Welcome to the first TALENT newsletter. TALENT is the name given to the alliance of Buckinghamshire Teaching Schools and stands for Teachers as Leaders/Educating New Leaders. There are now 5 teaching schools in this alliance: Astra at Dr Challoners Grammar School, the ASPIRE Learning Alliance, Cygnus at Wycombe High School, the Marlow and Maidenhead Learning Alliance (MMLA) at Sir William Borlase’s Grammar School and Aylesbury Vale Teaching Partnership (AVTP) at Aylesbury High School

The role of the Teaching Schools is to identify, develop and co-ordinate expertise for the benefit of pupils across a network of schools, resulting in:

better results for pupils

fewer poorly performing schools

more good and outstanding schools

a self-improving and sustainable system

Teaching Schools are designated by NCTL and have 6 core responsibilities

You will note that some of the responsibility areas overlap and NCTL is starting to focus on three areas: School Led ITT, School to School support and CPD, the other 3 responsibilities then become part of those. TALENT is working to strengthen the ties between the 5 teaching schools to ensure that the offer to Buckinghamshire schools is comprehensive, complimentary and responsive to changing needs. The purpose of this newsletter is to explain a little about each of the teaching schools and what they currently offer. We would appreciate your feedback and comments to help us develop our offer to meet your needs.

Newsletter 1 30 November 2016

teachingtalent.org

The Aylesbury Vale Teaching Partnership (AVTP) was designated as a Teaching School in July and is based at Aylesbury High School. We are very pleased to be joining Teaching Talent to work with other Teaching Schools in Buckinghamshire.

So far this term, we have initiated an NQT Twilight programme with 25 NQTs from 8 different schools in the Ayles-bury Vale area attending which has proved very successful. We have also embarked on a developing teaching, mid-dle leader and senior leader CPD programme with 24 staff from 4 different schools benefitting from sessions run by a variety of senior leaders from Aylesbury High School, Aylesbury Grammar School and The Grange. Staff attending this CPD programme will have the opportunity to take part in a visit to another school to conduct lesson observations and spend time with colleagues in sharing good practice.

AVTP is also establishing a CPD Coordinators hub for schools in the Aylesbury Vale area to help identify what the current CPD needs are for schools. Already there are some fantastic joint CPD school opportunities being promoted such as the Free Research programme run by Waddesdon School where they are looking to open up to colleagues in surrounding schools for the first time this year.

With an increased need for a school-led system, AVTP is looking forward to playing a part in the local framework for School to School Support.

If you are a school in the Aylesbury Vale area that would like to know more about what opportunities there are within the AVTP for CPD, ITT and School to School Support please contact the AVTP Director Amanda Brigden abrigden@ahs.bucks.sch.uk

The Aspire Learning Alliance is in its early stages and we are keen to work with all schools and with the network of Teaching Schools. We recognize that our ‘niche’ is more focused than other Teaching Schools, but believe that this will give us the capacity and capability to respond and deliver support in a way that can be tailored and responsive. Highlights so far

We have been meeting with our Alliance strategic partners (Booker Park Federation and Furze Down) and have started completing a skills and qualifications audit, which we hope special and secondary schools will contribute to.

The Alliance website is under development and we have ‘badged’ 5 SLEs from Aspire; we would like to increase the number of available SLEs from mainstream and special schools, with a specialism of behaviour, inclusion and SEN.

We have been commissioned — via MMA – to undertake a Behaviour Audit with a school in Maidenhead, which has been used to inform other programmes of support.

We have drafted 2 CPD Programmes for SENCo’s and Behaviour Leads. This programme will be both ‘opened’ and ‘closed’ by Tom Bennett

We are organizing a TeachMeet event at CSEC on Wednesday 7 December, 5.00pm – 7.00pm; please share with your staff.

http://aspirelearningalliance.org

teachingtalent.org

The Astra Teaching School and Astra School-Centred Initial Teacher Training provider (SCITT) is committed to providing outstanding learning opportunities for all through training, support and action research. We work with over 30 schools and organisations across Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire, and our vision is to achieve and deliver: Excellence; Collaboration; Support; Innovation Working with the Institute of Education, UCL, we provide both QTS and PGCE training for new entrants in local primary and secondary schools, offering a wide range of subjects for both salaried and fee-funded / bursary-led places. We are currently training 50 primary and secondary teachers in 2016/17, and aim to recruit up to 80 new trainees for 2017/18. We are also an Appropriate Body for NQTs, and offer a comprehensive registration and training service. For qualified teachers, the wide range of our popular continuing professional development programmes demonstrates our commitment to high-quality, low-cost training for school professionals at every stage of their career. We have worked with the NCTL to develop the SLE core training programme for the South East region, and have also designated and deployed 24 Astra SLEs from both primary and secondary schools. As part of our commitment to collaboration, we work in partnership with other Buckinghamshire Teaching Schools as part of the TALENT Network (teachingtalent.org) , providing exciting leadership development opportunities, with generous subsidies available for non-selective schools. More information can be seen on our regularly updated website: www.astra-alliance.com

The Cygnus Teaching School Alliance is based at Wycombe High School and is now in its third year, we are delighted to work within the TALENT network to help provide a comprehensive county wide offer. Cygnus runs a successful School Direct teacher training programme in conjunction with the Institute of Education at UCL for Secondary trainees and Oxford Brookes University for Primary trainees. In 2017/18 we will be offering over 100 salaried and unsalaried places in a variety of subjects in our 18 partner schools. Cygnus also leads on Middle and Senior Leadership programmes. The middle leader programmes are bespoke packages for Primary and Secondary teachers taught using a variety of experienced course leads. This year we have partnered with the IoE for the first time for the Senior Leadership course (Widening Leadership), this course has been extremely popular and has been very well received. Cygnus also has a strong record of research, leading Action Research programmes for participants on our middle leaders programme. We also run the Buckinghamshire Schools Internship programme which gives aspiring SLEs an opportunity to undertake a project in another school, giving host schools an opportunity to benefit from some free consultancy work. We also have a number of SLEs who are available for deployment via the school to school support programme. Cygnus also hosts a number of one day and twilight CPD events. We recently ran a very successful course led by a tutor from the British Dyslexia Association focusing on supporting More Able Dyslexic students. Our aim with CPD is to provide high quality, competitively priced, relevant courses. We are excited to launch the first of a series of enrichment events for teachers - the first of which is aimed at History teachers where, to tie in with the new GCSE curriculum, our guest speaker will talk about London in the time of Jack the Ripper. Further information on all of our courses can be found on our website: http://cygnustsa.co.uk or you can email: cygnustsa@whs.bucks.sch.uk

teachingtalent.org

Ben Parsons, MMLA Director, reviews a busy term developing the vision and activity of our Alliance at the beginning of its second year.

Much of our activity this term has been focused on leadership in various forms: leadership skills, vision leadership, and fostering growth mindsets which enable our students and colleagues to lead themselves with enthusiasm and resilience.

The MMLA Sixth Form Leadership conference involved 80 delegates from across our region (students, classroom teachers, mid-dle leaders, and whole-school leaders). We explored cutting-edge research and developments in peer leadership. Speakers join-ing best-practitioners from our schools included Tom Middlehurst, Programme Director of the SSAT National Conference, and Kevin Piper, Director of Creative Education and author of the British Council core skills programme in teaching leadership skills. Both were enthusiastic advocates of student leaders. Following great feedback from his inspirational session on hidden leadership, Kevin will be joining us in partnership with British Council later next year.

A coaching ethos is at the core of all our activity with MMLA schools. It was a pleasure earlier in the term to run a workshop at the Astra NQT Conference, attended by NQTs from across our region. One of the great challenges encountered by early-career teachers is moving from their closely-guided ITT programmes, to being responsible for ensuring the progress of their own clas-ses, inevitably with less hands-on support from mentors. We explored peer-coaching strategies which lead NQTs through effec-tive planning processes, with a focus on timely and impactful AfL. It is great to see NQTs at my own school growing in confi-dence planning in this way. Our September Coaching for Change workshop with Beaconsfield, Borlase, and Buckingham EBacc middle leaders explored how we respond to challenging situations, and investigated a range of strategies for growing through and evaluating change. There can be few periods in recent educational history where the change curve has been so pronounced: changes to funding, specification, attainment measures, as well as rich opportunities in pedagogical research. Heather Clements’ work before the summer holiday explored what was changing, and this day-long session, facilitated by Coach Karen Kennedy, built the skills to understand and lead it. We are at the planning stage of some fascinating School-to-School support work with three schools in

Windsor & Maidenhead, concerning peer review. The project will focus on the challenge for subject leaders to take ownership of evaluating and developing teaching and learning in their areas. The appetite for sharing and growing best practice, both within and between schools, and upskilling of middle leaders is clear and urgent. The project will get started in the Spring. Our early-career leadership CPD programme Leaders for the Future (developed with SSAT) is well underway. Aimed at those who have project leadership responsibilities in school, but not yet middle leaders, it develops on the premise that impactful leadership starts with knowing our-selves; only then can we be effective project managers and leaders of our teams. Cathrin Thomas (Associate Head and SLE) and I have a lively first cohort, hosted at Cox Green School, Maiden-head. SLE (Specialist Leaders of Education) Core Training takes place at the MMLA lead school Sir William Borlase in December, in collaboration with our Teaching Talent partner, Astra TSA. SLEs are the drivers of change in any TSA, and we are fortunate in having a growing number of brilliant colleagues deployed in this exciting role across our partner schools. For further infor-mation about the training, or becoming an SLE, please contact us at mmla@swbgs.com.

teachingtalent.org

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