Page1 BDAT Briefing September 2021 Learning during the pandemic: OFQUAL publish key findings on how students have been affected by COVID 19 On the 12 th July, Ofqual published five reports studying how different aspect learning have been impacted during The context for assessments in summer 2021. Quantifying lost time. Quantifying lost learning. Review of research from England. Review of international research. The overarching objective of the research was to understand the impact of the pandemic on levels of learning that were likely to be achieved by summer 2021, with a particular focus upon students in England from years 11 to 13. The report findings were wide ranging and concluded that overall there has been a system wide net learning loss as a result of the pandemic, with socio-economically disadvantaged students likely, on average, to have lost relatively more learning than their more advantaged peers. Students from certain areas are also likely, on average, to have lost relatively more learning than students from other areas, although this is best understood locally rather than regionally. Further details can be found: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/learning-during-the-pandemic INCLUSION MATTERS! As you will know promoting inclusion and equity is a priority for a BDAT and will continue to be a focus in 2021- 22. In July, Edurio published their report 'Equality, Diversity and Inclusion among School Staff' - which sets out the findings from Edurio's first Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Review with school and Trust staff across England. This collected the largest data set on EDI issues within schools to date. Over 16,500 staff members from 380 schools took part between January-March 2021. Welcome back to school colleagues. We hope you had a long and restful summer and are ready to hit the ground running for the new academic year. This newsletter is packed with national news around academisation, potential growth, the launch of our new sister site “BDAT People” and an update on how we will look to reconnect and reinvigorate pure accountability as we settle back in to school routine. Plus we have some wonderful news from our schools who have opened new nature hubs, featured on Songs of Praise and more….. Happy reading!
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BDAT Briefing September 2021
Learning during the pandemic: OFQUAL publish key findings on how students have
been affected by COVID 19
On the 12th July, Ofqual published five reports studying how different
aspect learning have been impacted during The context for assessments
in summer 2021.
Quantifying lost time.
Quantifying lost learning.
Review of research from England.
Review of international research.
The overarching objective of the research was to understand the impact
of the pandemic on levels of learning that were likely to be achieved by
summer 2021, with a particular focus upon students in England from
years 11 to 13. The report findings were wide ranging and concluded
that overall there has been a system wide net learning loss as a result of
the pandemic, with socio-economically disadvantaged students likely,
on average, to have lost relatively more learning than their more
advantaged peers. Students from certain areas are also likely, on
average, to have lost relatively more learning than students from other
areas, although this is best understood locally rather than regionally.
Further details can be found: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/learning-during-the-pandemic
INCLUSION MATTERS!
As you will know promoting inclusion and equity is a priority for a BDAT and will continue to be a focus in 2021-
22.
In July, Edurio published their report 'Equality, Diversity and Inclusion among School Staff' - which sets out the
findings from Edurio's first Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Review with school and Trust staff across
England. This collected the largest data set on EDI issues within schools to date. Over 16,500 staff members from
380 schools took part between January-March 2021.
Welcome back to school colleagues. We hope you had a long and restful summer and are
ready to hit the ground running for the new academic year.
This newsletter is packed with national news around academisation, potential growth, the launch of our new sister site
“BDAT People” and an update on how we will look to reconnect and reinvigorate pure accountability as we settle back
in to school routine. Plus we have some wonderful news from our schools who have opened new nature hubs, featured
A major focus of this analysis is how different staff groups - across a range of demographic and other
characteristics - experience life in the school and Trust structure. The main findings from the report are
summarised below (source: Edurio):
Staff confidence in workplace commitment to EDI is high, but there are material differences between respondent groups and school types - leadership staff are more confident their workplace is committed to EDI, compared to staff overall.
Less than half of staff feel their workplace is diverse.
Diversity is higher in urban areas. Most staff do not feel their workforce reflects
their student body. Leadership teams are seen as less diverse
than the wider staff body. White staff, men, and staff without a disability
feel more confident than their peers that staff are treated equally.
Staff experience can be worse for those with more than one protected characteristic. Disabled staff, Minority Ethnic staff, and those with a faith other than Christianity feel less valued in the
workplace. A higher proportion of White British/Irish men feel valued, than Minority Ethnic men and women of all
ethnicities. A higher proportion of staff with protected characteristics have experienced comments, jokes or
behaviour they perceive as offensive. Women, Minority Ethnic staff, and staff with a disability, are less confident that their leadership would
take action to prevent discrimination. There is more to be done in ensuring that different groups are supported and comfortable throughout
the recruitment process. Four in ten staff are not confident that decisions on career development are free from bias.
Further details can be found: https://home.edurio.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/EDI_Report_Final.pdf
At BDAT we believe it is important that our children see themselves in the leadership and management of their
schools. Having the right people around the table is one of the elements to good governance. Historically we have
not recorded the diversity of our governors and we believe that it is important that we need to do this as part of
our Inclusion Strategy. Over the summer and this term we have launched an equality monitoring exercise of our
governance profile. If you are a governor and have yet to take part please do so here: Trustee and Governor
Monitoring Form
In the Autumn, we will be repeating this exercise across all our staff. This will help inform our recruitment and
retention strategy moving forward.
We will also be running a cross-Trust consultation with staff and students on our equality values and equality
objectives to ensure that the work we do in this area supports the areas that matter to our students, staff and
families. Watch this space for more information, coming soon.
“There is no improvement for pupils without improvement in teaching, and no improvement in teaching without the best professional development for teachers”
(Confederation of Schools Trusts, 2021)
At BDAT we have always said we can’t have great schools without great staff. We work hard to recruit, retain and develop the very best staff so we can provide the very best education for our children and our young people. We aim to be an employer of choice.
NEW for September 2021, we are delighted to launch our sister website called “BDAT People”. This site is a one-stop shop summarising and providing useful information about how BDAT seeks to recruit, retain and develop the very best teachers and school staff. It contains details of our ITT offer, our professional development networks, recruitment and promotion opportunities, links to the ECF, new NPQs and much more.
Whether you are a teacher, a head, an office manager or member of our pastoral team, BDAT People contains lots of great information about how you can develop yourself to be your best self.
BDAT Plan 2021-22 and COMING SOON “Reconnecting Pure Accountability”
BDAT has published our plan and priorities for 2021-22: https://www.bdat-academies.org/trust-development/
detailing the key areas of focus for the Trust this year including our usual education improvement work plus the
inclusion strategy, work to enhance student voice, digital strategy roll out and the review of governance mentioned
above. As part of this work we will also shortly be publishing our follow up 2021 version of our accountability matrix:
“Reconnecting Pure Accountability”.
Reconnection is all about joining the dots. It’s about harvesting the new good practice – “the silver linings of how
we have improved and adapted our practice during the pandemic” and combining them with the great practice and
progress we have traditionally celebrated and measured. Now is the time to reignite our ambition to provide the
very best education and school experience for our students.
The “Reconnecting Pure Accountability” paper has been updated for September 2021 to consider what we can now
measure as we learn to live alongside the pandemic and to reflect on what we want keep as success measures for
our schools.
We recognise that the old traditional accountability
measures will quickly return but that doesn’t mean our
newer wider framework on measuring impact is not just as
important.
In this document we look to mix the old measures with the
new, drawing in our distinctiveness as a value led MAT. We
also look to identify where we can begin to measure trends
in improvement as we adapt again to another new normal
and where we might look to identify further accountability
and impact trends in the future.
Summer 2021 Staff survey shows vast majority of BDAT staff feeling safe and happy
Throughout the academic year 2020-2021 we ran two short survey across all staff from the BDAT family of schools to find out how staff felt during the pandemic. The survey considered how staff felt they had been supported and cared for during the pandemic, school communications, staff wellbeing, workload and morale. Highlights from the May Survey 2021 included:
93% of staff agreed that school had done everything they could to make the workplace safe (Up from 79% from last survey) and 94% knew who to talk to if they had concerns.
95% of staff also agreed they were happy to be in school (up from 79% from the Autumn survey) 96% of staff agreed communications from the Trust and school had been good (again up from 83% from
the last survey)
Wellbeing and workload was perhaps understandably viewed as more of a concern – we have been living and working through a pandemic. Professional and career development also scored less well than usual indicating staff did not feel as able to access CPD and training this year. These are areas we will explore further as we enter the new academic year. This PowerPoint which covers the full survey findings provides more detailed