Newsletters

End of Term Newsletter May 2021

Welcome

Welcome to the third edition of Transforming Futures Trusts' new staff newsletter.

With only one more day left until the end of term I wanted to provide a business update on key items across the Trust as follows:-

Critical incident at Courtlands: This has been a difficult term for all staff at Courtlands.  They have conducted themselves very professionally and supported their pupils through their own grief as well as helping others.  Thank you for your ongoing efforts and please do continue to access support available through the trust (see articles at the end of the newsletter for relevant links or contact TFTHRSupport@Deltservices.co.uk.

Delt TUPE Project: As of the 1st May, 30 of our central services staff transferred across and became Delt employees. Since then, Delt have been working hard to onboard and induct those colleagues.  As we move towards the end of this academic year and within the medium term, we expect to see service improvements continue as well as improved opportunities for partnership and sharing. We remain focussed on our continuous professional improvement programme in this regard.

Ensign House: In continuing our quest to drive down central costs we have given notice on the lease for Ensign House. The lease will cease in December this year. Efficiency savings generated will be re-invested into teaching and learning and a project to manage the removal of property is being implemented.

Estates/Buildings: The Board are actively talking to all local authorities and are searching for alternative properties to cater for the required upgrades to the WRAP provisions.  We are also actively investigating plans for substantial improvement to Courtlands.  None of these will be quick fixes.  The Board is determined to source and provide surroundings that are fit for purpose and contribute to the pupil and staff experience.

Arbor: A full update on the new Arbor system and implementation has been provided within the article below and so this is just a brief note in which I wish to thank Tim Mockford for the work he has undertaken and huge contribution he has made to getting this trust-wide initiative up and running.

Presentation to our Regulators: On 10th May, a selection of Trustees, Executive Team and Heads provided a presentation to our regulators sharing the depth and breadth of our different provisions across the trust and how each create educational value and outcomes for children in our settings. The presentation was well-received and our audience included the senior national DfE Adviser on SEN, Andre Imich along with key colleagues from the RSC and ESFA. This was a great opportunity for Transforming Futures to share greater knowledge around our complex and unique educational offer for our students and showcase the fantastic work you all undertake. It also allowed us to share some of the challenges we face and what our enablers are in terms of strengthening our provision going forwards.

Outreach work: We are also continuing our work in raising the profile of the Trust and specialist skills of our staff in terms of collegiate working with other Trusts. We’ve held several meetings talking to other MATs regarding our Trauma Informed Practice and there is growing interest within mainstream regarding how this can be adopted and used in their mainstream settings.

Plymouth Strategy: The Prime Minister has just announced a new place-based approach to increasing the number of pupils educated in good or outstanding schools.  In the first year, £10m will be used to focus on four areas: Plymouth, Ashfield & Mansfield, South Sefton & North Liverpool, and North Durham, City & Sedgefield. We await further details of the Prime Minister’s plans however I am excited to share that the Trust will be involved in developing the next phase of the Plymouth Strategy that is broken down into various work streams led by Trust CEO’s to develop a plan. The work streams are:

  • Leadership – Greenshaw Learning Trust
  • Curriculum – Westcountry Schools Trust & Ted Wragg Trust
  • Transition – Reach South, Plymouth Cast and Transforming Futures
  • Inclusion – Transforming Futures & PCC

I have been asked to work with Reach and CAST on “transition interdependencies” including transition between primary and secondary; early years to primary.  A connected work stream is on Inclusion/SEND with PCC.

Once again, thank you for all your efforts and commitment during this term. For those of you who are on leave next week, enjoy the holidays, and we look forward to welcoming you back for the second part of the Summer Term.

Best wishes

Gavin Gracie, CEO

Recruitment Update

Transforming Futures are pleased to announce a number of career opportunities currently advertised across the Trust.......

ACE Tiverton are looking for Teaching Assistants to join the team. For full details you can access the candidate pack here.

ACE Schools also have a number of vacancies including:-

  • Part-time Administrator (closing date 1st June 2021). Full candidate pack available here;
  • Design & Technology Teacher (maternity cover) (closing date 4th June 2021). Full candidate pack available here;
  • 1:1 Teaching Assistant posts based at North Hill and Ford. Full candidate pack available here.

If you need any further support or have any recruitment related queries, you can contact Recruitment via TFTRecruitment@deltservices.co.uk.

Headteacher's Blog

As a regular feature for the trust's newsletter, this week's spotlight falls on Lee Earnshaw, Headteacher at Courtlands:

The team and I wanted to share a story with you that happened this week. It is a great example of the fantastic work you each do and how you transform futures and change lives on a daily basis.

M came into school on Tuesday and verbally communicated with his team that he was sad because his dog Oscar died last night. He cried and asked for a hug. He has been supported by our MAPA lead Dene and caretaker Clint to make a wooden cross, varnish it so that he can take it home as a commemoration for Oscar.

He told his class staff that he was worried about how upset his family were about the death too. This is a wonderful good news story of the huge progress M is making in his ability to recognise, understand and share his emotions in a safe way. This is something that he could not have managed to do six months ago.

We want to celebrate the team in Pine class and the high structure, high nurture provision being led by NQT Lottie Cray. Knowing that the whole Courtlands family supported him on this day was such a powerful experience for M who has now been able to process and begin to heal from his loss.

With best wishes

Lee Earnshaw
Headteacher

New MIS System – Arbor

We would like to update you on progress to date with regard to our project to change our MIS system across the trust from SIMs to Arbor as follows:

Courtlands has now migrated over to Arbor and started to use the new system at the beginning of April. The migration for Tiverton and Ace Schools is well underway and the planned dates for their migration are 8th June and 6th September respectively.

The project is progressing very well and is a testament to the collaborative working between the staff involved in the project, with the commitment and time given to ensuring its success.

Great work everyone!

HR News

View your latest P60 via ESS

P60’s for the 2020/21 financial year have now been released to Employee Self-Service (ESS).

To view your P60, go to the Pay Module within ESS and on the P60 Documents widget click 'view' against the relevant year. This will open in a new screen - click 'Generate P60' and the P60 form will load.

Paper P60’s have also been issued.

Covid-19 - 17th May: What’s changed:

A summary of the Government's latest guidelines with regard to the roadmap out of lock down can be accessed here.

We note that the emphasis is now on personal responsibility rather than government rules in terms of meeting friends and family and people can now meet indoors in limited numbers with more venues opening up and welcoming us back. 

For us, and in delivering our roles across the trust, we need to continue to be prudent in relation to the measures we have in place to limit the spread of the virus and keep our school communities safe. This will help us reduce staff and pupil absence in individuals/groups needing to self-isolate. As such, our focus remains on ensuring the tight Covid-19 controls remain in place across our academies at this time and while we await further announcements on or around 21st June.

Thank you for your continued support and efforts in helping us navigate our way through the pandemic.

Wellbeing Update

In line with Transforming Futures' mission to transform lives and change futures, a strategic priority for the Trust is to systematically promote and assure staff and pupil well-being. By way of an update, vice-chairs Karen Deeny and Carole Burgoyne have been working with the Executive Team to set up a trust-wide wellbeing network group that includes individuals from across each of our academies and central services/business support staff.  We are in the process of setting up the first meeting that will be held during w/c 14 June 2021.

There is a huge amount of fantastic work being undertaken within each of TFT’s academies and so this meeting will provide an opportunity for that to be more widely showcased and communicated across the trust. It will also provide means in which to share best practice across our sites and promote the work you are all doing within these digital newsletters.....

Speaking of which, we would like to mention congratulations to ACE Schools for scooping the Bronze Award at the recent LiveWell South West 'Wellbeing At Work Awards 2021'. It was great to hear the award mentioned at their annual conference at the end of April raising the profile of your work to so many external organisations both within and outside the education sector.

 

Special thanks to Rachel Crozier and Nicky Jewell and their dedicated teams in making this happen!

 

 

Cyber Security

The DfE have been working closely with the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and have been made aware of an increasing number of cyber-attacks involving ransomware infections affecting the education sector recently, notably multi-academy trusts. These incidents appear to be financially driven but opportunistic, taking advantage of system weaknesses such as unpatched software, poor authentication systems or the susceptibility of users to misdirection.

Incidents that affect schools are not always the work of malicious cyber criminals. There was a recent case where a teacher left their system password written down on a post-it note from where a pupil stole it and used it to access their laptop and other systems to change their grades. The school was sanctioned by the ICO for breach of the Data Protection Act.

The NCSC have released some online training and there is a plan in place to roll this out for all staff to complete. In the meantime, there are 4 key steps we can all take as follows:

  1. Please be alert to suspicious emails and seek help if unsure of a request
  2. Use strong passwords that differ between accounts
  3. Only download software from official sources and lock screens when not in use
  4. Report suspicions as soon as possible to the IT helpdesk

Thank you for your support in keeping us 'cyber secure'.

ACE Tiverton pupils' success in organising basketball tournament

Key Stage Four students at ACE Tiverton took on a project to organise, plan and deliver a unique basketball tournament for their younger peers in year seven last week.

The project was a huge success and aimed to help the older children complete the Health and Fitness Sports Qualification that they are currently undertaking.

With all the arrangements and order of play carried out by the students, staff would like to share how proud they are of the excellent organisational skills shown by all the students and the natural ability they showed in working really successfully with ACE Tiverton's youngest pupils.

Well done to all those involved in this great achievement!

Value for Money in Procurement 

We are all committed to trying to achieve value for money when we procure goods and services and to be worthy custodians of public money. Our aim is to make efficiencies including savings, which can then bring opportunities to reinvest back into teaching and learning. To support this, the Trust has a Finance Policy and a Procurement Competitive Tendering policy all available on the Trust's website and quick link provided here

We thought it would be great to share some success we have had recently with securing value for money to demonstrate the work we are all doing in achieving this aim:

  • The Catering Manager has just secured an annual 15% year-on-year saving on re-tendering her food contract and is streamlining her supply base and processes by moving to one supplier
  • The Estates Team secured a 30% annual year-on-year saving by re-tendering our energy contracts
  • We are participating in an auction with the DfE Schools Buying Hub SW and looking to secure a potential 20% saving on our annual stationery supplies.

On these projects alone, a potential £45,000 saving will be secured!

Within carrying out your daily roles, if you have a success story that you wish to share, let us know by emailing anna.tapley@transformingfutures.org.uk and we can update everyone in the next edition of this newsletter.

Do you need extra support at this time?

Access the Trust's Employee Assistance Programme provided by Health Shield. The EAP service is available to you, your partner and your dependants* with access to a professional telephone service 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Full information can be accessed here.

* Dependants must be in full time education, aged 18 - 24 and living in the same household

In addition, Education Support are a UK charity dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing of education staff.

They have lots of free resources for teachers and support staff to access. For more information and to visit their website click here to see what's available.