Annual Report
We are pleased to publish our first ever annual report, providing a reflection of the 2021-22 academic year.
The annual report gives an overview on the pupils/students across our schools, statistics on staffing and finances, and sets out our emerging priorities for the future.
The 2021-22 academic year was again a challenging one. We were faced with the reality of “Living with Covid-19” whilst still being affected daily by absence of pupils and staff with a large amount of covid related absence. We balanced these operational logistics alongside managing our strategic priorities. Yet again, we couldn’t be more proud of what team TEAL has achieved.
This annual report captures some of our successes and outcomes and we could not have managed this without our pupils, staff, members, trustees, governors and parents/carers who have supported us throughout this very challenging year.
Our Organisation
The Education Alliance Multi-Academy Trust was established in 2015 so that South Hunsley School and Sixth Form College could support the setting up of Hunsley Primary School, the East Riding’s first and only Free School. In February 2016, Malet Lambert School, an 11-16 school in Hull, joined the trust and the following year, Driffield School and Sixth Form joined as a sponsored academy. The Snaith School, an 11-16 school, joined us in April 2019 and the latest school to join the trust was North Cave CE Primary School in November 2019. In addition to the six schools, South Hunsley School is also an Associate Research School. Due diligence took place throughout 2021-22 for Howden Junior School who joined the trust in late 2022.
The trust also operates Yorkshire Wolds Teacher Training, the only outstanding SCITT based in East Yorkshire, which is training a new generation of primary and secondary teachers in East Riding and Hull.
Our purpose:
We are here to make great schools and happier, stronger communities so that people have better lives.
The way we do this is by:
- Always doing what is right
- Trusting in each other and standing shoulder to shoulder
- Doing what we know makes the difference
Doing what is right means always acting with integrity, in the interests of others, and being honest, open and transparent.
Our trust improvement strategy is simple and clear:
The success of our schools going forward depends on our ability to ensure we have a good teacher in every classroom, delivering an excellent curriculum, supported by effective systems for behaviour. The huge benefits of working as part of our trust are the capacity we can bring collectively for high quality teacher development and curriculum development within our healthy, thriving culture, underpinned by ethical leadership.
attend a school
judged to be
Good or better
at 5 and above
at A or above
Trust Growth
Howden Junior School made the decision to join TEAL in early 2021-22 and the central team worked very closely with the team at Howden, LA and DFE throughout the year as we worked through the conversion requirements for a conversion in early 2022-23.
We have seen an increasing number of schools looking at joining a Multi Academy Trust and we have had some early initial conversations with some local schools.
In the summer term, we successfully made an application to the Trust Capacity Fund. This is a competitive grant fund which is available to help trusts to develop their capacity to grow. Our application looked at strengthening the central services team with a focus on supporting primary growth, IT services, communication and marketing; we were awarded £98,977 payable over the next academic year.
Governance
Following the release of the Academies Trust Handbook in the summer term 2021, we reviewed our governance arrangements to ensure they remained fit for purpose. The current arrangements were in place prior to our last period of growth and we wanted to ensure that the model and structures we operate within are suitable for further growth over the coming years. Recommendations were made to amend the number and foci of the committees.
Success
We have continued with our desire to promote collaboration across the trust and to support schools by undertaking the “heavy lifting” allowing schools to focus on improving outcomes for young people.
The strengthened Central Services Team have supported schools with finance, HR, estates and compliance. Our Executive Assistant, Head of Finance and Digital Marketing Apprentice took up their roles and integrated well as part of the team. The School Improvement team have worked alongside Curriculum Leaders and TEAL Subject and Area Leads to support our schools.
The National Tutoring Programme, which launched in November 2020, was amended to give schools more tutoring options in the 2021 / 22 academic year. Across our schools a total of 456 disadvantaged pupils benefited from 6,600 hours of online tuition at a total cost of £84,644. This tuition focused on Key Stage 3 Maths and English, with the majority of pupils receiving 15 hours of support. In addition to online tuition, pupils also benefited from School Led Tutoring, delivered by teachers within our schools with funding provided by the DFE.
School Led Tutoring included reading support in our primary schools, small group phonics intervention for Year 7 and 8 pupils, Easter exam classes for Year 11 pupils and summer school to aid the transition of our new Year 7 pupils. In total 576 pupils across our schools benefited from 7,335 hours of School Led Tutoring at a total cost of £67,552.
We implemented our No Pupil Left Behind Project given the inflexibility of the government’s catch-up programmes, we were concerned that not all external funding was targeted at all pupils who needed additional support following the pandemic. We had particular concerns about pupils taking external exams at age 16 and 18. The trust board agreed an additional £145,000 which ensured every pupil taking exams had access to a full programme of extra lessons focussing on closing gaps and consolidating knowledge. All of these pupils were also provided with a voucher worth £50 for revision materials.
A-Level across the trust
Yorkshire Wolds Teacher Training recruited and trained their biggest cohort to date, working in partnership with our School Direct Partners Riding Forward Education Alliance and Tidal. Following the requirement by the Department for Education that any provider wishing to offer Initial Teacher Training from September 2024 needed to apply for accreditation. Alison Fletcher and her team, had 6 weeks to complete a demanding application process. This was an enormous undertaking for the team, whilst taking ownership of the new building and ensuring that it would be fit for purpose. We are delighted that YWTT received confirmation that they had been successful at Stage 1, over 287 accreditation applications were received but only 80 of these were successful.
Summer term 2022 saw the completion of the TEAL Development Centre expansion. This has now provided a bespoke centre for YWTT and a great flexible space for training/meetings for everyone across the trust.
Due to the expanding roll at Malet Lambert School they have worked closely with Hull City Council to ensure that the facilities required to house the additional pupils have been delivered and the building was completed In September 2022 giving an extra 4 classrooms, multipurpose area for dining and a PE space.
Our SCA funding allowed us to undertake the following works across the trust:
- South Hunsley School had a refurbishment of their food technology classrooms
- Heating upgrades for South Hunsley School, The Snaith School, Malet Lambert, Driffield School and North Cave
- Refurbishment of pupil toilets at The Snaith School
- New roof, toilets and windows at North Cave
- Upgrades to fire protection including doors, emergency lights and sounders across the trust
We have also utilised some of our Pagabo funding for works across the trust and this year this has included:
- £241,153 for the LED sustainability project across the trust
- £66,904 for the provision of electric charging points across the trust.
Following the decision by the Board of Trustees to provide funding of £20,000 for the refurbishment of staffrooms across the trust, we can confirm that the amount of funding was then doubled to £40,000 to allow for decoration works and flooring to be replaced. Initial feedback has been really positive with more staff now accessing the staffrooms than previously.
We have continued to invest heavily in our ICT provision, completing an operating system refresh at Driffield, procuring new network hardware to keep in line with the recommended guidance for schools. Replaced the telephony at Malet Lambert and invested in replacing interactive screens and new projectors at Snaith. We have setup our web filter and firewalls to sync from a central management to allow us this year to create a seamless filtering policy. We have added new controls for protecting our data by rolling out 2 factor authentication for email/ office365 services and also setup data loss prevention measures when using mobile devices. We have also developed a new central IT Support team structure.
As we prepare for the second year of the full national roll-out of the ECF, it’s to the credit of our induction tutors, school leaders, mentors and teachers that our Early Career Development programme has been extremely well received and implemented thus far, particularly given the additional pressures of external fidelity checks as a result of designing and delivering our own ECF-based training.
Implementation of any new initiative requires all parties to learn and adapt along the way and staff delivering on aspects of the programme are now more confident with the ECF and our delivery model. Participation is high and feedback is positive in comparison to the national data collected. Many of our ECTs and mentors are beginning to feel the impact of the support and training they are receiving. This is reflected in the analysed samples of participant responses as referenced below:
- 100% of our new teachers agreed that the materials and training they have received meets their needs and is helping them to improve their teaching practices through guided implementation of evidence.
- 100% of TEAL mentors agreed that the mentor materials and training have helped them to focus their attention on discussions around the important findings from internal evidence and the ECF to best support their mentee with developing teaching practice that is context and subject specific.
- 100% of TEAL ECTs and mentors feel supported in the management of their workload. National data suggests 57% of ECTs agree that the ECF adds to their workload, with 65% of mentors suggesting the programme adds too much to their workload.
- 100% of TEAL ECTs agreed that the mentoring they are receiving effectively supports their progress. None of our new teachers expressed any interest in opting out or spending less time with their mentor.
- 100% of TEAL ECTs agreed that they have continued to learn from the TEAL ECF training and as a result are improving as a teacher. This compares to 64% of ECTs who participated in the national survey disagreed or strongly disagreed that they have learned a lot from the ECF, with only 30% reporting that the support they’re getting makes them a better teacher.
There is a range of feedback for us to consider, and we’ve already made changes in response to feedback from the appropriate body, school leaders, mentors and ECTs, and we’ll continue to listen carefully and be responsive. As we implement Year 2, we will continue to look for opportunities to share the successes of last year, along with regular updates/feedback on the areas we have adapted.
We successfully held a Summer School in each secondary school for the second year running. The week offered both academic activities and confidence building events such as It’s a knockout. Each event was highly successful with many pupils opting to attend more days than had originally planned. The events were staffed with school staff who had agreed to give up their time over summer in order to ensure our incoming cohort had access to valuable transition activities and we are very grateful to school teams for facilitating this.
We have continued to strengthen our relationships with external agencies. Jonny Uttley CEO was elected on to the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Advisory Board in the summer term.
This is in addition to his System Leader work where he supports other organisations across the region in his role as National Leader of Education. Lisa Longstaff is the Chair for The Local Government Association MAT HR network Northern Forum where the group shares best practice, the LGA provide national updates, and we share resources, have workstreams so we can work together on HR projects. Jennifer Jewitt is the Vice-Chair of the ESFA working strategy group which focuses on academy reporting to government and adherence to government regulations.
Alison Fletcher has supported the Vantage Teaching School Hub with delivery of their NPQLTD course aimed at Teacher Educators across the region. Further to this, Hayley Nickolay-Walker, Early Career Development Lead and Angie Harrison have sat on the committees for Vantage Teaching School Hub, influencing the direction of travel across the educational landscape.
Challenges
The Covid-19 pandemic continued to poses many challenges and often meant that our teams were still more operationally focussed than we would have liked whilst we began to “Live with Covid-19”
The new ways of working which were established during periods of lockdown were well established and we were keen to keep some of these elements which were of a benefit such as reducing travel time and expenses and also looking at how this could help our sustainability work.
We have delivered a number of estates projects across the trust which had ever changing project timelines due to the availability of materials and the workforce due to effects of Covid-19 and also due to the invasion of Ukraine. This meant that plans had to be changed to source alternative materials to ensure that the project budgets were not over-exceeded and that they were completed in a timely manner.
Each school had worked hard to deliver 5 year plans which covered the escalating costs for energy and other factors and these were submitted In line with ESFA requirements in the summer term. Decisions on the pay awards made after this date meant that schools were then faced with re-working these budgets to make savings to reduce the deficits caused by the unfunded pay awards and we thank the Heads and their finance teams for their diligent and pragmatic approach to this, ensuring that any savings were not to the detriment of outcomes for the life chances of our pupils.
This academic year was a time of great uncertainty due to political upheaval in Westminster, with four different Secretaries of State for Education in one year. We hope for more stability as we all seek to meet the challenges schools and communities face.
Pupils/Students
Hunsley Primary
North Cave CE Primary
Driffield School
Malet Lambert
The Snaith School
South Hunsley School
Driffield Sixth Form
South Hunsley Sixth Form
Team TEAL
New Teachers
Staffing remained stable throughout the academic year and retention rates have continued to be high. Teaching vacancies have continued to be advertised to Yorkshire Wolds Teacher Training colleagues where possible in line with our trust policy.
Teacher Training (YWTT)
providers
Education Alliance
Gender Pay Gap
Proportion of male and female employees according to quartile pay bands:
| Quartile 1 Lower | Quartile 2 Lower Middle | Quartile 3 Upper Middle | Quartile 4 Upper | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Female (% females to all employees in each quartile) | 86 | 81 | 71 | 60 |
| Male (% males to all employees in each quartile) | 14 | 19 | 29 | 40 |
Full gender pay gap data can be found here.
Staff Feedback
At the TEAL Annual Conference, we asked staff for feedback on questions which had previously been shared by TES. It was very reassuring to look at the feedback from TEAL staff compared to the national response and is something which we want to focus on in the coming year.
We also had a staff suggestions box where we asked for all suggestions from staff. Following receipt of these, the central team worked through the replies and categorised them all and provided feedback to all suggestions. Some we were able to Implement straight away such as the provision of drinks in staffrooms, others took longer to arrange and some which we are still working through and hope to be able to update on throughout the following year.
Finances
| Annual income for all trust entities: | £43,099,755 |
| Operating income: | £39,748,000 |
| Operating costs: | £41,557,000 |
| Reserves: | £7,868,000 |
| Total expenditure on staffing costs: | 76.4% |
| SCA funding received: | £824,230 |
Outcomes
Following a visit by Ofsted in the Spring term, we are delighted that The Snaith School was judged to be Good in all areas by the Inspection team. The full Inspection report can be found on Ofted’s website: reports.ofsted.gov.uk/provider/23/140866.
We are absolutely delighted with the excellent performance of our pupils in the first set of external exams since 2019. Our young people have shown extraordinary resilience and determination throughout the disruption to their education caused by the pandemic. We could not be prouder of their achievements.
Covid has caused enormous disruption to the education of our young people and the impact of that has varied for individual pupils and groups of pupils due to circumstances beyond their control or the control of our schools. These circumstances include infection rates in different communities, how often pupils had to self-isolate and facilities and resources available at home during national lockdowns. The impact on pupil attendance has obviously been stark. We are proud that the average Progress 8 score for pupils in all three attendance categories (above 95%, 90%-95%, below 90%) has increased significantly from 2022. Although overall Progress 8 has decreased slightly, this is due to having higher proportions of pupils with low attendance and the pandemic has played a part in this. The deal that our pupils receive from their teachers in their classrooms is fantastic.
Nationally, the pattern of results was somewhat different from previous years, with a greater proportion than usual of the highest grades concentrated in more affluent areas, many of which are concentrated in London and the South. It is likely that Covid has played a significant role here and there are several ways in which Covid contributed to this. Many areas of the North had higher Covid absence rates, and it is likely that in areas where a higher proportion of pupils had access to better resources and support at home, Covid absence had a less detrimental effect. Given that grades at GCSE and A level are awarded by comparing the relative performance of a national cohort, this would account for the changed regional distribution of grades.
Emerging Priorities for 2022-23
Trust growth will be a key theme for the central team, utilising the funding awarding through the Trust Capacity Fund grant. Initially this will focus on the strategic growth of the primary arm of the trust. We will continue to work with the Regional Advisory Directorate on potential growth opportunities. There will be further opportunities to apply for funding for expansion and we will look to make an application should we have an eligible growth project.
YWTT will continue to work with the ITE team at the DfE on accreditation for September 2024 as they complete stage 2 of the process looking at compliance. It is anticipated that YWTT will submit an application for the Accreditation Support Grant which will provide up to £25,00 to ensure that YWTT has the capacity to grow to be able to deliver ITE across the region. We are liaising closely with the DfE Sufficiency Department looking at how we can help absorb extra trainees now that a number of local providers have not been successful with their bids for accreditation.
We will continue to ensure that we get value for money across all areas and this work will be overseen by Charlene Hadfield in her role as Head of Projects and Procurement.
Environmental sustainability will continue to be a focus and the working group will look at different projects as we look at ways to reduce our carbon footprint, a newly appointed Sustainability Lead Mireille Digard will lead on this work alongside Luc Perquin, Director of Estates.
As we continue to develop new structures and capacity around trust-wide CPD, we have also begun to further embed our trust-wide framework for great teaching (The Teaching Charter). We’ve considered the extent to which the Teaching Charter and our Quality Improvement Framework should be tailored to support individual personal development of all teachers. As a result of this, we’re investing further training and opportunities during the academic year 2022-2023 for collaboration within each subject domain to lay the foundations for a new professional development process: Professional Quality Improvement. Professional Quality Improvement (PQI) will provide an opportunity to invest in teacher professional development that is bespoke to individual needs and interests, bringing through the idea that everyone is involved in improvement through engagement with evidence and collaboration.
We are mindful that we are now in a cost of living crisis and we are looking at ways we can further support our workforce and also our families across the trust.
