health: in 2022–23, 30% of girls aged 10–15 met the threshold for abnormally high emotional and behavioural difficulties, up 5 percentage points since 2019–20.

Celebrating Our Estates teams

The idea is to allow the team to create “a way of working” for the trust, to become more cohesive and share their expertise and skills. The meeting was kindly hosted by Kings College and the team met for a very productive three hours.

The meeting covered site-team specific asbestos training which included:

• legal duty
  
• emergency procedures
• risk assessments
• management plans
• surveys

They also discussed the Every Compliance system and the powerful tool that it is. Many of the schools hadn’t realised how helpful the provision is.

A networking session followed the training which proved to be very productive and allowed colleagues to discuss statutory compliance items, such as

• professional fire risk assessment
  
• asbestos re-inspection by site teams
• gas servicing

Discussions centred around contractors used, prices paid and how often.

With Russell’s main article in mind, there is no doubt that in order for a school to not only operate effectively, but to provide a safe, comfortable and welcoming environment for young people, it takes a whole team of differently skilled colleagues to work together to enable this.

Today we celebrate our Estates teams across the trust. Their importance should never be underestimated and although it is everyone’s responsibility to ensure that our work environment is safe and pleasant, it is our site teams who have a real hold on this area of school operations.

It is the site teams who expertly manage all situations from handling routine maintenance tasks, repairing broken equipment, supervising cleaning services, managing rubbish and recycling collections to managing building projects, conducting regular safety inspections, addressing any potential hazards and supporting the logisics of any school event preparation. The responsibilites are not exhaustive and the site teams across the trust are extremely flexible in their approach to their workstreams.

Sally Cave, the trust’s estates manager responsible for health and safety cannot be more delighted to be working with “a fabulous and skilled team of individuals”. Sally brought the whole team together in April for a meeting, which was a great success and it concluded with all of the participants being very keen to meet again and on a regular basis. Next academic year, they plan to meet termly and each meeting will provide a professional development and networking opportunity.

Sally came out of the meeting in April, skipping! Her vision for bringing all site teams from all the schools, cross phase, together was coming to life and with a bang.

We are very excited to announce that we will soon be launching a podcast for you to gather interesting snippets of information where the intention is to teach you something new or reinforce knowledge that you already have. If not, we hope that it will at least provide some light-hearted entertainment for 5 minutes!

The first series of podcasts will be centred around our site teams. We will be chatting with individuals and getting some top tips and we can’t wait!

SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT continued

Surrey Maths School Events

Women in Stem - Summer School

8 or 10 July, 09:30 - 15:30

University of Surrey

Meet the Headteachers

25 June, 17:00 - 17:45

Online

This one day event will be led by the co-headteachers of Surrey Maths School. It is for female students in Year 10 who have an interest in the STEM subjects, particularly maths and physics. Lunch will be included and the event is free. Please do inform your keen female scientists and mathematicians. But be quick - spaces are filling fast!

Please click here to download the flyer and for further information

on the day

Click below for some bitesize learning

Governors day at Tiffin School

Get Boardwise

SAfE CEO - Maria Dawes

Termly visit to Boxgrove

SFET CEO - Andrew Carter

1:1 COO

LA

Esher Church School

Trust headteachers meeting

School visit to Burpham

Spring review feedback at George Abbot

Directors of Education - MM/KK/GT

Termly visit to Stoughton and Northmead

1:1 Director of Education (KK)

LPCAT afternooon

1:1 Director of Education (AKR)

School visit to Tillingbourne

Jon Chaloner

Audit Committee

Moss Lane

Spring review feedback at Fullbrook

Secondary HT meeting

Julia Katharine

Executive team meeting

1:1 Director of Education (KK)

LPCAT afternoon

West Surrey Partnership

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A 12-month direct debit membership of £50 per month (instead of £72) and can be cancelled within the 12-month commitment period (with a calendar months’ notice) if there is a change in circumstances that falls within the terms and conditions. This includes a health issue or injury, redundancy, pregnancy, relocation, etc.

Additionally, there is a 20% partner discount available for anyone who joins alongside Learning Partners members providing they link their membership payments together.

Click here for further information

Octopus Electric Vehicle Salary Sacrifice Scheme

Supporting the UK government’s push towards an electric vehicle revolution, we are operating the Learning Partners Academy Trust Electric Car Scheme, in partnership with Octopus Electric Vehicles (OEV).

You can drive a brand-new electric car* using part of your gross salary, making savings on income tax and national insurance. You will pay some company car tax (Benefit in Kind) but the rates for electric cars are extremely low until 2025.

*Subject to eligibility and you signing the Learning Partners Academy Trust Driver Handbook.

You can save up to 40% on driving a brand-new electric car with maintenance, tyres and more included, plus insurance. There are some added extras too, including a home charger, funded with a standard installation, and 4,000 miles of free home charge or 4,000 miles public charge on the Electroverse + £50 home credit, if you switch to Octopus Energy at home. T&Cs can be found here.

Learning Partners Academy Trust and Nuffield Health have teamed up to offer a 30% discount to all Learning Partner employees at Guildford Nuffield.

There are two membership options available with the 30% discount. The pricing for these options is as follows:

1. A monthly rolling membership of £61 per month (instead of £87) and can be cancelled with a calendar months’ notice at any time during the membership.

Click here for further information

LEARNING PARTNERS Staff Benefits

Discounts for Teachers

& Ode Cashback Card

Free Will Writing Service

Learning Partners Academy Trust and Estate Planning and Will Writing specialists Dunham McCarthy are able to offer you a free will writing service to help you plan for your future, protecting your family and loved ones. The free service is provided remotely, either by telephone or video call, at a time to suit you. You will have an adviser to help you complete each step from start to finish.

All Learning Partners staff, in any role (not just teachers), can access exclusive discounts, cashback and vouchers when they join the scheme. There are over 1200 of the biggest brands on their website and thousands of deals. Save on holidays, fashion, homeware, days out, mobiles, finance, insurance, TV and broadband and more. It’s free to join and free to use, it only takes a couple of minutes to register, and you can start saving on your purchases right away.

Click here to watch a short webinar with advice on what can be included in a will

For more information and to book your initial appointment, click here

Freedom leisure - discounted membership

Freedom Leisure and Learning Partners Academy Trust can offer you discounted membership at Freedom Leisure sites in and around Surrey. There are three different packages to choose from offering various entitlements.

• Classic Corporate Plus (Peak) - £46 per month on direct debit or £460 annually (discount of 2 months free)
  
• Classic Corporate (Off Peak) - £37 per month on direct debit or £407 annually (discount of 1 month free)
• Connected Corporate - £51 per month or £510 annually (discount of 2 months free)
  

Employee Assistance Programme

The EAP is a confidential employee benefit designed to help you deal with personal and professional problems that could be affecting your home life or work life, health and general wellbeing. The helpline is available 24/7, 365 days a year.

Click here for further information

Click here to sign up for discounted membership

Click here for further information

Horizon Guildford

Surrey Sports Park

Horizon Guildford (in Merrow), part of Horizon Leisure, is a newly refurbished state-of-the-art not-for-profit charitable trust with over 25 years of experience in the health and fitness industry. With established locations in Havant and Waterlooville, Horizon Guildford marks the exciting expansion into the Guildford community. The mission is simple: to inspire more people to live healthier, happier lives. Alongside the gym, swimming facilities and classes, Horizon are passionate about promoting overall health and wellness. By becoming a corporate member, you will gain access to exceptional facilities, including a gym equipped with high-specification equipment, public swimming, sauna and steam room and over 100 weekly classes, including Les Mills experiences.

Surrey Sports Park, continued

• Member Journey
• An initial appointment to find out about your goals and what you're looking to achieve
  
• The fitness team will then provide you with a 3-day programme and go through this with you
  
• Your next meeting they will go through day 2 of the programme
  
• After 4 weeks, you will be booked in again to find out how you're finding your membership and make any adjustments to your programme
  
• This is repeated once more after
  
• They will then check in with you after 4, 8 and 12 weeks to see how you're progressing and here you'll be offered programme reviews.
  

Octopus Referral Scheme

Octopus have also just launched a referral scheme where staff who sign up for an electric vehicle receive a referral code which they can pass on to any colleague(s) ordering car. When the car arrives both parties receive £50 credit to their account. There is no limit to how many times someone can share their code.

If you are interested in this membership option or are just looking to have a tour around the amazing facilities, then please visit the sales team between 10am and 5pm Monday – Friday. You just need to provide proof of your workplace.

Click here for further information

Octopus EV

Salary sacrifice and pension impact

01483 682662

While salary sacrifice schemes can be really beneficial and help you save money, it's important to understand the potential impact they can have on your pension, especially if you’re part of a defined benefit pension scheme like the Teachers Pension Scheme (TPS) or Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS).

sales@surreysportspark.co.uk

www.surreysportspark.co.uk

Sports Massage and Injury Rehabilitation at Kings

Click here to find out how

an EV salary sacrifice

can affect your pension

A sports therapist who rents a room at Kings College is offering all Learning Partners staff a discount for various services including:

• Sports massage
  
• Injury assessment and rehab
• Postural correction
• Corrective exercise

Click here for further information