staff Voice

We asked our school leaders, staff and local academy boards what sort of trust we are and what it was like to work at Aurora, and this is what they said:

 We are ambitious as a trust - we all share an aim to get better at what we do – this is shared by all staff working across the trust and driven from the top by trustees.

• We have a strong track record of impact –all our schools are good or outstanding schools. We have developed and agreed key elements of our school improvement approach that have worked in supporting our schools to improve.
• We focus on the children and communities we serve – we are a civic institution that make a strong contribution to all the communities we serve from towns and cities to rural areas and coastal communities. We strive to provide fantastic pastoral care and extra-curricular opportunities to help pupils achieve excellence in all that they do.
• We believe in deep and purposeful collaboration – we work together and learn from each other to make things better for our pupils, communities, and staff. We learn from other schools and trusts and our schools are all part of local partnerships.
• We support and challenge each other to improve – we share a collective responsibility for the outcomes for all our schools and pupils; what goes with that is a genuine willingness to offer help and support whenever it is needed.
• We have developed shared and effective practice in key areas like the curriculum - this common practice is reinforced through shared professional learning and development. At the same time, we recognise and respect the unique characteristics of our schools and they have lots of freedom to decide what works best for them.
• We are strongly committed to supporting and developing all of our staff – including growing our own teaching assistants, teachers and leaders and there are lots of professional development opportunities for staff at all levels.
• We are part of a global partnership which gives opportunities to staff and students - our sponsor, Pansophic Learning, runs schools internationally in the US, Dubai, Switzerland and Africa. This provides opportunities for professional and cultural development for our staff and students.

We regularly gather the views of staff through the use of surveys, focus groups and visits from local academy board members and trustees. You can see the results of our most recent survey below. We are proud to outperform similar organisations in a number of key metrics but we are not complacent which is why we work hard to continue to support our staff to be the best they can be.