Additional opportunities to collaborate and hear from experts

A silver lining to the virtual world we are now living in is the ability to rapidly and easily connect practitioners and experts across our national network. We are delighted to share with you our enhanced knowledge exchange plans, which bring you more opportunities to get together with peers to discuss challenges, share leading practice, and join high quality events on urgent areas of focus. These include:

Leadership cafes - from 4 February we will be convening regular drop-in (phase specific) leadership cafes for trust leaders, heads or members of SLT to come together and share ideas and solutions to some of the immediate challenges you are facing. You will have the opportunity over a coffee to harvest diverse thinking from a national network of peers. These will be expertly facilitated by our Executive Director Dame Sue John, Director of Partnerships and Programmes Laura Lewis-Williams, and CEO Dr Kate Chhatwal.  To join, drop in on Thursdays (8:30am-9:30am for primaries & trusts and 12:35pm-1:50pm for secondaries). Links to join each session are here (login required).

We are aware of the opportunities that special and AP practitioners in some hubs have already utilised to connect with one another and share common challenges, and are working on plans to open these opportunities up to special and AP colleagues across the national network.

Masterclasses with leading educational practitioners to bring you stimulus and support in moving forward your school improvement plans. We are booking speakers now and will release further details through our newsletter and in our annual calendar on our website as these are confirmed.

Our next National Network Meeting on Wednesday 3 March, where we will hear from Alastair Campbell and Fiona Millar on Building mental health resilience in challenging times, and from Daisy Christodoulou on assessment. The former is informed by Alastair's book Living Better, an open and ultimately life affirming account of his lifelong struggle with depression. The morning will also offer opportunities to network and discuss your responses to these and other issues with peers. A calendar invite has been sent for this meeting and we hope you can join us.

Meanwhile, we continue our series of Sharing Leading Practice webinars hosted by schools in our network, incluidng sessions on mentla wellbeing and remote leaerning. As well as joining upcoming sessions, partners can catch-up on any sessions they have missed through the recorded webinars in the Members Area here (login required).

Planning is well underway for our virtual National Conference happening on 22 April. Details of the full programme will be shared shortly.

We also know that our local hubs are providing much valued support and a focal point for local collaboration. We have set up a Hub Managers Network to connect hub managers and encourage pooling of knowledge and expertise so that all schools have an excellent hub experience.