School Improvement
School improvement is at the heart of what we do. Why? Because school improvement affects everything that goes on in the day-to-day life of a school. Grove Learning Trust's vision is to create remarkable futures for all children and staff through our values of Trust >> Connect >> Collaborate
We aim to do this through the delivery of a strong professional development package that connects staff and a collaborative school improvement model.
Have a look at our 2024 - 2025 Annual Report to understand more about this work.
The suite of documents below captures our educational provision:
Annual Report - September 2025
Research Quality Mark plus Report 2025
Through Grove Learning Trust’s Education Framework we have agreed to:
- Share best practice, learning from each other and experts in our field
- Target combined resources, as appropriate, for the benefit of all children in our Trust
- Improve the quality of teaching, learning and standards across our Trust
- To know and understand the performance of the schools within our Trust to inform the cycle of school improvement
Grove Learning Trust will develop a deep knowledge of each of its academies and their performance to:
- Sustain success where it already exists
- Develop strengths where there is a need to improve
- Implement rapid improvement strategies where performance is weak
- Share strengths through mutual support and challenge
School improvement is led by our Deputy CEO (currently the Interim CEO), an experienced Head Teacher and Executive Head Teacher who has led schools from special measures to good and built transformational school teams to ensure long term capacity and improvement. The Deputy CEO works closely with the Heads in each school and the Executive Team to share strong provision, review the latest research and to maintain high standards in all aspects of our work. This group meet half termly for a leadership development day to learn from each other and from specialists outside GLT, agree collaborative projects and to review the impact this is having on standards of education.
The Deputy CEO line manages the Head Teachers and Executive Head Teachers in our schools and works with them and their leadership teams to identify the school improvement priorities for the year and the terms ahead. This then translates into a series of whole and half day visits where key aspects of the academy improvement plan are worked on by the central education team and school leaders. On some visits, this work is completed with the Head however the central education team also works with the wider school team including Deputy and Assistant Heads, phase leaders, subject leaders, SENCos and inclusion teams. The DCEO also facilitates peer review work across the schools within GLT to build positive relationships and networks across our family of schools.
It is important that external quality assurance also features within our school improvement model so we work actively with other Trusts and organisations to make sure schools and local academy committees have a range of internal and external feedback to celebrate and draw from when updating the school's self-evaluation. This ensures GLT is taking on board the latest national and global practice and finding the best ways to improve practice in our schools.
During the academic year 2024-2025 our work to create inclusive, research informed schools was recognised by both the Inclusion Quality Mark and Chartered College of Teaching. Two of our schools (Oakhurst Community Primary and Millbrook Primary) are now IQM Centres of Excellence and our central education team achieved the Research Mark plus award in recognition of how we have embedded and sustained Trust wide engagement with educational research, impacting positively on standards and high quality professional development.
