REAL Trust Aims – The Heart Of The Matter

Every person in every school and service has a right to a clear idea of the career opportunities available to them. The REAL Trust and Rochdale LEA pledges to provide this for you. Whatever your ambitions, whether it is simply to be the best you can be at your current job, or whether you want to advance through a clear career structure , to become a Head teacher, Advanced skills teacher, Learning mentor or school bursar, we will show you how and help you. The professional development opportunities we provide will be clearly graded to show the level of learning they address.

Early Stage Of Professional Development - This is very loosely defined as Newly Qualified Teachers, Recently qualified teachers and those in the first five years of teaching.

Opportunities For Experienced Staff - This includes those who have been working over 5 years but is a very loose interpretation and very much depends on how you define yourself.

Advanced or Consultancy Stage - These are courses for those who are at or are aspiring to be at a stage whereby they can help and advise others, both within their own school or in other schools and even other LEAs. These are the leadership courses.

Entitlement to professional development opportunities - It is the right of everyone, both individually and as a school, to have access to the best professional development opportunities that the REAL Trust can offer.

Entitlement to join networked learning groups - More and more schools are choosing to work in with likeminded partner schools on areas they want to develop. They are finding that working collaboratively works better than almost any other type of professional development activity. It shares the cost and doubles the learning. We have helped these networked learning groups to be incredibly successful and pledge to help you to become part of a network of schools if you so choose. We will disseminate the learning in all these groups so that, at the very least, everyone is aware of their success.

The REAL Trust will help schools build their capacity to provide good professional development.

• We work with networks of coordinators to develop policies and frameworks.
• We will continue to visit every school to help you with your policy and framework.
• We will help you fill in the relevant aspects of your SEF about improvement and innovation.
• The REAL Trust will help you build procedures that ensure improved recruitment and retention.
• We will help you to provide pathways and entitlement to embed excellence and enjoyment

What are REAL Trust ’s objectives?

• To provide challenge for all the partners in the education service to be creative practitioners.
• To enable educational professionals to network with colleagues where best practice has been identified.
• To enable groups of schools to work together on a range of shared activities e.g. workshops, seminars and conferences.
• To promote and support school based action research to advance teaching and learning strategies.
• To encourage and develop partnerships between schools with identified similar needs.
• To fund small scale curriculum development programmes not covered by national or regional initiatives.  
• To facilitate conferences and seminars throughout the Borough of Rochdale.
• To support accredited professional development programmes.
• To access funding to support its work

What are REAL Trust ’s objectives?

• To provide challenge for all the partners in the education service to be creative practitioners.
• To enable educational professionals to network with colleagues where best practice has been identified.
• To enable groups of schools to work together on a range of shared activities e.g. workshops, seminars and conferences.
• To promote and support school based action research to advance teaching and learning strategies.
• To encourage and develop partnerships between schools with identified similar needs.
• To fund small scale curriculum development programmes not covered by national or regional initiatives.  
• To facilitate conferences and seminars throughout the Borough of Rochdale.
• To support accredited professional development programmes.
• To access funding to support its work

Our Pledge To You

We will give you autonomy plus support. We pledge to listen to you and work on your behalf. Our portfolio of services now includes:

• The Professional Development Programme,
• The Treasury of Best Practice
• A high quality Brokerage Service 
• Individual Support for Schools 
• Support for Collaborative Network Development Work 
• International Opportunities 
• Charitable Company Status 
• CPD guidance

Your Pledge To Your Staff

Why not pledge to value and support your staff by promising that every member of staff will be entitled to go on at least one course or opportunity per year. This is linked to performance management and school improvement
We have arranged a very flexible range of opportunities; full day, half day, twilights, weekends and holidays for supply teachers and learning assistants.

There is online booking that you control. It is flexible and user friendly with built in aids to help you. This gives everyone in school access to all the opportunities and keeps all your CPD records for you. Why not put aside a staff meeting to give everyone a chance to register and have a look. www.realtrust.org.uk

Senior staff can meet to decide school priorities and then go on the website to find the opportunities that match.
Every month you will have a bulletin to remind you about what is coming up. You will have a poster for your wall. Above all have fun! It has never been so easy for everyone to browse and choose from a myriad of quality checked courses and opportunities that will have real impact on your ability to raise standards.

Validation of the Work of the REAL Trust: Your Guarantee

The REAL Trust has this year gained Leading Aspect Award Status for Continuing Professional Development and Collaborative working, another first as at the moment we are the only LEA to have gained this award. It has always been our core purpose to ensure that we reflect our schools’ development needs. Our greatest joy and instrument of success is our relationship with you and the fact that we are always listening to make Rochdale the place to “teach and then stay” developing with schools and services a welcome Succession Planning tool entitled Pathways to Learning.
We have continued to celebrate your willingness to work collaboratively and developed and extended our Treasury
of Best Practice. We have achieved a second Leading Aspect Award Status for this extended Treasury, which considers how we make the most of our collaborative work. It has succeeded in providing schools with guidance and encouragement to learn from each other. One of the mechanisms we continue to employ is the Creative Group and we are always welcoming new members, so please contact us if you wish to contribute.

Why Have A Charitable Trust?

Due to the changing role of the School Improvement Service where the focus is now very much on supporting and challenging schools and the delivery of training on Statutory National Strategies such as Literacy and Numeracy, the Trust aims to help in the delivery of a full professional development programme. The Trust provides a forum for delivering professional development support for those areas squeezed out by National Strategies. In addition, as a ‘Charitable’ Trust,
Rochdale Education and Learning Trust can also access additional funding through applications to external funding agencies nationally, locally and internationally

Membership and Subscriptions- What Do You Get For Your Money?

The success of the Real Trust depends to a great extent on the continued cooperation with and support from schools.
All Rochdale schools receive funding for School Improvement. The cost of providing the entire support included in this Personal Professional Development Programme equates to 15% of a school’s allocation for School Improvement.

This will entitle all school staff to access all provision included in the Programme, all year . Membership subscription to the Real Trust Personal Professional Development Programme will be itemized in a Service Level Agreement between the Trust and your school.
Every subscribing school will receive a full contract. This will include all of the provision offered within the Personal Professional Development Programme being available to all members of school staff with a guarantee of access to all who wish to attend.

Subscribing Schools are entitled to make individual or cluster applications to the Trust to support new initiatives, especially involving networked learning and working with other schools. The Trust will be able to carry forward funding at the end of the financial year to continue further investment in Rochdale Schools and services. We have provided all Rochdale Schools with an individual subscription charge based on this formula.

You are also entitled to an individual visit per school to help you develop your CPD plan and capacity for improvement.

Leading Aspect Award- Why Is It Good For Your School?

It is an easy and effective way to celebrate what is good about your school and the people who work in it.
Leading Aspect Award is a nationally recognized and externally accredited framework that has been developed to recognize and celebrate leading practice.
It is appropriate for all phases and relevant to any aspect of educational provision. Within your setting, an individual or group could put an aspect forward for self-evaluation and accreditation. It aims to help providers:

• show impact on pupil learning;
• identify and gain recognition for leading practice;
• support your own self-review process;
• offer a way of disseminating and celebrating leading practice both locally and nationally.
• identify ways in which you can raise standards

The Criteria:

Creating a CPD plan for your school

We have included a model CPD plan for you. This can be adapted to suit your school. We have also successfully provided a service as part of your subscription that involves;

Step One - We email a copy of the plan to your school
Step Two - We visit you in your school and fill it in, together. This takes one hour. 
Step Three - You customize it to your school.

The Rochdale CPD Coordinators Network has developed this and the draft individual personal professional portfolio for use in schools. Feel free to adapt it for your school. Ring 01706 925092 to join the network, which meets termly for a meeting and Italian lunch!!