Our Education Strategy | Cotswold Beacon Academy Trust

At the Cotswold Beacon Academy Trust (CBAT), we believe wholeheartedly in providing all of our children with a broad, balanced and ambitious education, underpinned by our CBAT Values – Excellence, Respect, Endeavour.

As a family of schools, our educational strategy has been crafted to deliver our audacious goal in the aim that we provide every child an education that ignites a love of learning and empowers all children and young people, no matter their background, to shape their own lives and help create a better future for everyone. As a result, we carefully plan and consider the cultural capital, powerful knowledge, learning behaviours and personal communication and leadership skills all of our children need for the challenges of the 21^st Century.

Working collaboratively and supportively, we aim to provide the conditions necessary to deliver the very best educational practice across our Trust. We are unashamedly ambitious for our children and students and understand our moral duty to provide everyone with the highest quality education so that all can flourish. Central to our work and purpose as educators is the desire to find beauty in both the work we do and the potential of our children to create a better world for themselves and others.

At the Cotswold Beacon Academy Trust, we strive for all to be the best they can be through an ethic of excellence.

“The key to excellence is this: it is born from culture. When children enter a family culture, a community culture, or a school culture that demands and supports excellence, they work to fit into that culture. A culture of excellence transcends race, class, and geography … Once those children enter a culture with a powerful ethic, that ethic becomes their norm. It’s what they know.”

Ron Berger, An Ethic of Excellence

As a values led organisation, our core values guide all that we do.

Excellence

Ensure the highest possible standards and strive for all to be the best they can be.
Grow and develop a world-class, research-informed education provision for all.
Support our teachers and leaders by growing and delivering a programme of high-quality CPD and CBAT career support and progression.
Secure all schools as ‘Good’ schools and support and encourage them to excellence.
Aim for greatness and be proud of what we achieve.

Respect

Work together to create warm, safe and inclusive environments.
Ensure exemplary behaviour through a collective culture and powerful ethic.
Embrace and celebrate our local communities and contexts.
Challenge deficit mindsets and celebrate our children’s identity and background.
Foster a sense of being and belonging to our schools, our community and the world.
Remove barriers to promote and help develop the highest quality provision, especially for those from under-resourced backgrounds or those with additional needs.
Encourage and facilitate strong collaboration and consideration.
Strive to ensure a brighter, more positive future for all.

Endeavour

Work together as a family of schools to develop strength in ourselves and others.
Embrace challenge and encourage critique and reflection.
Support and nurture all to build independence and develop confidence, self-esteem and resilience.
Collaborate to grow a structure of meaning, a sense of purpose, belonging, teamwork and personal responsibility.
Foster a collective belief that together we can be even better.
Work to be the very best we can be: Together, we can make the world a better place for ourselves and others.

How We’ll Make This Happen

“If we create a culture where every teacher believes they need to improve, not because they are not good enough but because they can be even better, there is no limit to what we can achieve.”

Dylan Wiliam, Institute of Education, University of London

At the Cotswold Beacon Academy Trust, we understand that achieving our Audacious Goal will take time. We seek to strike a healthy balance between delivering effective, efficient systems and empowering leaders with the right culture and conditions to achieve the amazing. To help make this happen, we aim to work collaboratively to:

Create a positive learning environment, recognising that we are all learners, proud of what we do.
Support schools to review progress and create a strong and evidence-informed development plan. Our strategic professional development and training will support and grow excellent practice.
Refine and embed the CBAT curriculum pedagogical principles and strategy, so that teachers can create the conditions for the highest quality Teaching and Learning.
Develop and utilise meaningful assessment to ensure the best possible outcomes for all our children.
Ensure a rich, broad and balanced curriculum that celebrates the truth and beauty of each subject, serving as a vehicle for progress and engaging all learners.
Place equity at the heart of school improvement and purposefully create opportunities for every learner to celebrate who they are and build their cultural capital.
Review and help develop practice through collaboration, specialist network groups and training.
Develop a Trust directory of excellent practice and expertise, nurturing talent.
Work towards creating a Trust bank of curriculum resources and mechanisms for sharing excellent practice.
Remove barriers and support the development of strong leadership at every level to create a culture of high expectation and ambition across the Trust.