Written by Tom Martell, Director of Strategy and Operations The school improvement team started this year by focusing on three common priorities across our schools: positive behaviour, reading and activating hard thinking. Behaviour was a particular focus during the autumn term, to create a disruption-free learning environment, so here we share some reflections on this work.  Starting with a highlight, according to teachers’ responses to survey items from the National Behaviour Survey, poor behaviour in lessons is much less common in CET schools than shown in a typical school nationally. However, there is still more room for improvement. Every pupil deserves disruption-free learning and our staff also deserve to work without misbehaviour getting in the way.    Digging into the

Written by Sue Newstead, Director of Learning Provision Cumbria Education Trust has always believed that collaboration is the gateway to school improvement. Learning from each other, choosing all the best bits from schools and creating a framework of excellence together, brings about rich conversations and a better understanding of why we choose the practices and areas to develop as one Trust. As our theme suggests, Creating Excellence Together! We are proud of our past achievements, such as the creation of the Quality First Teacher toolkit, the fair and robust assessment processes which accurately identify a SEND need, our strong safeguarding practices, curriculum developments and lots, lots more. This year, we celebrate the introduction of the Learning Provision Practitioner roles. These