CEO Latest News
Welcome to my CEO news page. I'll be regularly updating this page with news and developments from across the trust. There is lots going on so keep popping back to see what's happening!
Best Wishes
Gavin Booth (CEO)
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School Improvement at Infinity Academies Trust
Fri 18 Sep 2020For all colleagues in schools the last six months have been very strange ones. This unusual world is well illustrated in this description from our CEO, ‘whilst we’ve been closed we’ve been open, whilst we’ve been on holiday we’ve continued to look after children and whilst we’ve not been teaching, we’ve been delivering on-line learning.’
I always find that school staff are an inventive group and are eager to look for opportunities to develop ideas. Staff at Infinity Academies Trust have made great use of any additional time they may have gained during the lockdown. The two main areas were many have taken opportunities for development has been in the use of ICT to support teaching and also their own personal development. We all know staff who six months ago were reluctant to turn their laptop and are now uploading videos with the best of them. So many teachers have the Microsoft Education Centre as one of their favourite websites as they collect badges to illustrate their training. We also probably know more about attachment disorder, ACES or trauma than we’ve ever done and Dr Pooky Knightsmith has become a name everyone knows due to the great online courses that Creative Education provides.
As MAT leaders whilst supporting our Headteachers and leaders with the challenges they have faced in both providing child care and on-line learning and written more Risk Assessments than we’ve ever done before, we have taken the opportunity to review and fine-tune our systems and processes to deliver school improvement.
In the many MATs that I have worked in school improvement systems have continually changed and the documentation required to support the processes has barely kept up. Let alone having all the systems dovetailed with timelines to support all leaders deliver the processes.
So, it has been great to have been able to write a fully-formed school improvement handbook for Infinity Academies Trust which contains all the processes, documentation and timelines that we require to work with our schools to accelerate their performance.
Each of our Headteachers has a copy of the handbook and at any point in the year, they can refer to it and see what event comes next with the information they required to help them so that there are no surprises. In addition, they can work through the guide with their senior and middle leaders as a tool a professional development and at a Trust level we will use the handbook in our training sessions for Headteachers and Assistant Headteachers. (We are going to broaden our CPD offer during this academic year.) Trustees are also aware of what systems we will use and they will be able to use this knowledge to hold Trust leaders accountable.
Over the first three weeks of this term, our CEO and I, have begun the programme by meeting with all our Headteachers and it has been wonderful to produce school development plans, look at the contextual changes in our schools, address Covid concerns and give leadership coaching.
Trusts should always add capacity to their schools by seeking ways to help and support them. It should not become something that drags them down and prevents them from improving their schools. We are looking forwards to working together at Infinity Academies Trust to implementing our detailed school improvement programme with the aim of ensuring that our academies are the very best they can be and that our pupils receive the very best education.
Paul K Ainsworth is the School Improvement Lead for Infinity Academies Trust. He is the author of a number of books including Bloomsbury’s, ‘CPD Library: Middle Leadership’ and enjoys supporting schools in and out of the Trust.
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The Infinite Game
Wed 13 May 2020Over recent years the pressure of league tables and the polarity of OFSTED judgements has led to many schools, MATs and their leaders pursuing strategies based on short term impact. Yet the curious thing is, if we step back a little, the leases on our academies in our master funding agreement are in excess of one hundred years. Long after our careers and even our lives are over. There is a growing feeling among system leaders that we need to put aside the short termism of the first part of this century and begin to develop the structures and the people who will lead them in the decades ahead rather than the next few terms.
It is against this backdrop that our Headteachers have been reading the ‘Infinite Game’ by Simon Sinek. We are called the ‘Infinity Academies Trust’ so as the Americans may say, Sinek’s work should be our ‘playbook’ as we seek to have a long term positive impact on the community that we are proud to serve.
What is the Infinite Game?
We are so used to seeing the world in terms of black and white or as winners and losers. Yet in education you cannot win the game, as the game does not end, instead one academic year rolls into the next academic year and a cohort leaving is continually replaced by one joining. Furthermore if we were to come up with a win or a loss what would we base it on? There are so many metrics available that a winner could never be truly determined.
Instead education is an infinite game and our primary objective should to be keep playing the game, to keep providing the best education we can. At this Trust we are committed to playing the infinite game and that means that our current colleagues are our future and those NQTs joining us in September, will become the leaders of our vision.
Success in the Infinite Game
To succeed in the Infinite Game we have to think about how we are going to build a Multi-Academy Trust, which will be strong and healthy enough to stay in the game for generations. There are five essential practices that leaders who wish to adopt and infinite mind-set must follow. These are:
- Identify a just cause
- Build trusting teams
- Study your worthy rivals
- Prepare for existential flexibility
- Demonstrate the courage to lead
A Just Cause
We are used to talking about a vision or a set of aims and a just cause does have similarity to these. It defines where we are going, describes the world we hope to live in and the one we are committed to help build. Sinek give five suggestions of what a just cause should be:
- For something not against so it is both affirmative and optimistic
- Representative of a wide body of people so it is truly inclusive
- Service orientated, for the primary benefits of others
- Resilient, able to ensure future changes whether evolution and revolution
- Idealistic; big, bold and ultimately unachievable
The just cause must tick all those five boxes and at the same time it must not be a ‘moon-shot’ or be based upon just trying to be the ‘best.’
Trusting Teams
We all recognise that for teams to achieve their very best, there must be a high level of Trust. Sinek explains this in more detail in ‘Leaders eat last’. We want to ensure that our staff feel safe as they come to work. We want them to focus on providing a great education rather than worrying about making mistakes.
In the infinite game we are looking for long-term success and we need a system to ensure that trust and performance endures over time. Many system leaders will understand that they are not responsible for the results; they are responsible for their Headteachers. Then in a manner akin to Russian dolls, Heads will also understand that they are responsible for the people who are responsible for the results. This will not happen if there is a culture of fear in the organisation.
Worthy Rivals
In education there has been an obsession of competition over collaboration in the last two decades. This has meant that some school and MAT leaders have seen others as competitors, which in some areas has resulted in an arms race reminiscent of the cold war.
We are playing the infinite game so rather than competing we identify those around us who are our worthy rivals. They are organisations that share similar values that we can learn from. They will inspire us to help us get better at what we do and most importantly we can both succeed together. It has been wonderful to see so many MAT leaders reaching out the hand of friendship to the Infinity Academies Trust this year in a culture of sharing ideas so that we can all become better. These are our worthy rivals.
Existential Flexibility
This is the capacity to initiate a considerably change to our current working in order to move effectively towards a just cause. In many ways this is what we are doing at the moment. We have realised that we cannot continue to provide the same education for our community as we did in February via the Internet, as this would not be suitable for our community. Instead we have to think about what we are trying to provide for children and their carers that is aligned with our just cause.
We all know that education is constantly changing so we have to be ready to flex in response to that. We can all think of schools that haven’t changed their methods in the face of examination changes or OFSTED framework and their decline has meant they have been unable to stay in the game.
The Courage to Lead
Finally if we commit to playing the infinite game this requires considerable courage on behalf of the leaders in the organisation. If the rest of the world is looking through the lens of a finite game, it can take huge courage to state we are working for long term not seeking immediate success next term using boom then bust strategies.
We have to prioritise people over numbers and act consistently in line with the values of our organisation. We must also understand the playing the infinite game is not a checklist it is a mind-set.
Finally when leaders exercise the courage to lead, the people who work inside the organisation will start to reflect the same courage. These colleagues will then go onto play the infinite game in the future so that the organisation stays in the game. The very purpose of the ‘Infinite game’.
If you want to read more about the ‘Infinite Game’ by Simon Sinek, I would strongly recommend reading the book (or listening to it). Also have a look at ‘Leaders eat last’ or his first book, ‘Start with why’.
Paul K Ainsworth is the School Improvement Lead for Infinity Academies Trust. He is the author of a number of books including Bloomsbury’s, ‘CPD Library: Middle Leadership’ and enjoys supporting schools in and out of the Trust.
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CEO email to all staff following the Prime Minister's announcement.
Mon 11 May 2020Morning All,
I hope you are well. I like many of you sat anxiously watching the Prime Minister at 7pm last night hoping that he would lay out some clear plans to enable us to begin to return to normal. My top two wishes were the chance to interact with my wider family followed by a structured and informed approach to bringing our school community back together. Unfortunately neither of my wishes came true.
As you will have seen there is an initial suggestion that from 1st June the Government will look to bring children back into primary schools beginning with children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 6. This as you can imagine has thrown up literally hundreds of questions about how it’s possible to do this safely. We are anticipating guidance from the DFE today which we hope will offer more detail about how we might begin to tackle this including the implications for all of us as staff working in schools. I know you must all have a lot of questions. One thing is for sure at this moment in time myself and the Senior Leaders across the Trust don’t have the answers! We are hoping that in the coming days once we have this guidance we will be able to begin to form a plan about how this all might work. We will then be in a position to share it with you. I know waiting and listening to all the speculation builds anxiety but please try and be patient as we try and find a way through. At this point in time nothing has changed for us- the key worker and vulnerable children lists remain unchanged, the rotas stay in place and we continue to offer the emergency childcare that has become our new norm. One thing you can be confident in is that we will not be opening our doors to children and families until we believe we can do it safely. And by that I mean everyone’s safety; children, parents and staff. I am in regular contact with a large number of school leaders and many of them feel exactly the same way. The decision to open a school ultimately rests with me not the DFE and if I can’t be sure it’s safe I won’t do it. Many of my colleagues and other Trusts leaders are taking the same approach. I’ve been really impressed by the work of many of the teaching unions and they seem to really understand our concerns and we need to trust in them to challenge the DFE and represent our worries.
I have been overwhelmed with our response to this crisis. To put it simply you’ve all been amazing! I know we all want a return to normal, to welcome our children back and to rejoin our school families, however we need to make sure we do this when the time is right and when we can do it safely. I will endeavour to keep you all updated as I’m sure your school leaders will. Thank you for all that you are doing. The online learning and social media presence of our Trust is absolutely phenomenal. Keep doing what you’re doing and let the leaders worry about the next steps. We will get through this together.
Very Best Wishes
Gavin
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CEO Shoutouts
Thu 30 Apr 2020I'm delighted to launch our new "Ask CEO" inbox that will be available to you all from this week. This is a place where you can send in questions about the Trust, share learning and children's work and request "shoutouts" for children, parents and staff who are doing an amazing job. I will be reviewing these as they come in and putting together a "CEO shoutout" video on a regular basis posted to the Trust website's video resource centre: Infinity Video Resource Centre so if you want to share a particular success or ask me a question about the Trust please drop an email into: askceo@infinityacademies.co.uk -
Parent be Parents not Teachers: Home Schooling during the Coronavirus Lockdown
Wed 08 Apr 2020A short article in the Boston Standard about how to manage Home Schooling during the Coronavirus lockdown.
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People Matter!
Thu 13 Feb 2020At the end of another busy and successful term it's useful to pause and reflect on what's important. Infinity Academies Trust is continually refining and improving its offer to schools and what it means to be a member of our Trust family whether you're a pupil, parent, governor, trustee, staff member or friend.
As CEO when I think about my ultimate ambition for our Trust it's pretty simple... to put people first. I want our Trust and schools to focus on ensuring we help everyone be the very best version of themselves and we'll do whatever it takes to make sure that they succeed in whatever it is that's important to them.
Sure exam outcomes are very important as are Ofsted results but in 10,15 or 20 years time I want people to think back and be able to say how being at one of our schools whether as a pupil or staff member has enhanced their opportunities, supported their career and ultimately impacted positively on their life. I said it was a simple ambition... I didn't say it was easy!
To that end we frequently seek feedback from our pupils and their parents about how they feel about our schools. We are also just in the midst of conducting a well-being survey for our staff. I can't promise that we have got it right yet but I can say that we are constantly looking at how we can be better. We want Infinity to be place where every professional wants to work and every child wishes to attend and to do that we have to ensure we are investing in relationships and making people feel valued.
Schools are busy places and we ask so much of our teams and children but we want them to enjoy being part of our family and feel that they've got a support network across our schools focused on helping them succeed. So at the end of this busy term a huge "thank you" from me to all of our staff and children for a brilliant term. Your hard work does not go unnoticed, it is greatly appreciated and I'm so glad you're part of our Trust.
Have a great half term break.
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The Power of Peer Review
Wed 05 Feb 2020St Thomas' CE Primary Academy had its Trust Peer Review yesterday and it got me thinking.
As a Trust we are proud that our schools have the opportunity to regularly engage in Peer Review. The power of this reciprocal activity cannot be underestimated. Each school in our Trust receives a visit from two other Infinity Heads at least once per year. The reviews can focus on a particular aspect of the curriculum that the school has been developing, confirming the school's own self-evaluation or evaluating a specific strength. The reviews are developmental and supportive but come with a degree of challenge that means receiving Heads find them really helpful in informing next steps and validating their judgements. This is nothing new or revolutionary- lots of schools do this. However, doing it in a Multi-Academy trust feels different because people don't leave at the end of the day and not look back. The support continues...
The happy by-product of these reviews is the growing culture within Infinity that sees Heads and Senior leaders regularly reaching out to one another for support and guidance way beyond the original peer review, the willingness of staff to share resources and ideas and the new ways of working that the visiting Heads take back to their own schools.
As CEO I'm so proud of the growing culture of collaboration we have within our Trust, the increasing amount of informal networking and the Trust-wide ambition to be better for all our students and staff not just those within an individual school. It's this quiet, "behind the scenes" collective approach that sometimes those that are not part of a MAT can't see or always appreciate. It is incredibly powerful to know that there are people beyond your school gates working hard to make sure all our children succeed and who are prepared to share all they have so that we all flourish together.
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Infinity Data Day with James Pembroke
Wed 22 Jan 2020The Infinity Heads and Senior Leaders had a great day with James Pembroke (@sigplus) working on the Trust data strategy. We are passionate about making sure the pupil data we gather helps teachers to improve their classroom provision and target support where its most needed. We also looked at how we can reduce the workload on staff and use technology to carry out our data analysis. A really useful day- now to try and get our plan down on paper!