It gives me great pleasure to introduce you to our trust and tell you a little about what we do and the journey we are on.

Cumbria Education Trust now encompasses nine schools, around 4,000 students and pupils and employs more than 650 staff. We fully appreciate the responsibility that is placed on us to ensure all our young people are given access to high-quality education.

Our six primaries and three secondaries – as well as our soon-to-launch West Coast Sixth Form – have a shared vision.

That is to enable every young person to reach their potential and achieve the success they deserve by providing an innovative and inspiring learning experience.

And whilst each school has its individual ethos and personality, we are firmly of the belief that schools are better when they work together. Collaboration makes us stronger and sharing best practice from Longtown to Tebay, Whitehaven to Brampton is part of our everyday life. Our motto is “Be the best you can be”, our values “Respect, Responsibility and Resilience”, our students always come first.

We believe in raising the aspirations of our children and helping them aim higher. We offer a broad and balanced curriculum that is enriched by many wonderful and exciting opportunities.

We have grown quickly and welcomed more academies and want to continue building geographical hubs of feeder primary schools clustered around a secondary school.

Our expertise has also grown as we have developed our ways of working to make the most of the depth of talent at our disposal.

There have been notable achievements along the way. Many of our schools are now getting Good Ofsted judgments. We thrive to be Great in all that we do and, as such, we need to work hard to build positive relationships with all our stakeholders.

Please have a look around this website which will hopefully give you a sense of what the trust and our schools are all about. Most of all, I hope you are left with a feeling that the education of the young people in our schools is in safe hands.

Lorrayne Hughes, CEO, Cumbria Education Trust