How we achieve our goals
Aldridge Education is a family of schools working together for the good of our young people.
Our leaders recognise the responsibility of leadership and are unafraid to own it. Equally, they understand the benefit of working in collaboration with others inside and outside their school and they build successful partnerships across many spheres of influence.
The Trust's Strategic Plan outlines our five goals, which can be summarised as:
1) Organisational culture
- We have a shared culture that is shared and valued by our people and is all-pervasive across the Trust, therefore withstanding even key changes in personnel. It values all personnel equally, both in word and action.
2) Student outcomes
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Our students, families and staff together know success is possible and achieve this through great culture, curriculum, support for all and effective partnership working.
3) A levelled playing field
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Where required, we help our families to turn dreams to aspiration, working in partnership with us to ensure their children are not disadvantaged, regardless of economic or other factors.
4) Strong governance
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High value is placed on relationships within governance by all, with people working collaboratively to leverage potential, communicate effectively and work smartly in partnership.
5) Successful growth
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Internal clarity, efficiency and strength permit growth and advocate for it with external partners.
Its also defines how we operate, as one group working for one aim, both empowered and responsible to be working together for the common good.
Our Head teachers, or Principals as we call them, are fully responsible for their schools and our small central team provides support to assist them in this task. We expect our leaders to use their time on the things that are of primary importance and, as learning is at the heart of our purpose as educators, this means that all our Principals personally act as coaches to at least one teacher and coach others who are involved in lesson observation and feedback in our schools. Our Principals are expert teachers themselves, with a track record of improving outcomes for young people in their own classrooms.
Our leaders are focused on learning – and the culture and curriculum required to ensure that learning is excellent – and so the partnership they enjoy with our central team of operational specialists is vital. Our central experts own their areas, working in partnership with school leaders to ensure that the very best provision possible is available in their schools and that the provision made aligns to school priorities and requirements.
Aldridge leaders understand the benefit of being part of a family of schools and seek to maximise these opportunities, wherever possible. There is no uniform description of an Aldridge school. They look and feel different to each other and they bear the ethos and culture set by their leaders. We don’t want or need our schools to be identical models of one another. Instead, we provide clarity about negotiables and non-negotiables – where we expect our schools to align and where they are free to be individual.
We seek to leverage our differences by sharing our best practice and recognising the unique expertise of our different schools, within the operating model set out by the Trust. Notably, we align our practice around curriculum and assessment and we believe that there are four key components to growing a successful school:
- Strong student culture
- Data driven instruction
- Consistent and developmental coaching
- A knowledge-led curriculum that supports mastery of learning.
You can read more about our approach to school improvement here.
We aim to offer all of our students a range of experiences that build their cultural capital and work experience that is genuinely useful to them in exploring career possibilities. Our vocational courses are practical and hands-on and engage students in the real-world application of the theory they are learning.
