TDET’s inaugural training conference brought together staff members from across the Trust in an innovative training day on Thursday 4th January, with a key theme of collaborative working.
The sheer scale of the conference made this a training day with a difference. More than 800 teaching and support staff, as well as staff members from the Trust’s central office, took part in a selection of more than 60 workshops, listened to key strategy updates, and shared ideas to identify new ways of working together to benefit the Trust’s 5,000 pupils.
Scott Hudson, Chief Executive of TDET, said: “Our vision is to provide a world-class education for every learner in our academies. The key to this is working collaboratively, sharing resources, expertise, and partnership opportunities between and beyond our seven academies and central team to deliver the very best quality teaching, learning and outcomes for our pupils.
“I am delighted by the success of our first Trust conference, which highlighted the benefits of how belonging to a multi-academy trust makes us stronger together. Staff were able to choose from a huge variety of specialised workshops to take part in, as well as meeting and working together with colleagues in similar roles from different academies to develop new opportunities for our pupils.
“Collaboration is at the heart of our approach and, as a Trust, we have created a framework of expertise, opportunities and support around many different areas of education. Within this framework, our staff and central team work together as one large ‘faculty of education’ in different hubs and Communities for Improvement groups.
“This innovative way of working ensures our staff are able to access expertise from other colleagues as well as support and additional opportunities for professional development. Fundamentally, it also ensures we are able to offer our pupils a first-class education with a wealth of experiences, choices and opportunities, creating positive outcomes and empowering them to change their futures.
“Staff feedback from the event was hugely encouraging with many staff commenting how they felt enthused and energised by the event, as well as proud and privileged to be part of such a forward-thinking organisation. We are now working on plans to make these events a regular feature of our staff professional development entitlement and how we can make them even better.”