Our Improvement Journey

“We are at our best when we work together, for each other, in service of the common good, embracing both solidarity and subsidiarity. This is essential in all decisions undertaken by our Catholic schools.” Bishop Peter Doyle (February, 2019)

 

To secure our vision we will ensure that:

• Our decisions and practices place the interests of children at the centre and uphold the Catholic ethos of our schools.
• We are open to challenge and try new practices which respond to the current and future need of learners.
• We change what we are doing if it is not supporting the inclusion and development of the children and young people in our schools.
• We keep social, emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing at the heart of our work by nurturing the adults so that they, in turn, can nurture the children.

Rationale for Improvement

Courageous Leadership – to challenge ourselves in the interests of ALL children

We work within our Catholic ethos where we have the confidence, courage and self- belief to challenge ourselves, as professionals, in the interests of all children.  In retaining a focus on the needs of each child and providing a swift response to meet this need, we are confident that we will collectively raise standards in all aspect of our children’s and young people’s development. 

Our improvement planning is based on the principle that, when we work together, for each other, in service of the common good we will achieve our ambitions for our children.  As part of our improvement strategy, we emphasise the importance of each school owning their improvement journey. And sharing their success across the Trust for the benefit of others. To support one another, we have Core and Targeted improvement activity.  The kind of improvement activity that we undertake is determined rigorous evaluation of our provision and guided by: evidence of social and emotional learning; the achievement and attainment of pupils across the curriculum, pupil and community voice and internal and external evaluation of our work. 

The ELEMENTS of our CORE Improvement Activity

We have four key elements to our Core improvement activity:

This is the improvement activity that utilise the ELEMENTS of our improvement strategy to respond the needs of OLICAT schools.  The Elements are as follows:

1. Support and Challenge visits followed up by School Improvement Directors and Lead Practitioner support for the purpose of training or direct on-site support.
2. A Continuous Professional Development Programme in response to reviews and outcomes and to build leadership capacity.
3. Collaborative Leadership Meetings/Visits to moderate, exchange ideas engage in projects and to conduct Peer Review for Senior Leaders; MAT Leads and Curriculum Leaders.
4. Inquiry into Practice Initiatives which promote evidence based practices and peer collaboration for practitioner inquiry to ensure contextually relevant improvement.

TARGET Improvement Activity

For schools that require additional support because they are in challenging circumstance, are new to the Trust and therefore require an Induction Programme or because they have been judged to Require Improvement or as Inadequate by Ofsted, a bespoke Improvement Plan will be initiated through negotiation between the Headteacher, the School Improvement Director, Systems Leaders, The Diocese and the Department for Education.  To avoid schools receiving any confusing or conflicting messages, this improvement is specifically overseen and co-ordinated by a School Improvement Director from the Trust.

 

Operations Manager - Nathalie Young

Our aim is to achieve ‘Best Value’ without compromising quality to support the best possible outcomes for the children in our OLICAT Schools.

Operations Management creates the highest level of efficiency possible within the OLICAT Schools through the administration of business practices. Our Operations Manager is responsible for leading the implementation and compliance of non-educational functions, as well as coordinating and developing new processes, while re-evaluating current structures, in accordance with our Trust policy and procedures.

We provide strategic professional advice to the OLICAT Trust Board and Strategic Executive Lead on matters relating to business continuity and we are responsible for the tendering and managing of supplier and service contracts including Health and Safety, Premises and Facilities, Catering, Cleaning and IT provision, as well as the implementation of risk protection.

Jo Brake-Oakes, our Trust HR Director, is responsible for leading and managing the OLICAT HR service to all schools and staff employed within the new Trust.

OLICAT HR provides strategic and professional HR advice to support the Strategic Executive Lead, Head teachers and Senior Leadership Teams to lead and manage their staff and enable them to achieve the highest levels of individual performance to create and enhance outstanding teaching and learning in all OLICAT schools. 

OLICAT HR provides expert and professional HR advice on all matters relating to terms and conditions, employee relations (capability, disciplinaries, grievances, conduct, absence), performance management, restructuring, recruitment and retention, absence management, pay and reward and workforce planning. 

OLICAT HR will provide centralised HR document templates and services for all OLICAT schools including HR policies within an HR policy framework (CES and legally compliant), job evaluation grading, recruitment pack templates, HR procedures, letter templates and standardised forms.  OLICAT HR services can provide a centralised service to schools for pre-employment checks (enhanced DBS, medicals, List 99s, TRA checks), Occupational Health referrals, employee benefits and recruitment.  

OLICAT HR will develop and produce trustwide reports and data to demonstrate trends and metrics regarding all OLICAT staff, including sick absence, equality and diversity, recruitment, staff training, labour turnover and employee satisfaction. 

Please visit our Vacancies area of the website for further information and details of any current vacancies. 

 

The Trust Central Finance Team works across 12 schools in 2 hubs (Bedford/Northampton).  The team meet all the trust financial requirements, processing order requisition, paying of invoices, setting up budgets and producing reports, year-end accounting and completing the ESFA/DfE financial returns.

Email address:  Finance@olicatschools.org

The Data Service has oversight of information systems across the trust. We support decision-making across the organisation by providing information and analysis on a wide range of themes.

In addition to managing the core data systems infrastructure, we also support the Operations team to ensure the trust has cost-effective and efficient IT services in place.

The team works closely with the Data Protection Officer to monitor the processes for collecting and handling data within our schools, ensuring they are compliant with current legislation including GDPR.

Sam Jukes - Senior Data Analyst