Our recent Leadership Group meeting, held at Woodston Primary on the 14th of September, was extremely packed and quite eventful.

Attended by all of the current Headteachers, including the new Headteacher at Woodston Primary (Becky Ford), the Executive Deputies, and the CEO, it began with a sharing of Ofsted reports and a photograph by the wonderful David Lowndes from the Peterborough Evening Telegraph. David has been doing this for 50 years and is a very well-known figure in Peterborough schools. You can read the Peterbroough Today article about our recent Ofsted successes here.

The main business of the first half of the meeting looked at performance review structures, staff training days, professional development opportunities, school self-evaluations and improvement plans, and leadership structures following the changes to our Deputy Headteacher and Director of Learning roles. In a short space of time, and with great contributions from everyone, we managed to reach some key decisions and decide plans of action.

A brief break for lunch included a visit from our former Headteacher, Jacki Mitchell. Clearly, she couldn’t keep completely away, but was more than happy to tell us about her recent and planned travels during term time – a luxury none of us still working have!

We were then joined by our School Improvement Consultant Sarah Levy as we began an in-depth discussion of the 2023 pupil outcomes for each of the schools. Consideration of key assessment points in EYFS, Y1 phonics, KS1, Y4 Multiplication tables, and Y6 SATs gave plenty of chance for celebration as well as food for thought for the coming year.

The meeting was rounded off by a ‘Zoom’ session with Perspective Lite, a system we use for sharing school self-evaluation and improvement planning across the Trust.

The next meeting will take place in early October.