The Trust plays a key role in wider system leadership through the CEO’s unpaid directorship of Gateway Alliance, supporting other schools through Warwickshire LA, leading and participating in local partnerships and sharing expertise widely.

Our organisation has capacity and strength to support new schools joining the MAT or schools outside the Trust. We have SLE, LLE and ELE expertise, along with LA moderators and Curriculum Leads who support across and beyond the Trust, who can articulate their school improvement repertoire. It means the best teachers can have the biggest impact on more children than they could ever teach in one school and unleash potential across many schools.

The Stour Federation learns from and contributes to the practice of other Academy Trusts in the region and further afield. A mindset for creativity and innovation, including disruptive thinking, is an essential ingredient in helping our School Trust generate increased value and improved levels of performance. We accept the opportunity to act as a leader in our sphere of influence, behaving as an inspiration to others and demonstrating what can be achieved for the benefit of other schools as well as our own.

Our school improvement steps for high performance are built on the climate and culture of the school, underpinned by our 6Cs:

• Character.
• Citizenship.
• Collaboration.
• Communication.
• Creativity.
• Critical Thinking.

We use the RADAR acronym (based on the EFQM Excellence Model) to help diagnose the Trust’s current strengths and opportunities for improvement.

• Determine the Results we are aiming to achieve as part of our school improvement strategy.
• Have in place a number of Approaches that will deliver the required results, both now and in the future.
• Deploy these approaches appropriately.
• Assess and Refine the deployed approaches to learn and improve.

Our culture of continuous improvement drives the bespoke packages of support for each school at the stage of improvement they have reached so far.