This week, we are celebrating high attendance in all our Trust schools. Children's academic and personal success is built on strong attendance. Our schools are fantastic places for children to learn, succeed, achieve and thrive but children can only do that when they attend school regularly. All our Trust schools have attendance above the national average which is super to see. However, national average is merely a baseline, not a target for us. Afterall, who in life only wants to be average?    Last week some of our nurseries achieved 100% attendance - it does not get better than that! The most important years in education are when children are aged between 0 and 5 years old as they learn all of the foundation building blocks of knowledge to underpin their entire lives. Our attendance target is 98% because we know life happens and sometimes we may all be ill sadly, but 98% attendance equates to 4 lost learning days and 28 missed lessons.  Many of our learners have achieved 98%-100% this year and the photo accompanying this week's blog shows the celebrations taking place at Healey school on Friday - with the golden tables celebrating all high attended learners. What a wonderful way to end a successful week at Healey School!    High Attendance = High Achievement and Every Day Counts.   

Welcome Back! We hope you enjoyed a great half term break and plenty of time to relax, unwind and see family and friends. Our Trust family of schools have been busy over the break with lots of exciting site development work underway to make all our schools the very best learning environments for the children we serve. The school holiday periods are when the magic happens! A huge thank you to all our caretakers and site teams who work really hard and take enormous pride in our school sites. Ramadan has also now commenced and we wish everyone taking part, Ramadan Mubarak during this holy month. Ramadan is a time for giving, sharing and spreading kindness.   We would also like to congratulate Upper Batley High School and Assistant Headteacher, Mr Sherrard who was asked to join a panel of experts to share his best practice work on careers education in a national webinar for practitioners and school leaders to discover the latest research from The Skills Imperative 2035 Programme, funded by the Nuffield Foundation. Mr Sherrard leads Upper Batley High School's work on careers and the excellent use of Skills Builder. Learners develop essential skills, and track how they use these which helps build their knowledge, skills and expertise and prepare them for the world of work as well as make them highly employable when they leave Upper Batley High School and enter the working world. Careers is the golden thread of our Trust school's curriculum from Early Years right through to our adult education programmes, and the hook to engage all our learners regardless of their background or starting point. Great careers education and guidance helps young people to know the skills and qualifications they need to achieve their goals. Our goal is for all learners to believe, achieve and succeed in their education and their lives.