Ensuring that teachers and school leaders have opportunities to develop their skills, continue self-improvement and explore ways they can further their career is essential for job satisfaction.
This is always relevant but it is especially so in the midst of national recruitment and retention challenges. However, finding time for staff to pursue these opportunities in a truly meaningful way can be difficult.
At Windsor Academy Trust (WAT), to ensure that we provide both the time and the opportunities, we created the WAT Associate initiative, which gives colleagues the chance to spend 20 per cent of their working time for a year in an “associate” role.
Associates can use their time to focus on their own professional development by bringing their talents to critical trust-wide initiatives - such as learning about decision-making, planning on a larger scale, collaborating with new colleagues across WAT and sharing innovation and ideas.
Sabbaticals give staff a chance to grow
To make sure that this benefits the staff involved, each associate chooses the types of project they want to be involved with, typically linked to their strengths, aspirations and experience.
For example, former associates have worked on developing a centralised careers programme, delivering a series of Dragons’ Den-style events to encourage enterprise and entrepreneurship, enhancing our digital learning strategy and embedding character education - which led to the implementation of a new framework to support every learner.
These colleagues also get opportunities to visit high-performing schools and trusts across the country.
They can attend national conferences and events, and broaden their internal leadership understanding and capabilities by observing trust leadership in action, such as by attending executive and governance meetings and benefitting from a mentor.
Together, these opportunities generate fresh, innovative approaches to the important work that we do, encourage colleagues to be outward-looking, and build future system leaders.
How does the scheme work?
Associate positions are open to teaching and professional services staff with at least three years’ experience. Applicants must be able to provide evidence of strong performance in their current role.
Applicants follow a standard recruitment process with a formal letter of application, followed by interviews with the trust’s executive leadership team.
These interviews take place during the summer term in preparation for newly appointed associates to hit the ground running at the start of the new school year in September.
The key to making the programme work from a school’s perspective is extensive planning and collaboration, especially in relation to time management.
To allow schools to plan how their member of staff’s time in the associate role will be covered, advance notice is given during the summer term that they will be taking up their secondment the following academic year.
Headteachers are supportive and adept at being as flexible as possible, buying into the long-term view that associates will be adding capacity to the school and wider trust later on, as a leader of the future.
Careful consideration is also given to the number of associate positions available each year - typically it is two to three - so project involvement can be planned to avoid any overlaps and to ensure that mentor support from our executive leadership team is available.
Driving school and trust improvement
Now in its seventh year, our associate initiative has yielded excellent results. From a trust perspective, we are nurturing a pipeline of talented staff with the capacity and capability to drive school and organisational improvement.
Individual colleagues benefit from dedicated and focused time to learn, as well as the ability to work on trust-wide projects that they are passionate about.
Former WAT associates, myself included, now hold senior positions across our schools and trust, with past participants praising the scheme for how it helps to build confidence, inform decision-making, grow a supportive network and focus attention on projects or topics that they care about.
This dedicated and focused time cultivates an authentic sense of purpose, which, in turn, positively impacts wellbeing.
We will shortly be recruiting for our next cohort of associates, who will begin their secondment in September, and we’re already excited to see what they will achieve.
By creating our own professional development system, we’ve not only been able to recognise and reward our most talented staff but also engender a culture of continuous learning that provides a marked impact on colleagues, schools and children.
Leyla Palmer is head of professional learning and talent at Windsor Academy Trust
