Vision and Values - Building a sustainable future for the schools in our Trust.

The Trust of choice, for children, parents, and educators. A community of practice, where everyone belongs, learns, and succeeds.

Where every child receives a first-class education and is prepared for a future of possibilities

As a group of schools, Prestolee Trust has a set of clear values.

At our Trust we work to understand the context and needs of the communities we serve. Our schools are geographically close and yet serve diverse communities. The vision describes the future that speaks to those communities.

This is a Trust built on the notion of choice. A trust we want schools to choose to join. A trust where staff choose to work and grow. A trust made up of schools which families choose to send their children to. 

This means a more complex and bespoke approach to building our Trust.  This means you will not get any ‘out of the box’ solutions or systems. We know each school is unique and the contexts they serve are unique. As such standardised systems are not what we believe schools need.  We will help, support, challenge and empower you to develop the very best solutions and provide the very best education for your school.  Not by providing s system or approach but supporting you and working alongside you to create that which your community needs.  For every challenge that exists there is a solution.  We will support you to do this, minimise your workload.

We believe a Trust works best when schools are part of an autonomous community of practice. We believe schools thrive when they are challenged to improve, supported with practice and helped by their colleagues to reduce workload in a mutually supportive community.

The vision for Prestolee Multi Academy Trust is that our children are prepared for the next stage of education and life in modern Britain.

This means children have access to a broad rich curriculum offer with a wide range of activities. We believe in an inherently strong core of English and Mathematics, together with strong specific academic foundation subjects focused on knowledge and skills.

We believe children should be prepared for a future of possibilities.  This means equipping them to make the best choices for themselves, socially and academically.  We cannot make the choices for them, but we can equip with the skills they need, academic, social and emotional to make the best life choices they can.

Our curriculum strategy supports our schools to develop their own curriculum that meets the needs of their children, families, and communities. We strive for excellence in quality first teaching. This can be seen in our teacher training and beyond. Career progression opportunities and development of knowledge and skills through CPD (Continuing Professional Development), networks and other professional programmes and training are key to our success. This is done through our Prestolee Pathway alongside our many professional development opportunities.

Several of our headteachers have grown in Executive leadership positions, teachers and middle leaders can develop their work in the classroom and within our SCITT or school improvement work.  We want our staff to have the bets opportunities so we can continue to provide our children with the best people, delivering the best education.

Our trust is relentlessly focused on improvement, in self, in others and in the organisation.

A community of practice

Prestolee Trust has developed, over time, a strong community of practice, based on Wenger’s Community of Practice (1998). This is an open shared support network across all schools and SCITT. As a community, we are a group of people who share a common set of values, concerns and interest in education who have come together. This enables dialogue to focus on sharing best practices and creating new knowledge to advance our professional practice. Interaction is on an ongoing basis including face-to-face meetings as well as web-based activities. Our wide networks of practice across the Trust are there to help empower and develop all.

We do this through joint activities, discussions, information sharing and opportunities in the wider trust. This also, importantly builds relationships. The community members, leaders, teachers, teaching assistants, governors, administrators build a shared collection of ideas and resources that they can take back to their own practice.

Cultivating these groups has taken time, but slowly, by integrating different people over time we have encouraged teams to use their new knowledge for real change and purposeful actions that develop tangible results.

We do not define our schools’ curriculums for them. Our schools decide on their own curriculums that meet the needs of the children and families they serve.

If you are interested in finding out more about working with us or joining us then please contact:

Karis Schroeder: karis.schroeder@prestoleetrust.org