Introduction from CEO
This past year has been remarkable, and I am incredibly proud of the achievements of our pupils, staff, schools, and managed service team. Despite ongoing challenges with financial uncertainty in the education sector and the impact of rising costs on our children, staff, and their families, we have made tremendous progress.
As a Trust, we continue to grow. At the end of the last academic year, we had 36 schools, with another joining us in November 2024. In the 2023/24 academic year alone, we had eight Ofsted inspections, bringing our total to 48 inspections since inception. We expect to hit 50 during 2024/25.
Robert Farmer Chief Executive Officer
Alongside our academic focus, we remain committed to prioritising the wellbeing of our pupils and staff. Through staff training and a range of support services, we have embedded this as a core part of our agenda.
Despite the challenges, I believe that Hamwic has successfully fulfilled our goals this year. We have strengthened our vision and values while keeping our pupils at the centre of everything we do.
The HET Foundation continues to thrive, providing essential support to our most vulnerable pupils and their families during these difficult times.
Looking ahead to 2024-2025, we are excited to further enrich our educational offerings. Our focus will remain on delivering a robust curriculum and enhancing the quality of teaching, ensuring our pupils receive the best possible educational experience.
Message from Trust Board Chair
Welcome to my first Annual Report of the Hamwic Education Trust as Chair to the Board of Trustees.
I am honoured to be part of an exceptional team of Trustees who bring a wide range of skills and expertise from their individual fields. Together we volunteer our time to help deliver the vision, values, and strategy of the Trust for every child attending a Hamwic school, and the amazing staff who support them. This report highlights the significant achievements of the past 12 months and outlines our plans for the coming year. I look forward to the exciting opportunities ahead for the entire Hamwic community.
Gary Plummer Trust Board Chair
ā Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.ā
Nelson Mandella
Our Statement
āAll Hamwic pupils receive a high quality, enriching, learning experience in a safe and inclusive environment, which promotes excellence through a broad curriculum that prepares them for their future and opens doors to a diverse array of opportunities.ā
Vision & Values
āAll about the Childā
We put the child at the heart of everything we do. We believe that by doing this, it drives our ethos and values to do the best we can for our children.
Vision Aims
āWhat about Sam?ā
Sam is the name we give to the notional Hamwic child. By asking ourselves āWhat about Sam?ā we ensure that we put our pupils at the centre of our decision making.
ā¢ All pupils and adults within Hamwic flourish as individuals and together
ā¢ All pupils make exceptional progress
ā¢ All schools are rated at least good by Ofsted across all areas
ā¢ High levels of attendance and engagement for both pupils and adults
ā¢ All schools and the Trust are financially secure
ā¢ Governance is purposeful at all levels and contributes to the success of pupils and adults
Ethos
ā¢ HET and schools work in partnership collaboratively. We succeed together (one team)
ā¢ We take a collective responsibility for delivering excellence for all our schools
ā¢ We celebrate individuality ā not corporate education
ā¢ We donāt believe in a standardised approach to education
ā¢ Our schools help shape HET and what we offer
ā¢ Our strength is our people, who we value and develop
ā¢ We are a learning organisation committed to improving ourselves and others
Our Journey in Numbers
No. of pupils 12,311
No. of Academies
No. of staff 1,826
37
Ā£m Revenue Budget
Ā£81 Million
No. of SCITT Students 6
No. of Local Authority areas
No. of Ofsted inspections (7 in 23-24)
4
32
Ā£m of premises investment this year
Over Ā£4.5 Million
No. of partnerships No. of MS Team 37 6
Our Schools
Jefferys Education Partnership
Hollybrook Infant School
Hollybrook Junior School
Shirley Infant School
Shirley Junior School
Southampton Hospital School
Upper Shirley High
Wordsworth Primary School
Edwin Jones Partnership
Beechwood Junior School
Glenfield Infant School
Harefield Primary School
Ludlow Infant School
Townhill Infant School
Weston Park Primary School
Weston Shore Infant School
Weston Secondary School
Ridings Partnership
Gatcombe Park Primary School
Westover Primary School
Hillary Partnership
Bearwood Primary School
Hamworthy Park Junior School
Henbury View First School
Hillbourne Primary School
Lytchett Matravers Primary School
Springdale First School
Twin Sails Infant School
Upton Infant School
Upton Junior School
Wimborne First School
Mayflower Partnership
Sholing Infant School
Sholing Junior School
Thornhill Primary School
Woolston Infant School
Greenway Partnership
Bishop Aldhelms C of E Primary School
Hampreston CE VA First School
Livingstone Road Infant School
Livingstone Road Junior School
Pimperne Primary School
Talbot Primary School
The Year Past - 2023-2024
Education
It has been a positive and successful year with notable improvements in outcomes for pupils. Curriculum development has continued apace culminating in the development and launch of the Hamwic Curriculum HUB. Currently our schools can access Primary Curriculum for Music, PSHE and Computing. The restructure of the education team with the introduction of three Director roles; primary, secondary, and quality assurance has helped to facilitate further improvements in the quality of education which can be evidenced in the feedback from the Ofsted inspections, visits to schools by Education staff and improving data. Of the seven schools visited by Ofsted last year, 5 schools were identified as good overall with two requiring improvement in some areas. Leadership in six of the seven schools was identified as good or outstanding.
Attendance
Attendance has remained a key focus for HET this year. There have been three clear strands around our action planning: Improving attendance with a focus upon our vulnerable pupils, ensuring our decision-making around attendance (support, intervention and challenge) is based upon the analysis of data and ensuring a consistent approach to the management and monitoring of attendance across schools.
To support this work, we have developed and introduced a set of ten Attendance Fundamentals. This work has been co-written with schools and the DfE. It makes clear our expectations around Process and Procedure, and Culture and Ethos. Schools began a process of self-evaluation around these fundamentals in 2023-24 and in the coming year, work will continue to check implementation to support further improvements in attendance.
We continue to make available to schools our Attendance Policy and School Graduated Response. HET Graduated Response has been developed to categorise schools; this informs the support, intervention and challenge they receive. Data and categorisation are reviewed half-termly. We continue to offer network meetings for schools to share best practice and highlight any changes in statutory guidance.
The data shows that the vast majority of our schools are above national average figures for attendance. With regards to persistent absence, the majority of our schools have figures below national average. We continue to monitor this closely, alongside PP and SEND gaps in attendance.
A focus in the coming year is further improving the joined-up approach to attendance across Hamwic teams, ensuring everyone uses shared information, resources and language.
The Year Past - 2023-2024
Safeguarding
Our consistent monitoring of safeguarding standards has ensured safeguarding remains a high priority. Our strategic approach to safeguarding focuses upon three strands: Consistency & Compliance, Communication and Continuous Development. This ensures there is a clear structure and systems around the management and reporting of safeguarding and DSLs are fully equipped to effectively and robustly manage safeguarding within their schools.
Over this year we have implemented two new trust platforms to give us access to all school safeguarding systems. We are now able to read and review pupil cases enabling us to give better, more specific advice to our Designated Safeguarding Lead. The improved access to safeguarding data and information, also gives us an improved opportunity to check and challenge practice and develop training based upon need or misconception. Our work has included the introduction of a new HET Safeguarding Toolkit which makes clear our expectations around safeguarding recording and reporting. Over 2024-25, the team are developing strands of compliance checking to ensure consistency of approach and quality of practice and recording. New standardised HET safeguarding categories have been introduced in our CPOMS and MyConcern schools.
We continue to audit safeguarding by visiting and supporting schools; this has demonstrated that Leaders are responsive to concerns and take appropriate, timely action. There is an evident culture of safeguarding throughout, and the nurturing environment encourages an openness among staff and pupils that supports safeguarding. Leaders and DSLs continue to work tenaciously with outside agencies to support our most vulnerable pupils. Pupil knowledge of safeguarding and personal safety is checked through our school visits and review programme.
All staff receive high quality training and updates, this is a combination of school-based resources and materials created by HET. The mantra remains, safeguarding is everyoneās responsibility, and this message is reinforced in all training materials.
Staff Development
Our face-to-face conferences, networks, briefings and bulletins have grown from strength to strength. These include School Leaders, Business and Operation Managers, Site Managers, IT Team, Leadership, Teachers and Teaching Assistants with a strong focus on staff development and staff wellbeing.
Mental Health
Mental health sits at the heart of HET Strategy. We have accredited Practitioners throughout HET implementing trauma informed practice in our schools. We also aim for each school by the end of the year to have a Senior Mental Health Lead. This person will receive specific training to implement a whole school approach to health and wellbeing in their schools. Many schools also have access and work closely with Mental Health in Schools Team (MHST) so that we can support our children in crisis as well as possible, but also work closely with our partner organisations in health and social care to provide the right support at the right time for our pupils.
People
Health and Wellbeing continues to be a priority for HET. Our health and well-being programme has developed, and we have continued to expand on our offering and bank of resources over the past year. Services and offerings to employees include confidential counselling and legal advice (available to employees and dependents over the age of 16), access to a mental health programme, staff benefits portal, gym membership, dental plans and meditation app. We are a Trauma Informed Trust, have a number of mental health first advisors who can spot signs and signpost individuals to relevant support. We continue to develop resources and services in this area so that everyone within HET, can access the right help at the right time for them.
The Year Past - 2023-2024
Inclusion
We are very aware of the national picture surrounding SEND and Inclusion, and have seen some incredible challenges within our schools. These challenges continue to be met with creativity, dedication and resilience across all of our partnerships and schools. Inspections continue to demonstrate that inclusion practices in Hamwic schools continue to grow in strength, we are proud of our commitment to inclusion and are driven to ensure that our decisions are made by our āAll about the childā ethos.
Our identification of SEND process continues to be rolled out across HET, so now, pupils targets are designed to target the barriers to learning, break them down and remove them. Our IEPās have never been stronger!
We now also have designed our Hamwic SEMH assessment, to be used as a profile tool, whilst also being flexible enough to be used as a pre and post baseline assessment, in order to show smaller steps of progress throughout the area of need and built on term by term to demonstrate progress over longer periods of time. This is being supported by a suite of resources put together by our Trust Behaviour Officer to ensure that all school have access to high-quality resources to support the development on self-regulation of pupils.
Our āReduced Classroomsā continue to grow in number, offering bespoke environments, higher support ratios and deliberately designed curriculums to support pupils with the most complex behaviour needs and those pupils who are assessed against The Engagement Model and not yet engaged in a subject specific curriculum. We are poised to underpin this pedagogy, utilising the Universal Design for Learning as our framework for reduced classrooms, as this type of responsive and adaptive teaching gathers momentum across Hamwic and becomes more prominent and recognised as good practice.
We also have the privilege to be represented this year at Global Schools inclusion Summit held at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, where our Strategic Lead for SEND and Behaviour was recognised for commitment to inclusion by becoming a Distinguished Fellow of the International Forum for Inclusion Practitioners.
We are now embarking on our journey to develop Hamwicās Alternative Provision offer for schools as we look to build our resources, environments, skills and expertise in specialist provision for our schools and communities. We are not entirely sure what the future holds as the world of SEND and inclusion reforms are revealed, but we know we are well placed to navigate these times alongside our schools.
Environment
The Estates team have had another busy year working hard in ensuring our schools are secure, fit for purpose, safe and secure learning environments, with a total spend this year on projects of Ā£1.9m.
Works have included a new sports hall for Weston Secondary School, which has had a huge impact for the pupils, as well as the new School Leader.
The LED Light replacement project commenced with 17 schools now fully switched over.
The remaining schools will be completed over the Christmas and Easter holidays.
Another project saw the refurbishment of a school swimming pool, which included a new pool liner, pool surround and a new roof. As well as mechanical upgrades and the installation of air source heat pumps. The difference this has made to the pupils and local community users has been great to see.
The team also oversaw the rendering of brickwork and mortar/ concrete repairs at a couple of schools, drainage works at Wordsworth Primary School playing field to alleviate major flooding issues.
Other projects across the HET included a rolling programme of boiler/ heating projects, with six boiler replacements taking place at three schools, asbestos removal, classroom refurbishments following a flood and new roofs on four schools.
Bearwood Primary School
Weston Secondary School
Westover Primary School
Finance
We recognise that for schools to be successful in keeping our children safe and deliver high-quality education, we need to ensure our financial stability and maximise the impact of every pound spent. The finance team work closely with all key stakeholders to ensure that our pupils receive everything they need to succeed, whilst remaining financially secure.
Key performance indicators from the last year:
ā¢ Reserves at 5.2% of total revenue income at 31 August 2024.
ā¢ 81% of revenue income spent on staffing.
ā¢ In excess of Ā£1m worth of high value contracts tendered.
ā¢ No high-risk issues identified at external audit 2023/2024.
IT
This year was a year of embedding the new IT strategy to compliment the overall HET Strategies. We focused on getting our backbone infrastructure consolidated within all our schools with upgrading and standardising the network infrastructure equipment used across all the schools.
We have now turned our focus towards streamlining and consolidating systems that we have across HET, and worked on HET provided systems initially, including a Document Management System, revamped the Incident Management System, and developed a Curriculum sharing website alongside the Education team.
Key Projects
Some of the key projects that we worked on included:
1. Network Switch Upgrades ā 34 schools had their network switches upgraded across the Trust.
2. Cloud Migrations ā Most schools are now fully into the cloud for data storage. This has meant better collaboration, accessibility, scalability and security. It has also helped with switching servers off in schools to assist with HETās approach to sustainability.
3. Document Management System ā Successful deployment of Document Management across multiple sites with various stakeholders, ensuring that everyone knew how to use the new platform as well how to effectively maximise benefit from the platform.
4. Curriculum Site - Develop, deploy and update curriculum resource sharing site. Achieved a custom site with structure and layout customised to the trusts requirements.
5. Incident System ā Implemented a new security focused site that implements industry standard security practices to protect sensitive data.
IT Metrics and KPIs
Governance
A programme of Trustee recruitment was undertaken in 2023/4 with five new Trustees appointed. Trustees are linked to HET partnerships and have formed a working party to further strengthen communication frameworks between the levels of Governance. They continue to value the whole group discussions at Board level.
The new governance arrangements are now in place across all schools within HET. The governance training package continues to be adapted to suit the needs of our schools with increased attendance. 2024/5 will see further planned additions to the suite of training available include safeguarding training specific to safeguarding governors, introduction of training for governors on complaints and the new governance council which will further develop robust communication links between local and trust governance.
HET Foundation
The HET Foundation has continued to be available for our pupils and families most in need of support. We continued our legacy of providing Christmas Eve Boxes to over 550 pupils, alongside providing support in the form of essential equipment for families, music lessons, access to clubs and other key activities. Over Ā£5,000 was raised for the HET Foundation during the year 2023/24.
