Today, Danes Educational Trust launch 'The Partnership' to provide exceptional teacher training for graduates and career changers who have chosen to become teachers.

Having been a Teaching School for 9 years under the expert leadership of Josephine Valentine, today is the day we say a fond farewell to our Alliance and welcome our new strategy through Danes Educational Trust: ‘The Partnership’.

As the first Monday in July, this is traditionally our Joint INSET day when over 500 of our Alliance colleagues have joined together to share best practice; to listen to key note speakers such as Andy Buck, Alison Peacock and Martin Robinson, and to remind ourselves of the power of collaboration and system leadership. This is a day we have had to forego for two years now in light of COVID and, as such, it is a remote goodbye to our Alliance’s strategic partners Dr Challoner’s High School, The Chalfonts Community College, St Michael’s Catholic High School, Beaconsfield High School, Croxley Danes School, Queens’ School, Parmiter’s School, Chessbrook ESC, University of Hertfordshire, Herts for Learning and, of course, our Lead School, St Clement Danes.

Enormous thanks go, in particular, to Ed Conway and Nick Daymond, both National Leaders of Education, who, along with Josie, had the vision and will to forge a partnership that has had such significant impact. An impact most apparent in colleagues’ professional development; the recruitment of fabulous teachers to schools across Hertfordshire and beyond, and, most importantly, the life chances of those children beyond our Alliance schools who have benefitted from school to school support programmes and the expertise of our Specialist Leaders of Education, senior leaders and expert colleagues over time.

Despite an obvious sadness at the end of our Alliance, we are however mindful that the strength of our partnerships remains and, as such, we are delighted to announce that, having been granted Lead School status for the delivery of Initial Teacher Training, Danes Educational Trust will continue to work in partnership with University of Hertfordshire and our Bucks Hub, Dr Challoner’s High School for Girls, to recruit our next generation of teachers across both secondary and primary phase from September 2021. Information relating to our programmes, key contacts and recruitment process may be found here.

We look forward to welcoming applications to TRAIN TO TEACH at our schools.

We are equally delighted that we will continue to work with Best Practice Network (partners since 2017 in the delivery of legacy NPQs) through roll-out of the Early Career Framework across our Danes Educational Trust: ‘The Partnership’ schools. Forty-five Early Career Teachers are due to join our schools from September 2021 and we look forward to providing them with high quality, bespoke support through our twelve trained facilitators drawn from senior leaders and lead practitioners across our schools; our suite of mentors and coaches and, of course, our colleagues at Best Practice Network itself.

If you would like to continue to follow us, we are now on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook @DanesEdTrust. We look forward to you joining us in the next phase of our work and ongoing development together.