Hello everyone,
The news I was looking forward to sharing this week is the Ofsted report for Morley Meadow. Reports like this matter to parents, and rightly so, but for those of us who already know the school they do something else. They put on record what the staff and children do every day. The inspector picked out the Early Years work in particular, which won't surprise anyone who has spent time there. That practice is already shaping what we do across the trust, and beyond it too. My thanks to everyone at Morley for the work behind those pages.
We also met the Department for Education about the rebuild at Callington. I can't say much yet, but the noises around the scale and scope of the project are encouraging, and it is investment the school genuinely needs. I'll share more when I'm able to.
Two review points came up for the RISE programme this week: one for a school of ours needing a light touch of support, and one for a school outside the trust that we work alongside. Both are examples of trusts pulling in the same direction for the children in their care. The same spirit ran through a meeting with Trust Leaders, the DFE and Local Authority about young people in Devon aged 16 and 17 who aren't in education, employment or training. A good deal of that conversation came down to something as unglamorous as rural bus routes, which turn out to matter enormously.
Our Diversity Reference Group met again and took time over the new guidance and law on gender-questioning pupils. People hold a range of views on this. What steadies us is our values: respect, integrity, and keeping young people at the centre while staying firmly within the law. It was a careful, thoughtful discussion, and I was grateful for the tone of it.
I was also struck this week by our staff survey results. A total of 1,664 of you took part, a 72% response rate, and 14 of the 15 comparable questions have moved in the right direction since last year. The feedback on line management, safeguarding, wellbeing support and commitment to our ethos was particularly warm. There's more to do, but this is a good place to build from, and I'm grateful to everyone who took the time to be honest with us.
There has been no shortage of good work in classrooms. Coombe Dean's Year 7 historians met Lady Jane Grey through a live workshop with the National Archives, an actor playing the queen on the eve of her execution, which is about as vivid as Tudor history gets. Their Year 10 artists drew and sketched their way round Tate St Ives and the Barbara Hepworth garden, and I was pleased to hear a group of Year 7s had finished the reading fluency programme with Mrs Paul. At Plymstock, seven Year 12 biologists have been staining tissue samples at the Peninsula Medical School, while others turned out 231 pizzas between them, which sounds like both learning and lunch. South Dartmoor's Summer Exhibition
and Creatives in the Making evening brought art, dance, drama and music together, and I was glad to read that former pupil Aliyah came second in the National Student Pastry Chef of the Year.
Younger children have been out and about too. Camelford's infants explored Plymouth Aquarium, Buckfastleigh's Year 2 came home from the library each clutching a free book, and St Breward learned to surf at Polzeath. Holbeton's beach school had children building rafts and dens, and one of their Year 6 pupils won the River Erme art challenge, bringing home a book voucher for herself and a generous one for the school. Boringdon's Year 2 met a police officer during Aspirations Week, and their Year 6 spent a day at Mount Edgcumbe.
On the sporting side, Ivybridge had a run of good news: Nelly's 300m win at the Devon Schools Championship and a place at the South West regionals, Evie's third at the Royal Bath and West Show, and staff members Miss Dent and Mrs Taylor winning the RFU Intermediate Cup Final at Twickenham. Callington's Harry took four silver medals at the World Martial Arts British Championships, and a Plymstock pupil, also an Evie, helped the Devon U16 Girls become the first female county team crowned Champions of England. Plenty of Duke of Edinburgh expeditions were completed too, at Callington and Plymstock, in rather kinder weather than earlier attempts.
Communities have been busy as well, with summer fairs at Plympton St Maurice and Morley Meadow, and the beach barbecue where, I'm reliably told, Mr Oaten arrived by paddleboard. At Ivybridge, five Sixth Form students finished their EAL mentoring, giving their time to help newer arrivals find their feet with the language.
I want to end on something quieter. I spent part of the week jotting down thoughts about our purpose, and kept coming back to the same idea. For all the words we use, belonging, flourishing, joy, our core job is to enable learning, and for some children the first step is simply feeling welcome. We can't guarantee every child thrives every day, but we can make sure every child is greeted, noticed and treated as someone with a rightful place. Feeling welcome is often the door to everything else.
I closed the week at the celebration of the life of a colleague I've known for thirty years, someone who put family and young people first in everything they did. I'll be carrying that with me for a while.
Next week I'll be paying attention to how we turn the survey findings into something colleagues can actually feel.
Warm regards,
Nat Parnell
CEO
