- Recruitment and retention – Staff are our greatest asset, whatever their role and wherever they work. As DMAT grows there will be opportunities for all colleagues (associate and teaching) to develop and progress their careers and their practice. This could be through secondments, leadership positions, school to school support, trust wide project work, tutoring/mentoring or enquiry- based work. As a trust we can recognise and identify talent, coach and support colleagues we know have potential and give opportunities to colleagues to support retention and satisfy their development/progression needs. Doing this as part of a trust keeps the talent within the organisation and, over time, builds a group of trusted colleagues all working toward the same goal, all more than happy to help and support. For our associate colleagues in particular, it can be difficult to build a career within education. Being part of a trust naturally offers greater and wider opportunities and progression routes.
- Educare – An online training provider specialising in Education. with a package of accredited CPD, updated and enhanced regularly, which can complement, or replace your existing packages and/or role- specific training. Educare contains a multitude of courses and content covering a range of areas: Compliance; H&S; Safeguarding/Child protection; wellbeing etc. Educare will also simply and effectively deliver your mandatory training: Child Protection, Fire, H&S and GDPR as well as more role-specific courses such as Asbestos Awareness. Educare will save costs and potentially simplify existing processes. Courses are accredited and reporting systems are recognised/approved by OfSTED.
- Joint INSET days and trust-wide CPD. There will be a trust-wide INSET day annually. This will be a great opportunity for networking and team building. Guest speakers will be invited and the day will centre around high quality CPD. INSET day resources for joint priorities will be shared and there will be an opportunity to share delivery and planning for ECTs, associate/ support staff, so that we are shaping and refining a professional continuum for all staff.
- Embedded culture of collaborative working, sharing best practice and support. This will reduce workload for staff, create a greater team ethos and more networks of professionals. We will facilitate this through an open forum on DMAT’s intranet. We hope over time colleagues will share and discuss ideas, support each other, build relationships across schools, regardless of phase and location. As relationships develop we will facilitate opportunities for closer collaboration and support, whether that be across subject areas to support curriculum planning and development or within our IT teams when looking at future technology and exploring how we can utilise it across our trust.