On 20th October 2023, all the schools in the Southwark Diocesan Board of Education Multi Academy Trust (SDBEMAT) joined together remotely to participate in the Trust’s first Inset Day.

We were welcomed with a prayer and thank you from Catharina Stibe-Hickson (Vice Chair of the Board) and Jane Heffernan (CEO) before staff participated in their assigned sessions.

Developing Effective Sentences

Teachers and teaching assistants participated in the Developing Effective Sentences training led remotely by Martin Galway, Head of School Programmes for the National Literacy Trust.  Martin revisited some fundamental sentences subject knowledge, held activities to support the development of the concept of a sentence and additional strategies to improve sentence writing.

Office staff participated in Arbor Data return training and the Premises Officer attended Effective Site Management led by Jon Robinson from Carson Robinson, the SDBEMAT Health & Safety Partner.

Making SEND Everyone’s Business

In the second set of sessions, teachers and teaching assistant attended Making SEND Everyone’s Business with Tina Harvey, the SDBEMAT SEND Partner.  In this session, each member of staff reflected on their roles to achieve strategic leadership of SEND, looking at SEND nationally, and finally looking at each school’s SEND plans.

The office staff then participated in Arbor’s An Introduction to Custom Report Writing, enable them to produce reports more easily and quickly.

The premises officer attended Arson and Site Review with Jon Robinson, Carson and Robinson.

Flourishing Adults

All staff participated in the final session hosted by Andy Wolfe, Executive Director of Education for Church of England.  Andy focussed on the ‘Flourishing Adults’ section of the document ‘Our hope for a flourishing school system’ and gave the schools questions to consider and reflect on in small groups and then as a school together.

Mark Burnett (Chief Operating Officer) and Luigi Leccacorvi (Education Partner) closed the Inset Day with a prayer.