It is a privilege to be the Chief Executive Officer of Four Stones Gateway Trust, working alongside talented and dedicated staff, governors and trustees to enable the lives of our students to be transformed.

Our Trust currently consists of a family of seven like-minded schools – four secondary and three primary – a Teaching School Hub, a Maths Hub, and a SCITT (School Centred Initial Teacher Training). We work collaboratively across Worcestershire and Shropshire, providing mutual support, sharing best practice, and learning from one another to achieve our core purpose: to provide excellence and opportunity for all.

As a team, our work is underpinned by our four core values: Ambition, Commitment, Creativity and Integrity – these values act as an inseparable thread woven into the fibre of our organisation, strengthening our efforts to achieve our Trust Dividend.

We are committed to delivering research-informed education across our Trust, where evidence-based practice drives teaching, learning and leadership. Our schools foster creativity, curiosity and high expectations, underpinned by a strong culture of professional development that offers clear career pathways and leadership opportunities for staff at all levels. We work in close partnership with local organisations, universities and national networks to influence educational excellence beyond our own schools, and through these collaborations, we craft meaningful opportunities for every student to thrive – academically, socially and personally – regardless of their background or starting point.

Whilst our core purpose is the same in all our schools, we acknowledge and celebrate the differences and uniqueness in each school’s community. Therefore, our Trust’s approach is two-fold: we work closely in supporting schools where centralised systems and services enable leaders to focus their attention on the biggest levers at local level. In contrast, our support is more facilitative and bespoke where local context is key in determining the strategy. Ultimately, our students deserve the best and we do this most effectively by knowing our schools well and working together.

I want Four Stones Gateway Trust to be the Trust of choice across Worcestershire and Shropshire due to its exceptional practice, investment in staff at all levels, commitment to a quality curriculum and teaching and learning for all, extensive personal development programme and pride in developing relationships between students, staff and families.

As our Trust expands, we will continue to be unapologetically ambitious for every student, regardless of their background, prior attainment or needs, so that success is desired and achieved.

If you would like to learn more about our Trust having explored our website, come and see our schools in action. I hope you are inspired to join us on our journey.

Mark Pollard

Chief Executive Officer

The Four Stones Gateway is a family of like-minded schools that collaborate to provided mutual support, share their good practice and learn from each other. Our students deserve the best and we do this most effectively by working together.

'Achieving Together’ has a number of connotations and reflects our ongoing practices at The Four Stones Gateway.

Our schools achieve together within the family of the Four Stones Gateway by collaborating and learning from one another to produce the best educational experience for all our students

Our school communities achieve together to create the ethos that supports our students to flourish both academically and socially

Our staff teams achieve together by working collaboratively and cooperatively to positively impact student outcomes

Our staff members and students know that success is largely an individual endeavour, and we commit to delivering our best to achieve together

We have four core values which underpin our vision: Ambition, Commitment, Creativity and Integrity.

They act as drivers for our strategic and operational thinking and support our work to achieve excellence and opportunity for all.

A key part of our Trust Dividend is that we are kind and driven, because these two qualities are not incompatible. We believe that happy, well-motivated and well-trained staff make the most effective teachers, leaders and support staff and, in turn, ensure excellence and opportunity for all. As our jobs are demanding, we strive to remove barriers and find ways to make life easier. From high-quality professional development to ensuring that there is an opportunity for a break and a cup of tea, caring for and investing in our staff is a high priority to ensure that they enjoy their time at work and thrive professionally.

We also recognise that working more flexibly can help our staff achieve a better work-life balance, as work is just one aspect of our lives and balancing our home lives can be difficult at times. To do this, we value our family-friendly policies and constantly review and evaluate our thinking to best accommodate our staff where it is possible to do so.

At The Four Stones Gateway, our staff have extensive access to an excellent package of benefits, including access to Teachers’ Pensions or Local Government Pension Scheme, the Employee Assistance Programme, staff long service recognition, Cycle to Work Scheme, Lifestyle Discount schemes and a free annual flu jab.

We have several established practices that make our Trust an excellent place to work, including:

• A strong commitment to professional development and growth: we offer access to recognised, accredited training and leadership courses such as the National Professional Qualifications
• Opportunities for promotion: we focus on growing and developing our staff through succession planning and by providing opportunities for promotion from within our schools
• Designated buddies: we ensure that staff always have someone to work alongside in order to soundboard, discuss ideas and solutions, have their thinking challenged and to challenge the thinking of others
• Ringfenced mock-marking time: each December, we have a Trust-wide TED which gives teaching teams dedicated time to the marking and moderation of Year 11 mock examinations
• A work-life balance: we do not expect our staff to answer out of hours emails and we discourage the use of personal mobile phones to retrieve and respond to emails
• Admin support: we lighten the load of our middle leaders by providing admin support throughout the year so that they can focus their time and energy on strategy and the biggest levers to develop practice
• Ringfenced time: our school teaching leaders have a reduced teaching load to ensure that they are highly visible and have maximum impact in supporting staff and achieving excellence for our students
• A focus on wellbeing: in each of our schools, a member of the senior leadership team is in charge of wellbeing and workload to evaluate our practices and provide essential support to all staff
• Refreshments: on training days, parents’ evenings and other evening events, food is always provided