Neville Coles' Term 2 Update for Parents and Carers
Welcome to Term 2
Tuesday November 9th
A very warm welcome to T2. I hope you again enjoyed a fabulous two-week October break; there will not be any more one-off INSET days this year across our Trust. All our schools will now work through until Friday, December 17th.
In this new term we will be moving forward quickly with more site development thinking – for example, we will be planning for our ‘Appropriate Provision Centres’ (APCs) which will hopefully be in place for September 2022. These two new centres will meet the needs of more of our learners in a more appropriate way – behaviourally, socially and emotionally. We are also working on plans to relocate the Priory Pre-School (currently at PCSA) to our Castle Batch site. This will be branded as ‘Little Learners @Castle Batch’ and will be set up in the same way as our current provision. We are very fortunate to be in a really strong financial position to make all these projects happen; our end of year accounts (December) will show very healthy reserves. All our reserves are now ‘pooled’ centrally to allow these bigger projects to happen more easily. Great work by our Central Finance Team and COO.
Our main aim this term though remains a relentless focus on excellent classroom practice across all our schools – quality first teaching. This is the main route for our children in ‘catching up’ for any lost learning – effective teaching and effective feedback in classrooms has always been the key to educational success. Mr. Jenkins (Head of School Improvement) and Mrs. Dadds (Deputy Head of School Improvement) are continuing to work very closely with all our Principals to drive our schools – even with and despite the pandemic. You might not be aware, but we have three excellent ‘Directors of Subject’ – Mrs. Goddard-Lock (Maths), Mrs. Daniels (Science) and Mr. Walker (English) – these superb colleagues work across all our TPLT schools on curriculum development and assessment. They also coach our subject leaders and get involved in coaching great classroom practice. We also have a central Director of Careers in Mr. Wilmot; we are very passionate in the view that effective careers education is a right for all students across TPLT. Careers Education is a real strength of TPLT. So, we have a really strong team of school improvement professionals working alongside our school leaders.
Some people news; in October we were delighted to appoint Mr. Dan Milford as the substantive and permanent Principal at TKASA. Dan has previously worked with us at WCSA and will continue the great work at TKASA into the future. He has recently been our Acting Principal at TKASA. Lastly, and on a personal note, and as you may have seen, I will be leaving TPLT at the end of March 2022 after around 20 years working in W-s-M at PCS, PCSA and now as CEO of TPLT. Our Board (Governing Body) will be taking the lead and appointing a new CEO in due course; it will be an exciting time for all. This will bring a new perspective that I am sure will take TPLT into the next stage of its development. The future is very bright.
Once again – thank you for all your super support in Term 1 and we look forward to another strong and successful term ahead. Soon it will be Happy Christmas!
Best wishes,
Neville Coles
CEO
