About the Orwell Education Alliance

The Orwell Education Alliance is part of the Orwell Multi Academy Trust which was founded on a belief that collaboration unlocks the potential to create excellent school communities where learning is unstoppable and aspirations have no limits.  The schools in the Orwell Education Alliance have all been committed to helping colleagues in the profession and would be involved in School to School Support (STSS) and developing teachers through Initial Teacher Training (ITT) and Continuing Professional Development (CPD).  Our Trust has previously had Teaching school status in recognition of our strength in these areas, our substantial expertise and our willingness to use our resources for the good of the profession within and beyond Suffolk. We have kept our ITT, STSS and CPD activities under the umbrella of the Orwell Education Alliance and we work closely with regional Teaching School Hubs and Research Schools.

School-led training and improvement is a key aspect of the DfE’s plans to improve the profession, acknowledging the fact that schools are in the best position to understand what is needed to make an excellent teacher and what works well for initial teacher training and ongoing professional development.  This model is sustainable and allows local areas to “grow their own”, helping areas like ours to develop and attract more high quality practitioners to address some of the recruitment challenges we have.  

Education Alliances such as ours, in partnership with local Teaching School Hubs, provide a vehicle that allows available expertise to be effectively deployed - strong schools led by strong leaders that work with others to provide high‑quality training, development and support to new and experienced school staff. 

The key goals of the Orwell Education Alliance are:

• To provide the very best learning experiences for all children by developing excellent practitioners and continuously improving those skills.
• To establish and deploy a varied skillset of Key Practitioners, SLEs and NLEs who actively provide support in a bespoke capacity for schools
• To be recognised locally and nationally as an excellent provider of the best teaching colleagues

We will meet these goals by continuing and improving our Graduate internship work, our initial teacher training, continuing professional development and providing excellent school to school support.  We are proud to work collaboratively with Teaching School Hubs and other Schools within the area as we see collaboration rather than competition as key to helping the profession succeed in having great practitioners across the country inspiring future generations of children.

Our Partners

The Orwell Education Alliance comprises the following schools that are in OMAT:

• Brooklands Community Primary School
• Grange Primary School
• Halifax Primary School
• Handford Hall Primary School
• Springfield Infant School and Nursery
• The Willows Primary School

In addition we have other schools outside of the Trust who are part of the Orwell Education Alliance:

• The Raedwald Trust
• Chantry Academy
• NLEs, SLEs, Key Practitioners drawn from a number of schools across the region

We work closely with Teaching School Hubs and Research schools:

• Alpha Teaching School Hub
• Unity Teaching School Hub
• Unity Research School
• Ipswich Research School
   

More detail on each of our partners can be found by following the Partners link