Overarching Principles

At LDST, our school improvement and effectiveness strategy is explicitly underpinned by Christian Distinctiveness and ensures that School Improvement and Christian Distinctiveness are not viewed as mutually exclusive.

It is a strategy that:

• Promotes high outcomes for pupils
• Offers both support and challenge to each school individually, while also deliberately shaping a Trust-wide culture of collaboration, celebration and trust. Our Christian values are at the heart of all that we do.

• Is based on the concept of strong collaboration so that the skills and talents that exist and develop within the Trust, can be of benefit to all. While each one of our schools is unique, we understand that the mutual challenge, support and partnership that we offer each other as a Trust working together, will enable our schools to flourish and continue to develop as centres of excellence

"The CEO and executive leaders judiciously match tailored support to the improvement needs of each school."

"Mechanisms are in place to ensure that individual school improvement priorities align with the trust's strategic priorities."

Ofsted (MAT Summary Evaluation) 2023

The Core Principles of our School Improvement Strategy

Raise standards and bring about sustainable school improvement, through self improving schools and high levels of accountability

Our strategy will:

Through support and challenge,  continue to raise standards and bring about sustainable school improvement (accountability)

• Support and challenge in Education Officer meetings (variance dependent on category)  to quality assure self evaluation and focus on outcomes
• Robust Performance Management

Through a culture of collaboration, celebration and trust, encourage schools to

• Share practice more widely
• Work together on the things that matter in the drive to improve outcomes for all (collective efficacy)
• Develop and promote a Trust wide vision for pupil outcomes

Together we endeavour to:

• Further develop, celebrate and maintain the Christian distinctiveness of all our schools
• Work towards every child and young person having a life changing encounter with the Christian faith and the person of Jesus Christ
• Fulfil the particular vocation that Church of England schools have to the poor and vulnerable so as to open the doors of opportunity and enable transformational outcomes, making our schools truly inclusive
• Work to ensure that our schools become centres of excellence, leading to high achievement for all pupils with no significant gaps in attainment or progress between different groups
• Promote structured mutual support which benefits those who work and learn in our schools
• Identify and develop future leaders who will commit to using the best and latest research in child development and pedagogy in order to drive forward school effectiveness, and who will model and be servant leaders

We achieve this by being:

• Respectful of the individual identity of our schools –knowing their strengths and understand where improvements are needed
• Resourceful and recognising effective and successful practice in all schools and using this where possible as a resource to support others to bring about improvement
• Responsive to the context of each school, adapting strategies where necessary to promote and sustain improvements
• Relentless in our pursuit of excellence and led by a belief that every child can achieve

Learn, Love and Achieve, Together with Jesus