School Based Career Support Framework for Teaching Staff 

At Enlighten Learning Trust we are committed to supporting our colleagues throughout their career.  We want to encourage great teachers to stay in the classroom and value them for their skills and the difference they make to our community.   It is essential that our colleagues feel that they can continue to flourish in the classroom environment and feel valued every day that they come to school.  We want our outstanding teachers to support our Trust community by sharing great practice.  We need our classroom practitioners to be hungry to develop, to engage in current research and to contribute to the body of information that will help others to continue to discover, learn and improve.   

We develop our system leaders.  It is great people that enable us to secure the firm foundations and future of our Trust.  Our Trust leaders are vital in securing that unbreakable, supportive bond between schools.  Our Leaders live the vision of our Trust every day that they are in school.   

We value and celebrate our outstanding classroom leaders and our system leaders equally. Below we have attached a sample of the types of career support that we offer at ELT.  The list is not exhaustive, but it is illustrative of a commitment to developing our team.  We are always searching for new opportunities and widening our networks to ensure that we remain at the cutting edge of education development and improvement.   

Talent Management 

We understand that a core element within our School Effectiveness Strategy is to ensure that we capture and share the expertise within our own Trust schools.  We have a belief in the talent within our own Trust, and we want to ensure that we maximise the impact of such talented individuals.  As such we have drawn up a programme of Continued Professional Development that not only encourages every individual to engage in ongoing learning, but that also directs colleagues to ways in which they can extend their reach and support others across and beyond the Trust.  This helps us to deliver on our commitment to the retention and development of great colleagues.   We have three roles within the Trust which are focussed on promoting wider school networking and sharing great practice: 

• School Based Leaders 

These roles will be filled by colleagues who have illustrated a talent and impact and have shared a thirst for further knowledge development and creation.  Such SBL’s could specialise in curriculum areas or phases.  They may have a particular strand of pedagogy that they are interested in developing and sharing.  We are interested to explore how research can be used to further develop the quality of our classroom provision.   

• Trust Consultants 

These roles will be filled by colleagues who have illustrated a track record of highly effective interventions in school in one or more areas of specialism.  Colleagues will be adept at carrying out research-based activities in school and working in a coaching style with other colleagues to share great ideas.  Trust Consultants will have had experience of managing change.  They will be empathetic and have an approach which is supportive and collaborative.   Trust Consultants will work very closely with the School Effectiveness Leader and Headteacher / Head of School to plan an organised approach to school improvement strategies. 

• Associate Trust Consultants 

As above.  We have strong relationships with other Trusts and school effectiveness providers.  Where we find colleagues who demonstrate a natural connection with our own vision and values, we strive to build relationships with them that can bring expertise and capacity to our Trust. We recognise the need to have the capacity to respond rapidly to emerging difficulties in a school, and we are experienced in being able to bring a team together to respond at speed and our Associate Trust Consultants help to provide that capacity.  This work is co-ordinated by the School Effectiveness Leader.  Our relationships with our Associate Trust Consultants are crucial in keeping us as an outward looking organisation.  It also enables us to stay in touch with talent beyond the immediate ELT family of schools.     

Shared CPD

Shared CPD is a core part of our work.  We will bring leaders and teachers together from a variety of schools to work on common aims and goals.  We currently host a wide range of moderation events for our primary colleagues in Early Years,  Year 2, Year 3,  Year 4 and Year 6.  These events are led by qualified moderators who keep us in touch with latest developments and requirements as well as validating our judgements and offering the opportunity to share great curriculum ideas that have worked effectively.  

We are building our subject leader networks and encouraging colleagues to work both cross school and cross phase in order to build on our knowledge of progression and coverage in different settings.  These subject leader networks offer us the opportunity to delve deeply into development in research and share great ideas with one another.  They also encourage self-reflection and an opportunity to seek solutions to challenges that we may be facing.   The core focus of our subject leader networks is to focus on quality first teaching, but we also pick up on themes that may emerge for our Trust.