Our Primary Strategy

Our ambition is that all TKAT primary schools are Ofsted Good or better, that outcomes for pupils are at least at national average or better, and that every year we are closing attainment gaps for disadvantaged and underachieving children.

We value the wider curriculum and value the sense of community a school’s curriculum can bring. We want every child in every TKAT school to feel safe and enjoy learning. We want them to have a sense of themselves, to be part of their community, and to grasp every opportunity out there.

Great teaching and learning is at the heart of everything we do. We are passionate about recruiting, developing and retaining the best primary practitioners. We are committed to delivering the best teaching we can through development, training and ongoing coaching and support.

We want children to have the core skills and knowledge that will enable them to enjoy a broad curriculum. We use programmes such as Read Write Inc to help children develop their phonics and early reading. We want children to have a lifelong love of reading, and we use Accelerated Reader to complement our teaching of reading and help assess children’s progress.

We enable our children to practise, learn and apply models of writing in a structured way. In maths, programmes such as Mathematics Mastery help to ensure that all children understand number and principles, and have grasped the key concepts.

We challenge and support our primary schools to offer a broad, balanced and exciting curriculum. We use each other to share and encourage innovation, great resources, planning and ideas. We use the power of the group to access high quality development, data analysis and proven methodology.

We believe that schools need some flexibility to make curriculum choices that best meet the needs of their local community. We also have a trust team of Primary Lead Practitioners who help our schools continue to develop their teaching, curriculum and assessment.

A key principle in our approach to assessment is that we have the data that can help us see where children’s learning is now and where they could make further progress. We use termly standardised assessments to help see where we are as a Trust, and which schools and which children might benefit from further support.

We are always excited to learn and find and share the best from within and outside the Trust. We are open to new ideas and challenge from colleagues in the education world and are keen to hear from and work with excellent practitioners. 

Neil Small,
Senior Director for Primaries.