Our offer for all staff joining the LiFE Multi-Academy Trust and our schools
Professional Capital: ‘we believe in getting the right people, getting them to work together and getting them to stay’
| STRATEGY | DESCRIPTION |
| Putting your trust in our Trust | We believe in your development. Everything we do is about creating a team of committed professionals who share our ambition for young people. If you believe in this too, we are committed to providing an exciting, enjoyable and rewarding working environment. |
| Coaching | Coaching is integral to our success. We support colleagues through coaching; enabling deep reflection, which has allowed us to build a bold, creative and aspirational culture, where collaboration with peers and new approaches to practice are encouraged. |
| Personal Improvement Plan versus Performance Management | Instead of the usual performance management, we encourage our staff to identify aspirational targets through our ‘Personal Improvement Plan’ (PIP) process. With your coach, you will look to make significant progress in a critical area of your practice; we believe in valuing the process of improvement not pass or fail numerical targets. |
| Health and Wellbeing Strategies | Having happy and healthy staff is key to a successful organisation. The Trust is committed to:
We are committed to supporting colleagues to overcome the stigma and discrimination of mental health issues within the work place. To show our commitment to this we have publicly signed up to ‘Mindful Employer’ and the ‘Charter for Employers who are Positive about Mental Health’. We believe it is important that we are role models to our students of how to be a healthy adult. We actively promote the importance of a work life balance, offering support to staff on managing stress and workload, as well as a physical activity programme. Access to coaching, counselling and supervision is also available to all staff. |
| Equality and Equal Opportunities | Our Trust and its schools are committed to ensuring equality of opportunity in line with the Equality Act 2010. The Trust seeks to reduce disadvantages, discrimination and inequalities of opportunity, and promote diversity in terms of its students, workforce and our wider communities we serve. |
| Presumed Professionalism | We have a ‘Presumed Professionalism’ ethos across the Trust. Our staff are professional educators and we recognise the need to support staff to enable a healthy work life balance to allow maximum impact whilst working with our young people and each other. We achieve this by allowing staff to sign out during their free periods, as long as professional duties are not affected. See our policy for further details. |
| Development of Professional Capital and Excellence | As a Trust we always look to invest in our staff and pride ourselves on our ‘home grown talent’. We pride ourselves on this and believe this has the biggest impact on how our staff understand their communities and make a difference to the lives of our young people.
Quite simply, our aim is to employ people who match our ethos and values and enable them to truly collaborate with colleagues across the Trust so that they are satisfied professionally. We provide outstanding training pathways which draw on excellence both within and outside of our Trust to enable you to build your professional capital. Examples of the many opportunities we encourage staff to take up externally include :
Pathways are available at apprenticeship level, NQT, aspiring middle leader, Lead Practitioner and aspiring senior leader level. Some of these courses are lead by staff within the Trust and others are externally accredited. In addition, the Trust provides the opportunity of becoming an associate SLT member, enabling middle leaders to gain insight and experience of leadership at the highest level within a school. Support staff have their own Personal Improvement Plan that they use as a tool to create a bespoke professional development plan. All support staff also receive Coaching and training opportunities, in order to help them feel empowered and in charge of their own development. Across the Trust we pride ourselves on equal opportunities for all staff, irrespective of background, gender, disability, religion, sexual orientation or age. |
| Great access to progression and leadership responsibility | Further evidence of our investment in ‘home grown talent’ is that 86% of our TLR holders have been internal appointments. We have clear professional progression pathways within the CPD offered throughout the year at all levels within the Trust. |
| Collaboration across all schools | We are developing relationships across our Trust to enable collaboration to support learning and teaching outcomes. In addition, we are able to offer a joint CPD programme to draw upon expertise across the Trust. Staff work and meet regularly in teams across schools in the Trust and we hold an annual Strategic Planning Day, where each member of the Trust work together. |
| Sabbatical and flexible working policies | We have developed a unique sabbatical policy to support staff to develop their interests. For some, this has been to develop professionally, whilst others have taken this time to experience travel with their family. See our policy for further details.
Flexible working arrangements are also promoted across the Trust where possible, to enable our staff to manage their work life and family commitments. |
| Strong Induction Process | It is important to us that every member of staff has the right start to working in our Trust. The importance of a good induction is invaluable for new starters irrespective of previous experience. To support this we have a New Staff Induction Day before the start of term, which enables colleagues to get a real understanding of what the school is about and what it means to be part of the Trust. This day also prepares new staff for our training (conference) days at the beginning of the Autumn term. In addition to this ALL staff are invited to visit a series of lessons across the school year. |
| NQT Programme | |
| Continued NQT and RQT support | Where possible we try to ensure that NQTs and second year teachers have reduced teaching loads to allow them more opportunities for CPD throughout the school week. This also allows for peer to peer observations and additional coaching to take place to develop their practice. |
| 3D Networks | 3D Networks are an opportunity for faculties to share good practice and new ideas with colleagues across the school, based on our unique 3D Learning and Teaching model. |
| Attendance of staff | Our staff are committed to their roles and ensure that students are supported to maximise their outcomes. Levels of attendance are exceptionally high across all staff and well above national averages in the education sector and beyond. |
We are always looking for highly quality teachers and support staff who buy into our values across the LiFE Multi-Academy Trust and our schools
We work with the providers listed below, supporting new people entering the teaching profession:
Loughborough University Teacher Trainee Information
University of Leicester Teacher Training Information
Brookvale Groby Learning Campus Schools Direct Train to Teach