LEO Academy Trust, formed in 2015, serves over 4,500 pupils across the London Borough of Sutton and Surrey through a family of ten primary schools. The Trust fosters a culture of excellence and provides extensive opportunities for pupils, staff, and local communities. All schools within the Trust are members of the Challenge Partners’ Network of Excellence. LEO Academy Trust also leads the London EdTech Hub and is an Associate College of the National Institute of Teaching.
A July 2024 Challenge Partners Trust Peer Review highlighted LEO’s strengths, noting its values-driven and ethical approach, strong commitment to equity, and innovation in educational delivery.
Please could you give an introduction to your trust, its context and yourself.
My name is Phillip Hedger. I'm the Chief Executive Officer here at LEO Academy Trust. My background is in primary education. I started my career as a Teaching Assistant, then became a class teacher, worked my way through to become an Assistant Head, Deputy Head and Headteacher.
In 2015 I founded LEO Academy Trust from the school where I was head, Cheam Park Farm Primary Academy. Since then the Trust has grown - we're currently 9 schools soon to be 11 schools by Easter 2025. We serve around 5,000 young people, and we're based in the London borough of Sutton in South West London, and also we have three, soon to be five, schools in Surrey.
When did you first hear about Challenge Partners, and why did you partner?
I first heard about Challenge Partners when I was a new Headteacher back in 2010, and I was doing some work with a colleague Headteacher in another local authority in London, and they had just started a Challenge Partners Hub. So I've been in almost since the start, and I joined because I wanted our school to be very outward looking. I wanted us to benefit from networks, locally, regionally and nationally, and I was really drawn by the collaborative spirit within Challenge Partners to be very open and share practice, but also to push each other on.
How does the Trust utilise Quality Assurance Reviews (QAR) across its schools?
We use the QARs to provide us with that annual external check on what teaching and learning is looking like within our schools, what the quality of education is looking like, and to get support and challenge around areas such as curriculum.
The reviews are used in different ways: By the school themselves to have that external critical friend to come in and to look at what they're doing on a peer-to-peer basis, and to provide challenge and support. And then they are used by the trust as that external validation of the quality of education.
The other layer to the QARs is the opportunity for staff to get out beyond our own trust and local area, to visit other schools across the country. Both to provide our support and expertise back in terms of that challenge element, but also to see the best practice that's happening across the country to see things that are happening in different contexts, and then bringing that back to our own schools and trust.
Do you have any examples of change over time that has had a positive impact on pupils, which Challenge Partners’ Quality Assurance Reviews may have supported?
When our schools have been out on review, where they have seen some really brilliant practice in terms of SEND, or sometimes subject specific areas such as phonics, writing or reading, they bring that back. They share it across our hub and across our trust and then we've adopted some of that practice, and now it's embedded trust-wide.
Through Challenge Partners, one class teacher in one school, somewhere in the network can share something, and it can then ripple, not just across one other school, but across multiple schools. And that one idea that they had can then shape the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of children.
What had you hoped to get out of the Trust Peer Review (TPR) experience, and was this achieved?
Being a trust CEO can be quite a lonely place. You're not exactly too sure whether you're doing it right, and you listen to others. The Trust Peer Review is that safe space to bring colleague CEOs and trust leaders into your organisation and really share with them over an in-depth three-day process. It's the chance to articulate why you're doing things in the way you are, and then get really good quality feedback, but also an honest review of what an outsider who's got that knowledge thinks because they're doing the job themselves.
As a trust leader you are looking for that critical friend, but you are also wanting it to be hard edged, you know the Trust Peer Review is not just come in and say nice things about each other. It is that hard edge to collaboration where people are actually being open and honest with you, and crucial to that is having the Lead Reviewer who can be the person that will lay the difficult question on the table.
What constructive challenge did you receive through hosting a Trust Peer Review, and what actions have you taken?
Through last year’s Trust Peer Review, it has led me to reflect on our leadership structure across the trust, and how prepared it is for growth and for scaling up. And it has made me think about what's working successfully for the trust now, and how the model might adapt in 5 years time if we were to grow: What do we need to do in-house to make sure that we continue to support our own schools as well as we do now, while making sure that we have extra capacity ahead of growth.
In addition, a trust might articulate the trust vision and values really well, internally. But how do you do that externally? And how is it viewed by an external audience? That is another area that we've looked at since.
LEO Academy Trust had its second Trust Peer Review last academic year. What are the benefits of having the review as a repeated cycle of improvement?
We deliberately left a gap of 3 years because we felt that trust development and school development are slightly different, and as a result the reviews were different. While we therefore didn’t focus on the EBIs of our first review, as we had moved on beyond those, I was able to draw on the lessons of the first to maximise collaboration.
They were both valuable in their own space and time. Our first review was during Covid in 2021 and it was focused on how the Trust supported the schools to respond to the pandemic. Our second review focused more around what a strong trust is, in line with the Strong Trust Framework, and the work that CST has done to inform Challenge Partners’ Trust Peer Review.
LEO Academy Trust leads the South West London Hub of collaboration. What are the benefits of this local network for your schools and trust?
It allows schools from different trusts and different local authorities within a close geographical area to come together and share best practice within their particular locality. The benefit of the Hub network is that schools know each other, each other's context and the local context well. And therefore, when they're working together on a Hub Action Plan, there is genuine alignment to solve a problem at their own school level, while also tackling something that is causing concern more widely.
Last year, we wanted to establish subject specialists through the Challenge Partners Middle Leadership QAR, and we were able, through hub funding, to bring in specialists to lead training for different subject areas such as PSHE and DT. We also established a writing network across the hub. This was to review the quality of writing in each year group, and peer moderation of writing outcomes at Key Stage One and Key Stage Two.
The hub’s priorities for this year are:
1) To embed staff use of oracy as a vehicle to enhance teaching and learning across the curriculum.
2) To further refine and develop disciplinary literacy through the continuation of our hub writing networks.
3) To foster strong language and communication skills in the early years, developing an evidence informed approach to early years practice.
4) To further develop our middle leaders by participating in the Challenge Partners Middle Leadership QAR.