Hello everyone,

Some weeks the news lands and you simply feel proud to be part of it. This is one of those.

The headline you will all want to read first: our former CEO, Rob Haring, has been awarded an OBE in the King's Birthday Honours for his services to education. Most of you know the shape of Rob's contribution, from his time as Principal at Ivybridge through to founding this Trust in 2011 and growing it to 31 schools before he retired at the end of last year. His response to the honour was entirely in character. He spoke about receiving it on the shoulders of the colleagues he worked alongside, and about the teams who have done the work day in and day out. Having had the pleasure of working with Rob for two and a half years, I can tell you that humility is no act. All of us at WeST are delighted for him.

Staying with national recognition, congratulations to Jenni Bindon, our Executive Director of Modern Foreign Languages, who was honoured at the German Embassy in London with the German-British Friendship Award for Network Champion for German. It reflects years of quiet, determined work to build links and open up opportunities for our students to learn languages well. A fine thing to be recognised for.

 

I spent part of the week at Eggbuckland as part of their Review and Support cycle, visiting lessons, talking with leaders and enjoying the company of the pupils. They happened to be hosting a visitor from America who wanted to understand how multi-academy trusts work here. Rather than wheel out the polished highlights, the Headteacher folded him into the evaluation schedule for the day, which struck me as a brave and confident choice. He left genuinely taken with the school and with the way the team have used the Trust and the DfE RISE programme to push teaching standards in English, maths and science. It told me a good deal about the culture there.

There was real strength of character on Dartmoor too. Our Year 6 pupils from Ermington, Stowford and Ugborough took on the Junior Ten Tors, trekking roughly 15 miles from Cadover Bridge to Princetown, navigating to ten tors and camping overnight at Tor Royal Farm. They met cold, drizzle and fog on the Friday and blazing sun on the Saturday, and every one of them rose to it. My thanks to Richard Woodland and all the staff and volunteers who made it happen. Stowford's wider team did themselves proud across the weekend as well.

Plenty was going on closer to home. At Plympton St Maurice, pupils worked with Babcock International on a STEM day, designing protective equipment for a dockyard safety team and getting properly stuck into a real engineering problem. Sir James Smith's Year 9 geographers visited the Eden Project ahead of starting their GCSE course, and three of their pupils, the Harbour Hurricanes crew, won the under-16 title at the Devoran Regatta. Over at Plymstock, Year 10 separate science students carried out an eye dissection, and a period-six business revision session drew 35 students at the end of a long day, which says something about the appetite to learn there. At Callington, Year 7s heard from Exeter College, Oxford about university life and what it takes to get there, which is exactly the kind of early window onto possibility we want our young people to have.

This was also the week of National Thank a Teacher and School Colleague Day on Wednesday. Schools across the Trust took the chance to say thank you properly, and the messages that came in from families were a reminder of how much the daily, often unseen work of staff means to the children and parents who rely on it.

A word too on community. Coombe Dean's Student Senate organised a collection for the Plymouth Food Bank, deliberately timing it for June because donations tend to dry up once the winter giving is over and families still need support through the summer. That is thoughtful, outward-looking work from young people, and the kind of thing that gives me real confidence about the future. Across several of our primaries, summer fairs and discos kept PTAs and volunteers busy, and the cheerful behind-the-scenes effort that makes those evenings run is never lost on me.

Next week I am looking forward to our event with Dell, hosted at Ivybridge. Thursday brings a virtual escape room for students, and Friday a conference on technology and AI in learning, with speakers from industry. We are welcoming colleagues from across the South West sector as delegates, which fits our own thinking about safe, governed and responsible use of technology. We don't chase shiny new things. We look hard at whether a tool genuinely helps a child or a colleague before we explore the implementation, and I expect those conversations to be worth having.

That is where I will be paying attention next week. Thank you, as ever, for the work you do.

Warm regards,

Nat Parnell

CEO