Transform Trust and Teaching alliance was founded in 2012 on the core belief that education has the power to transform the lives of children. In order to achieve this, the trust knew that it was crucial to invest in the professional development of the adults across its schools, to ensure that they could be at their very best to create inspiring learning environments for all pupils. It was for this reason that ‘Transform Applied’, the adult learning provision created at Transform Trust, was developed. The journey began around nine years ago, with termly strategy days which were held for the Teaching School Alliance, and has come a long way since. Through a process of learning from those strategy days, taking on board feedback, and building a connection with leadership expert Steve Radcliffe, an ambitious strategy for adult learning within the trust began to take shape. To find out more about Transform Applied, Rachael Gacs met with Rebecca Meredith (CEO), Liz Barratt (Lead Associate Head teacher), and Fiona Moore (Leadership Development and Talent Specialist), who have all played an instrumental role in the success of the programme, to learn about the approach of Transform Applied and its impact on Transform Trust, and beyond.
“Transform Applied is fundamentally about how we can enable adults in schools and academy trusts to be at their best for the benefit of pupils”, explains Liz, “and it is based on a robust conceptual framework of how we know learning works”. We also wanted a common language for leadership and chose to work with the leadership model created by Steve Radcliffe, author of Leadership Plain and Simple. Steve has provided leadership consultancy to many leading organisations in the UK and first started working with Transform Trust in 2017. “Our initial plan was to see what would happen within the trust if we studied one leadership model for a year”, says Fiona, “that’s how we started working with Steve, but we quickly realised that while it had definitely had a fantastic impact in that year, there was still so much further we could take it. As it has turned out, our partnership with Steve has continued to this day.”