Happy (almost) end of half term everyone! It’s been a marathon start to the new school year and I know we have some pretty exhausted children and staff as we head toward the finish line of Friday 27th October. From being in and around all of our academies, it’s clear that we’ve achieved loads in the past 2 months.

There are a lot of different things to update you all on that I’ll get straight to it. Firstly, I’d like to extend a big Nexus MAT welcome to Victoria Morris, who will be joining us from the 14th November 2017 as our new Extended Services Manager. Victoria will be replacing our interim manager Bev Findlay, working 2 days a week alongside the excellent Dawn Allen as we work across our academies to develop our new, exciting offer to the children and families of Rotherham. Providing out-of-school-hours services was a big ambition of ours when we created the Trust, so I’m delighted we already have something in place that can be developed further. As we welcome Victoria, I also want to record a huge thank you to Bev Findlay for all of her setup work.

We’ve had a new senior leader join us since I last wrote, with Richard Webster taking on the role of “Strategic Development Lead” for the Trust. Richard is leading on our Free School & 19-25 ambitions and is also supporting Jacky and her team at Kelford following the recent departure of Assistant Head Annali Crawford. Richard is an experienced school leader and also happens to be a top, top bloke: welcome to the team, Richard!

In the past month I’ve also been thrilled to welcome some new school governors. Peter Macaulay has joined the Abbey LGB as a new staff governor alongside new parent governors Ronnie Norton and Sonia Seymour- Thackery. Christine Brodhurst-Brown has recently joined the Kelford LGB and Naveen Judah has also accepted our invitation of being a governor at Pennine View. Great to have these new governors on board with the passion, skills and experience they all bring!

Finally, we’re in the process of talking to a local mainstream primary school who are really interested in joining the Trust. This would be a bold step for us to take given all of our academies at present are special schools, though the Headteacher and governors think and behave in the same way we do: which means we have a lot in common and share some really child and family centered values. It’s early days, but also really exciting times! I’ll write soon with more info!

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