Message from the Principal
Wednesday, June 23, 2021
Dear families,
I hope that you and your loved ones are well and good. Having been back two weeks now the students have settled back in well. As you will have seen in the news, schools have been advised to continue with their current ways of working for the time being until the next review date, which is in our last week of term (week beginning 19th July 2021). Before the end of this academic year I will write to you with our organisational plans for the new year, in the hope that we might be able to operate restriction-free!
I had meant to send this email to you on Monday but yesterday’s Ofsted visit slightly disrupted that! I will write to you with the findings as soon as I am allowed to and I look forward to sharing with you the report.
The main reason for writing is to inform you about an exciting development for the school. Over the last 18 months the Board of Governors have been working hard to identify a Multi-Academy Trust (MAT) to join. MATs are groups of schools who work together, as opposed to individually as we currently do, in order to secure the best possible education and life chances for young people. The future seems to be very much that all schools will be required to be a part of a trust within a few years and the days on ‘stand-alone’ schools and academies may soon be a thing of the past. With this in mind our forward-thinking governors wanted to ensure that they properly researched and explored all of the potential options in terms of trusts to join. This has taken a great deal of time and effort on their part, including multiple meetings and school and trust visits to the south-west and London.
I am delighted to tell you that our intention is to join the Midsomer Norton Schools Partnership (MNSP) and we hope to have joined them by the Spring term 2022. They were the unanimous first choice of all of the governors, who agreed that their values and ethos match with that of Preston. We felt that they would support us to further improve our academic outcomes whilst allowing us to keep the many key ingredients that make Preston such a special school. It would very much be that we work with the trust in a genuine partnership. In addition, their proven track record with improving academic outcomes matches perfectly with what we need to secure that ‘good’ Ofsted grade.
The MNSP website is: https://www.midsomernortonschoolspartnership.com/
There is also a short video from Alun Williams, CEO of the MNSP, which gives you some more information: https://youtu.be/Mw_VvkawFi0
Alun Williams said ‘ I am very much looking forward to welcoming Preston to the trust and working with Gregg Morrison, the staff and governors to carry on improving the school. I was impressed when I visited Preston and I look forward to coming to meet the students, staff, governors and families when restrictions allow’.
Our Chair of Governors, Tom Byrne, said: ‘The announcement of MNSP as our chosen MAT is the culmination of two years intense work during which the Governors and the school leadership consulted and met a number of prospective MATS across England, giving their time freely for which I am very grateful. The Governors reached the unanimous conclusion that MNSP was the most appropriate fit for Preston School, being closely aligned to our ethos, value and ideas for the school and with a proven track record of bringing improvement to schools, which is at the heart of the decision. I have no doubt that the Governors and school have made the correct decision in opting for MNSP and look forward to working with them to further improve the outcomes and experience of the entire Preston School Community’.
Under normal circumstances we would have arranged an evening for Alun and the MNSP staff to come in and present to you. We will plan to do this in the autumn term prior to us joining MNSP in the Spring of 2022, hopefully with restrictions-allowing. In the meantime if you would like to discuss this next stage in the school’s development at all then please do contact me on gregg.morrison@prestonschool.co.uk . I will take any questions that you have and also forward any relevant ones on to MNSP if you would like me to.
This is a very exciting progression for the school and I am excited about the added potential that this gives us. We know that our only barrier to the ‘good’ Ofsted grade is our academic outcomes and we are sure that MNSP’s track record in this field will support us immensely.
Thank you for your ongoing support and we will provide more information when we are able to with how this project is progressing.
Best wishes
Gregg Morrison
Principal
