A big welcome back to all our children, staff and governors after a summer of England cricket miracles and mixed weather! Having seen all our Headteachers in person, I can say with some certainty that we have had all our pupils and staff return to us happy and healthy.

This is the first briefing of 2019-20 and the column to the left now includes the logos for Coppice, Heatherwood and North Ridge schools who have all signed on to become associate schools of the Trust, ahead of their academising to legally become part of Nexus over the coming months. We’ve already started to work together in earnest and there will be lots of opportunities over the coming 12 months for our staff and children to get to know our new academies and vice versa.

We’ve had further improvements to the Hilltop and Kelford buildings over the summer, which means better, safer learning environments for our pupils. We’re also in the process of finalising arrangements with the Council for improving access to Abbey school, with the plan being to add a new road.

The growth of the Trust, in turn, places a need for us to increase the support offered by the central team, and Sarah Fairburn has recently joined as an additional Finance & Compliance Officer. We also have a new HR Consultant, Joanna Hedge, who will be providing dedicated time to Nexus academies and leading a Trust wide project on staff wellbeing. A big welcome to both Sarah and Joanna.

Following the departure of David McNaught at the end of 2018-19, I have re-designed the MAT’s school improvement team with Lisa Suter, Jacky Tattershall and Luci Windle all working for the Trust over the next year to undertake key project work as we continue to facilitate collaboration and research across all our schools.

For the third year running, we provided families with a summer school offer that saw a record number of children engage. I’m incredibly proud of the hard work Victoria Morris, Jessica McArdle and Lauren Oakley put into planning this offer and I’m really grateful to all our staff who worked the additional hours over the holidays to ensure we had this provision in place. Extra congratulations to Jessica, who contributed to all this whilst having her own wedding, in between!

Last year saw our children continue to push the bar of achievement in their academic progress in all our academies, which is testament to their hard work and the incredible support our learners get from their teachers and teaching assistants. Though our children weren’t the only academic achievers last year: a huge well done to Nicole Bruce at Abbey for successfully completing the National Professional Qualification in Middle Leadership. What a way to start the new year!

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