Welcome to our report to stakeholders, which provides a summary of developments in RLT over the past 12 months. If you haven’t read our previous reports to stakeholders, the links are available below. They provide additional details not included here about the Trust and how we work.
Paul James
RLT is a multi-academy trust that is committed to excellence and collaborative working. As at December 2022 we comprise nine secondary schools; 19 primary schools; and a SCITT provider (school-centred initial teacher training) within Oxfordshire and Swindon.
The Cherwell School
Wheatley Park
Cheney
Chipping Norton
Kingsdown
The Marlborough CofE
The Swan School
The Oxford Academy
Gosford Hill
Cutteslowe
Wolvercote
Tower Hill
New Marston
Edith Moorhouse
Garsington CofE
Horspath CofE
Madley Brook
Witney Community
Middle Barton
Beckley CofE
Rose Hill
Sandhills
Larkrise
Seven Fields
Charlbury
Windrush
Barton Park
Bayards Hill
Being part of RLT means that schools have access to a range of colleagues and collaborative opportunities to support their school improvement – we aim for our schools to be ‘better faster together’ in a way that is sustainable over time.
We also provide a full range of operational services to schools such as finance, HR, estates, health and safety, and IT, as well as supporting major projects such as large scale procurement.
This year we have produced a small number of short videos to help explain ‘how we work’ at Trust level to support our colleagues to enable them to provide the best possible education to our children and young people.
The diagrams below the videos seek to represent an outline of the support we currently offer our schools. You can click on them to see a larger version.
Delivery of the Strategic Education Plan (curriculum, professional development, leadership and governance):
Ensuring high standards of school performance:
Supporting schools in the challenges presented by the post pandemic context:
Barton Park Primary School
A core principle for RLT is ‘Everyone Learning’ and this year has brought this principle into sharp focus. The section ‘What are we proud of?’ is an important reminder of many successes and we do not have scope here to describe all of the successes that our schools have achieved; which are all the more impressive when set against a continuing challenging backdrop.
Whilst Ofsted reports are just one measure of success, we are pleased that we have been able to celebrate numerous positive inspections this past year. Our aim is to enable schools to get better faster, together and where this isn’t happening as well as we would like it to, we reflect and learn so that we can improve year on year.
We know that the variation in outcomes between some of our schools is more than we would like and we are continuing to develop as a collaborative system which helps all of our schools achieve the aims we have for them.
The year has also confirmed for us once again the value of our people – whatever the role in our schools, it is our colleagues and their work with our children, young people, families, and each other which creates healthy and successful schools.
Whilst we are talking to a number of schools about the possibility of joining River Learning Trust, our focus for the next year links to our learning as we make stronger use of our system work to support and challenge schools that are further behind others in their improvement journeys.
We also continue with the progress we have made this year in moving forward with our plans to further develop our support for our schools around inclusion.
During 2023 we will continue with our strategic plans in the areas of sustainability, EDI, IT and delivery of our capital programme, including preparation for the new build of Gosford Hill.
Alongside this we will continue to work alongside external stakeholders in the strategic planning of pupil places across all Trust schools and in leveraging the best possible support for our schools in wider local and national systems that have resourcing challenges which impact our pupils and families.
We remain focussed on our crucial work on recruitment and retention, including wellbeing and professional development for all colleagues.
The River Learning Trust, which is an exempt charity and a company limited by guarantee, is registered in England and Wales with a registered company number 7966500.