What we stand for
5 minute read
Students First. In 2009, we became a multi-academy trust with two secondary schools: Outwood Grange Academy and Outwood Academy Adwick. We’ve come a long way since then. We now have 42 schools across the North of England, including secondary, primary, post-16 and alternative provision. We employ over 4,500 colleagues and serve over 30,000 children.
Our purpose and vision
Our vision: Students First Raising Standards and Transforming Lives.
This is our guiding vision as a trust. To achieve this, we ensure all Outwood staff:
- Put “students first”: we care deeply about children;
- Strive to be experts in our respective fields; and
- Are obsessive about attaining the highest standards, thereby enhancing children’s life-chances.
Our ethos: Ensuring a Climate of Success.
- Ensuring Inclusion
- Setting High Expectations
- Building Strong Relationships
- Promoting Diversity and Equality
- Fostering a Praise and Achievement Culture
Every three years, we outline our priorities in a development plan.
Our employee values
Ambition without limit
Setting high standards, and achieving them, is central to everything we do. This applies to our teaching and learning practices, our approach to shared school services, and the behaviour of the young people in our family of schools. Crucially, it applies to their outcomes. We are obsessive about helping all of our pupils achieve to the best of their ability because we know this will open doors for them.
To make sure this passion translates into meaningful action we need to be honest with each other if we fall short, avoid making excuses on behalf of ourselves and our communities, and commit to self-examination. We refer to this as the four Is: information gathering, identifying the problem, systematically intervening and measuring the impact. We believe that if we do this repeatedly, consistently and with fidelity, our standards will improve. The ultimate test of this approach, and our sky-high expectations, is whether our schools are strengthening the communities in which they are situated.
We break down barriers
Wherever there is a barrier preventing a child’s progress, we seek to remove it and take individual responsibility to do so with urgency. Done well, we believe this is one of the most fulfilling aspects of working here. We know that moving swiftly and speaking honestly can sometimes feel challenging. If you are new to our family, this directness can be disconcerting, but it is a manifestation of our commitment to the young people we work with.
We know that many of the situations that we find ourselves in will be difficult, even unfair. When we make mistakes in service of this value we will apologise openly and quickly. But we refuse to wait until next week, next month or next year to intervene. We have seen how this has affected our communities in the past and we hold ourselves accountable for making sure this doesn’t happen in our family of schools.
We turn our best into normal
We know that the best ideas come from expert practitioners in schools. So, when we see that something works—be it a lesson plan, financial procedure or behaviour practice—we record it and implement it for the benefit of our pupils and colleagues. We stop doing things that do not have a positive impact on pupils. We go out of our way to share these insights, and to find ways to deliver training and support so that our colleagues can learn from them, evolve them and build them into systems.
We don’t do this because we seek control or standardisation. Instead, we do it because we unapologetically believe that consistent, well implemented systems and processes will improve outcomes. They make the young people in our communities feel happier and safer and allow us to spend more time caring for individual pupils. We understand that some approaches work better in particular places, but we are committed to ensuring that excellence is shared across all our communities, not just found in lucky, isolated pockets.
Every interaction counts
We have always said that when we see litter, we pick it up. It isn’t really about the litter, it is about our belief that the adults in our schools should always be acting as positive role models. For us, small everyday interactions are crucial for this to be successful. So; we dress smartly, we queue politely, we open doors, we communicate clearly, we exude positivity.
This can be demanding, but we want the young people in our care to grow up surrounded by evidence that the adults in their lives take pride in their physical environment, their classroom, their community, and their interactions with others.
We are a Family
We know that our strength is best shown by how we support those within our family that are struggling. When an individual, a department, or a school faces a challenge or a setback we rally around. We are not satisfied if our own students, school, department or subject is doing well, but there are difficulties elsewhere in our family. This is rewarding but can be tiring: We sometimes need to cover for each other or spend time on the road supporting other schools.
In thinking like a family, we reflect the best of the supportive communities where we work, live and are grounded. Like them, we treat each other and all the children in our care with respect, assuming good intentions, and we are always looking to build each other up. We will work harder to celebrate our successes.
