The School Improvement Conference

DISCOVERING THE DNA OF TRUST-LED SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT
Tuesday 30 April 2024, The Eastside Rooms, Birmingham

The 2024 conference is now full

Please email conference@cstuk.org.uk to join our waiting list

School Improvement Conference 2023This conference will see the launch of the initial findings of CST’s inquiry into trust-led school improvement. This sector-leading inquiry brings together a host of experts from within and outside trusts to answer the question ‘how do trusts improve schools?’

Conference delegates will hear about the evidence the inquiry has explored and be there for the launch of a new conceptual model that seeks to describe the DNA of trust-led school improvement: a triple-helix of evidence-informed considerations.

We will also be welcoming a range of expert keynote speakers, as well as featuring case studies through a carefully curated programme of workshops that look at high-quality practice within the sector.

Importantly, colleagues will also have the opportunity to collaborate through crafted networking and to connect around the problems and solutions associated with improving education across a group of schools. Attendees will not only benefit from the insights of speakers, but they will also contribute to a growing body of knowledge about trust-led school improvement.

The conference will be supported by members of CST’s inquiry panel, who will contribute to the event. Plus, we’ll consider how the sector can work together moving forwards to deepen our understanding of the DNA of trust-led school improvement.

The themes which will be explored include:

  • Purpose, strategy and goal setting
  • People, culture and performance
  • Implementation

Join us for an informative and inspiring day of professional conversations between trust leaders, policy makers, expert providers and others, and to connect with your peers from across the country.

Speakers

  • Zoe Carr OBE

    Chief Executive Officer, WISE Academies

  • Owen Carter

    Co-Founder and Managing Director, ImpactEd Group

  • Sam Crome

    Director of Education, Xavier Catholic Education Trust

  • Leora Cruddas CBE

    Chief Executive, Confederation of School Trusts

  • Professor Lee Elliot Major

    Professor of Social Mobility, University of Exeter

  • Harry Fletcher-Wood

    Head of School Surveys, TeacherTapp

  • Dave Gibbs

    Education Strategy Lead, STEM Learning Limited

  • Josh Goodrich

    Founder and CEO, Steplab

  • Tracy Goodyear

    Director of Staff Development, The Mercian Trust

  • Dawn Haywood

    CEO, Windsor Academy Trust

  • Peps Mccrea

    Director of Learning and PD Designer, Steplab

  • Siobhan Meredith

    Executive Director of Education, Ted Wragg Trust

  • Dr Dan Nicholls

    Deputy CEO, Cabot Learning Federation

  • Sir Hamid Patel CBE

    Chief Executive, Star Academies

  • CJ Rauch

    Head of Teaching and Learning, Evidence Based Education

  • Steve Rollett

    Deputy Chief Executive, Confederation of School Trusts

  • Simon Shanks

    Senior Director of Science, Ormiston Academy Trust

  • Lekha Sharma

    School Improvement Lead, Avanti Schools Trust

  • Dr Sam Sims

    Research Lead, Ambition Institute

  • James Townsend

    Executive Director, Reach Foundation

  • Ed Vainker OBE

    CEO, Reach Foundation

About the conference

The conference is being held at The Eastside Rooms in Birmingham on Tuesday 30 April 2024.

Delegate tickets are £325 plus VAT (£390) for members and £390 plus VAT (£468) for non-members. The conference is an extension of our Directors of Improvement Professional Community, which is an inclusive benefit of CST membership.

Delegate registration will open at 08:30 and the conference will finish at 16:00.

Supporters

Thank you to our community supporters

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2 Simple Limited

2Simple has been making powerful and creative educational software for learners and schools for over 20 years. We are committed to providing creative, inclusive, and inspiring software to encourage children to love learning and prepare them for later life. We work hard to provide teachers, schools, and educators with the innovative resources they need to inspire and educate the next generation. At 2Simple we support teaching and learning with a variety of resources and today our software is used by learners in over 11,000 schools, in more than 70 countries.
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AQA Education

Since 1903, we’ve been rewarding achievement by designing and delivering fair and inclusive assessment. We do this because quality assessment is an essential ingredient for a good education.

We set and mark the papers for around half of all GCSEs and A-levels, but we’re more than an exam board. As an independent education charity we reinvest all of our income. From funding cutting-edge research, to supporting new insights that help raise the bar in assessment practice internationally, we’re always focused on fair and inclusive assessment and the positive impact it has on teaching, learning and society.
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Alps Education

As a MAT, navigating assessment data across your schools and colleges is essential, but can be complicated and time-consuming. Alps Summit is your hub for swift, actionable insight into performance at KS5 and KS4. Delve down from MAT to School to Subject, even Student level analysis in order for you to intervene quickly to ensure the very best results for your students.
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Cambridge Centre for Evalaution & Monitoring

Cambridge CEM is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment and has been helping teachers clearly see what’s happening in the classroom for over 40 years, empowering students in over 100 countries to achieve ever-greater things. Cambridge CEM assessments accurately measure students’ potential, progress, and wellbeing. Our assessments help you to identify how students are doing before and during their time with you, so you can effectively plan next steps, as well as evidence student progress to parents and governors. Cambridge CEM is a not-for-profit organisation on a mission to unlock every student’s potential with the very best learning solutions.
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Century Tech

CENTURY is the online teaching and learning platform for English, maths and science from KS2 to KS4, as well as KS4 geography and PE . It combines artificial intelligence with high-quality diagnostic assessments and materials to accurately spot gaps in knowledge and overcome these through personalised learning.

Students are provided with a constantly adapting unique learning pathway targeted to their strengths and weaknesses, and staff have access to data dashboards around attainment, usage and effort. CENTURY can significantly reduce teacher workload on marking, admin and resource creation.

 


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Culham St Gabriel's Trust

Culham St Gabriel's is an endowed charitable foundation. Our vision is for a broad-based, critical, reflective education in religion and worldviews (often referred to as religious education in England) contributing to a well-informed, respectful, and open society. The Trust is committed to providing teachers of religion and worldviews and other professionals with the support, connections, challenges, and professional development they need. We want all partners, such as curriculum leaders, school governors, faith/belief communities and policy makers, to be positively aware of the benefits of a high-quality study of religion and worldviews.
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Edurio

Stand 18

Edurio is a leading provider of stakeholder feedback solutions to schools and multi-academy trusts. It works with over 150 trusts as well as 2,000 schools across the UK and internationally. Edurio has developed an advanced survey management and data visualisation platform for schools and multi-academy trusts as well as a research-based survey library. It covers topics such as staff retention, parental engagement as well as teaching and learning. The team designs surveys in partnership with academic experts and practitioners to address school management priorities and inspection requirements. Edurio publishes research, case studies and practical guidance on evidence-driven school improvement.


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Evidence Based Education

We provide training and tools to help enhance the quality of teaching. Our work is evidence led. We bridge the gap between research and practice, supporting teachers and leaders to be informed. We create innovative, impactful and engaging professional learning to help improve learner outcomes for good.

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FFT Education

Stand 29

 

At FFT we are committed to helping pupils achieve their full potential and enabling schools to improve
 
That's why FFT Aspire provides a unique 360-degree analytics package for multi-academy trusts — a full ‘helicopter view’ of your trust and schools, allowing you to track performance and attendance, identify early intervention needs and share best practice around your schools.

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Healthy Minds At Work

Healthy Minds At Work is a workplace mental health consultancy based in London and working digitally across the UK. We are a team of highly experienced psychotherapists, psychodynamic coaches and trainers and our work is focused on helping schools and educational organisations improve the mental and emotional health of all their staff (and consequently the whole school community). We provide coaching, reflective practice and supportive supervision services for individuals and groups in schools to help them manage the mental and emotional impact of working in these challenging roles. We also provide leadership coaching and training to develop management and communication skills for individuals and small groups.
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IRIS Connect

 

Enable effective professional development at scale with IRIS Connect. One system, thousands of journeys. Our market leading video technology and integrated professional development platform contains all of the PD mechanisms (EEF) that have been shown to lead to sustainable, positive change in teaching practice. One adaptive, centralised and secure platform across the trust that enables tailored PD for every teacher at every experience level. Enable targeted self-reflection, trust-wide sharing of good teaching practice, improve collaboration and deliver impactful coaching without timetabling constraints or location limitations. Trusted by 100k+ teachers worldwide. Speak to us to find out more!

 

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IXL Learning

IXL Learning is anadaptive learning platform that caters to students from Reception to Year 13. With over 8,500 skills covering maths and English, it offers an immersive learning experience. Using real-time diagnostics, personalised recommendations, and actionable analytics the power of IXL is endless. Trusted by educators and parents, IXL provides comprehensive content to help close learning gaps. Whether it’s practicing math facts or honing language skills, IXL supports success for every learner.
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ImpactEd

ImpactEd supports schools to measure their impact of their work with pupils, from classroom strategies to curriculum change to teacher development.

This gives credible and rich data to show the impact of the interventions you’re making. It also helps you take evidence-informed decisions to stop doing things that are working less well.

We do this through hands-on partnership and training for schools alongside access to our research-backed digital platform which makes monitoring and evaluation quicker, easier and more effective.

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Leadership Edge Coaching

Leadership CoachingTraining with an Edge! Instead of the ‘quick-fix’ offered by twilights or training days, we become your ongoing partner on this journey of cultural change. Our 3-tier coaching accreditation programme supports you to create a culture of trust, motivation and wellbeing, one conversation at a time. Our team of 22 associate coaches all have school leadership experience and show your staff how to listen to themselves and to each other, resulting in happy, high performers who feel valued by their organisation. Our mission: To Lift Up the Education System From Within. Please join us to enhance professional fulfilment within your dedicated workforce.
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Learning by Questions

Classrooms buzzing with excitement. Fully engaged pupils who groan with disappointment when the lesson stops. Teachers with real-time insights at their fingertips and the power to give every child the right level of support at the right time. At Learning by Questions, we offer more than just a stand – we provide an experience. Take the weight off your feet and join us for coffee and biscuits as we show you how our online platform and resources are helping schools achieve a remarkable 35% increase in ARE in only 6 weeks.
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LessonUp

LessonUp is a user-friendly all-in-one platform for teachers. Create interactive lessons from scratch, work with our AI assistant to save time, use ready-made lessons from our lesson library, and import your existing material. Thanks to our 10+ interactive assessment features it increases student engagement, and captures all assessment data in one safe, central place.
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Mighty Writer Ltd

Winner of the Education Resources Awards for Best Primary Resource, Teach Primary Awards 2020, Teach Early Years Awards 2021 for Best Literacy Resource. Mighty Writer is gaining a reputation as the world’s best primary resource for literacy. Mighty Writer is a unique physical resource that transforms children’s literacy almost overnight, guaranteed! It is designed for every class of EYFS, KS1 and for intervention in KS2.All our CPD training is free, for life! Now used by 450k children in 47 countries!
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MyTutor

Stand 47

MyTutor is an online tuition platform trusted by 1300+ UK schools.

We match students from secondary schools with tutors from top UK universities to reinforce classwork, fill learning gaps, and boost attainment. We’ve provided personalised 3:1 and 1:1 tuition to over 2m students, and are a National Tutoring Programme (NTP) Tuition Partner.

MyTutor students typically make one whole grade of progress after one term of lessons - over 2.5x the progress of their peers. Lessons take place online, conveniently slotting into students' timetables, and tuition programmes can be set up within three weeks.

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ONVU Learning

 

ONVU Learning provides an innovative video lesson capture tool for schools and Trusts, offering a unique 360-degree view of the classroom with superior audio quality.
 
This platform supports teachers in reviewing and enhancing their teaching methods, promoting autonomy and self-reflection by allowing them to control footage sharing.

It addresses traditional observation anxieties, emphasising teacher well-being and supporting personalised continuous professional development (CPD), while raising academic standards benefiting both teachers and students.

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Pearson

Stand 21

At Pearson, we add life to a lifetime of learning so everyone can realise the life they imagine. We do this by providing high-quality content and learning experiences, as well as assessments and qualifications that help people build their skills and grow with the world around them. We believe learning is one of the greatest forces for change in the world, and as the world’s leading learning company, we have a duty to help drive that change and deliver against our purpose. For us, learning isn’t just what we do. It’s who we are.

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Place Group

Place Group was founded to make a positive, lasting impact on the education system through growth, efficiency, and sustainability services, driving the best possible outcomes for young people, families and communities. From devising building programmes to help transform education, developing the first academies and free schools to liberate innovators in the sector, we now help hundreds of MATs with their growth and efficiency strategies and procurement planning. Our consultancy services are designed to support and add value to central teams; Academy conversion; Decarbonisation strategies and implementation; Free School/Presumption/AP/SEND applications; TCaF/TEG applications; MAT/SAT growth strategies; Procurement consultancy; Project management; DfE-approved Everything FM operator. https://place-group.com/ 
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Primary Steps on Demand

The Royal Ballet School is the world’s most celebrated centre for classical ballet training. It is the leading classical ballet school in the UK and an international institution. The School is committed to widening access to dance. Since 2007, it has delivered its outreach programme in schools located in areas of socioeconomic diversity across the UK. Now, Primary Steps on Demand has been developed digitally, enabling all primary schools to access high-quality dance education. It raises awareness of the benefits of dance and gives thousands of children the chance to participate, supporting teachers to deliver dance in their schools. Trading name information: Primary Steps on Demand
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Progress Teaching Limited

ProgressTeaching is a teaching improvement platform that drives continuous school improvement for better pupil outcomes. From our pioneering reporting dashboard Vision – which gives you instant insights into areas such as the quality of teaching, along with attendance and exclusions trends at school or trust level – through to helping teachers to seamlessly:

    •         Set actionable steps for staff
    •         Input data via markbooks and curriculum tracking
    •         Analyse and report on summative and formative data
    •         Access seating plans
    •         Log behaviour points
    •         Assess attendance trends
    •         Measure the impact of student strategies
    •         Communicate with parents
    •         Manage teacher development

The ProgressTeaching platform will revolutionise how you work.
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QDP Services

Stand 3

QDP Services offer an unlimited survey membership to Trusts which is an independently managed, confidential platform and ensures ALL of your stakeholders are given a voice.

Membership Includes:

"…ability to track improvements is instrumental in shaping school improvement priorities."

"…ability to compare data against other institutions is fantastic…I highly recommend QDP.”

"…confident no provider can match [QDP’s] price or products."

Let us help YOU make a real difference and shape a better tomorrow for those who matter most.

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ReadingWise

 "ReadingWise is our trust-wide reading intervention strategy for all 23 of our secondary schools.”

We have over a decade of experience working with school groups to improve reading outcomes.

Our programmes cover Phonics and Decoding, Comprehension and Vocabulary. ReadingWise is a viable one stop shop for literacy improvement across your trust. This can streamline the delivery for your schools and literacy leads. This gices you a coherent and effective literacy strategy.

ReadingWise can deliver significant reading improvement for each pupil falling behind, whichever area of reading they are struggling with. ReadingWise often delivers disproportionate gains for disadvantaged and SEN pupils.
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Renaissance

Stand 38

Renaissance has been a global leader in education technology for almost 40 years. Our growing family of assessment and practice solutions also now includes GL Assessment and Nearpod. Our collective expertise ensures that assessment, teaching, practice and analytics solutions meet the needs of Trust and school leaders and teachers.
 
Renaissance Star and GL Assessment products offer the ideal starting point to help schools understand students’ strengths, pinpoint areas of need and put targeted measures in place. Meanwhile personalised practice solutions Accelerated Reader, myON and Freckle, then provide teachers and leaders with effective next steps and insights to drive better student outcomes.

 

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STEMLearning

STEM Learning is the UK’s largest provider of education support for STEM. Our mission is to raise young people’s engagement and achievement in STEM subjects and careers. We support school trusts through:

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SYNC

Sync supports Multi Academy Trust's across the UK, aiding in the adoption, deployment, and ongoing use of Apple technology. This includes the provision of hardware, software and finance solutions, as well as installations, training, technical support, repairs, and more.
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Schools BI

 

Schools BI is an analytics tool that draws data from multiple School & Trust systems (MIS, Finance, HR etc) and displays it for you on clear and insightful dashboards.  Bringing all your  information together in one place enables your Trust to efficiently make data-driven decisions.

We offer a unique blend of a core solution and bespoke consultancy; A strong set of core dashboards plus the flexibility to custom build a solution specifically tailored to your Trust’s individual requirements.

We are a tight knit team of education experts that is agile and responsive enough to constantly evolve depending on requirements in schools.
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Speech Link Multimedia Ltd

Created and supported by our team of speech and language therapists, Speech and Language Link’s award-winning, online speech and language assessments, interventions, staff training and resources empower schools in their work with speech, language and communication needs. Our universal, whole-school approach aims to ensure that no student falls under the radar, that those with severe needs receive timely discussion with specialist SaLT services and that EVERY student reaches their full potential.
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Steplab

Steplab is a professional learning platform that provides schools with everything needed to systematically improve teaching.

 



 

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Third Space Learning

Third Space Learning enables primary and secondary schools to access high-quality, cost-effective one to one maths support for the pupils who need it most - all at the same time. Following an initial assessment to diagnose individual gaps, pupils receive regular personalised online one to one maths lessons with their personal tutor. All programmes are designed by former maths teachers and pedagogy experts, and tutors are all maths specialists who complete rigorous initial and ongoing tutor training and development. In an independent trial, pupils receiving one to one maths tutoring from Third Space Learning made 7 months' progress in 14 weeks.
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Youth Sport Trust

 

The Youth Sport Trust is the UK’s leading charity improving every young person’s education and development through sport and play. Working together, we empower young people to achieve their personal best and equip educators to change lives, creating a future where every child enjoys the life-changing benefits of play and sport. Working with more than 20,000 schools across the UK we operate on a local, national and global level. We harness the power of PE, sport and play to build life skills, human connections and belonging which increase young people’s life chances through improved wellbeing, greater attainment and healthier lifestyles.