At Gateway, we truly value the feedback of the schools and educators we work with. Hearing first-hand about the impact of our professional development programmes helps us continue to refine and enhance the support we offer. Watch this testimonial to see how our CPD has made a real difference.

 

Sustainability has never been more important. As we navigate the challenges of a rapidly changing world, equipping young people with the knowledge and skills to address environmental issues is crucial. At Gateway, we are proud to play a role in this vital mission through our Sustainability Network for Schools, and we are looking for like-minded organisations to join us on this journey.

About the Sustainability Network for Schools

The Sustainability Network for Schools is one of our flagship initiatives. Designed to empower educators, the network supports schools in embedding sustainability across their curriculum, fostering positive environmental change, and inspiring young people to create a greener future.

Here’s what the network offers:

This initiative aligns with the Department for Education’s Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy and is delivered in partnership with the education charity Let’s Go Zero. We’re proud to already be supporting over 90 schools—but we know there’s so much more to be done.

Why We Need Your Support

The Sustainability Network is offered free to schools to ensure that tight budgets don’t stand in the way of meaningful progress. To continue this work and expand our impact, we are seeking forward-thinking partners who share our commitment to sustainability. This is where your organisation can make a difference.

Why Partner with Us?

By sponsoring the Sustainability Network for Schools, your organisation can:

Let’s Work Together

If your organisation is passionate about making a tangible impact on sustainability and education, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can ensure that more schools have access to the tools and training they need to create a brighter, greener future.

ACTION: Complete this Google form to express an interest or contact our CEO Helen to discuss how we can partner on this exciting initiative.

Let’s inspire the next generation to think big, act sustainably and create lasting change. Will you join us?

Making a lasting impact on the education sector, one leader at a time

At Gateway Alliance, we help schools secure outstanding leaders who align with their vision, drive success and make a lasting impact on education. Our bespoke recruitment service ensures the right match for your school’s unique needs, saving you time and providing expert guidance every step of the way.

Who are we?

For over a decade, Gateway Alliance has been a trusted partner in supporting schools across the UK. As a leading provider of innovative and inspiring professional development programmes and networks, we are passionate about helping schools thrive. Known for our friendly and approachable team, we are committed to delivering services tailored to meet the unique needs of schools. With 100% of participants rating our professional learning opportunities as good or excellent, we are proud of the impact we make.

Building on the combined experience of our expert team—spanning education, training and recruitment—we are excited to launch our *Leadership Recruitment Service*. This nationwide initiative is designed to help schools find exceptional leaders who inspire, lead and transform.

 Why choose Gateway Alliance Leadership Recruitment Service? 

Recruiting high-quality leaders with the right expertise, skills and values is crucial to a school’s success. At Gateway Alliance, we understand the unique challenges and nuances of leadership roles in education, and our service is designed to make the recruitment process seamless and effective.

Key Advantages:

 

Addressing the Challenges

Recruiting school leaders can be complex due to factors such as:

What does our service offer? 

Our Leadership Recruitment Service follows a structured, three-stage process designed to deliver exceptional outcomes:

Job Analysis & Role Definition:

Sourcing & Attracting Candidates:

Selection & Evaluation:

Let’s Work Together

Ready to find the perfect leader for your school? Our team is here to support you every step of the way.

 

To chat to one of our team about how we might be able to support your recruitment needs please click here

In our latest ‘In Conversation with…’ articles from our network leaders, we hear from Ellie Chettle Cully. Here she shares her thoughts, observations and tips on her passion for Modern Foreign Languages in Primary School.

 

What drives you to keep going and advocate MFL education?

I believe that learning language provides children with an opening to other cultures and turns their eyes out to the world beyond their own experience, without them even having to leave the classroom. I think there is a general perception, in the United Kingdom at least, that everybody in the world speaks English so there’s not much need to learn another language, but in fact 75% of the global population don’t speak English at all so giving children those skills as language learners at a young age is incredibly important and empowering.

What are some of the key issues you think we are currently facing in MFL education?

Within primary schools, I feel that languages can feel very low down on the list of priorities. Lessons are often very short, which doesn’t give teachers time to cover content in much detail, or blocked together over half a term and then not taught in the next half term, which obviously has implications for knowledge retention. We also see that the transition from Primary to Secondary still isn’t very well managed, with pupils usually starting from scratch in languages once they reach Year 7, even if they have had four years of language learning in Key Stage Two. This can negatively impact on pupil motivation.

In your experience, what are the challenges faced by teachers with MFL?

I think a lot of class teachers lack the confidence to teach languages, as they feel that their language skills as not as strong as they might like them to be. I know from experience that the timetable in Primary Schools is also so pressured that languages can often fall off the end. Both of these things mean that languages are often taught very little and by staff who find the process very challenging.

What would be your three Top Tips?

  1. All school leaders should get creative with their school timetables so that languages lessons happen every week, even if just for 30 minutes. Don’t forget that encouraging staff to do the register in the target language or asking children to change the date or weather into the target language daily are all opportunities for language learning. These don’t take much time but massively help to raise the profile of languages and make them a part of daily life in school.
  2. If you struggle with subject knowledge, try to adopt the role of facilitator within lessons. If your school has a good scheme that can support you, you have a powerful opportunity to work alongside pupils, modelling what a good learner does, showing them that we are all learning every day! Whilst this can feel a little strange at first, it takes away the pressure to ‘know it all’ and makes languages lessons more enjoyable.
  3. Reach out to your feeder schools and create networks to share information and best practise to ensure that pupils do not have to go back to the beginning in terms of their language learning when they move onto Secondary.

If you could encourage all Primary school teachers to consistently do ONE thing in MFL, what would it be?

Be enthusiastic! If you appear scared, lacking in subject knowledge or unenthused by any subject, pupils will pick up on it. Modelling enthusiasm to learn and interest in the culture/s of the country/countries where the target language is spoken will encourage your pupils to do the same. I know it’s easier said than done but it really makes all the difference to your class and will make the process of learning languages more fun for everybody.

 

Ellie led on our Gateway Alliance Curriculum Modern Foreign Languages event receiving fantastic feedback:

‘All concepts were well explained with practical classroom examples. I liked how the session was broken down into clear sections: phonics, grammar and assessment. I know my next steps really clearly.’

Having some suggested websites that might help to use alongside the scheme. Thought provoking questions such as what is the grammar, vocabulary progression like in the current scheme we use.’

‘Very helpful and Ellie is incredibly knowledgeable.’

 

Ellie Chettle Cully is a qualified primary teacher with a degree in French and Hispanic Studies, currently working as the French specialist teacher and Languages and International Dimension Lead at Hazel Community Primary School in Leicester. Ellie regularly speaks at national conferences and writes about the delivery of languages in primary schools and also provides a range of primary languages CPD for teachers and trainee teachers, both locally and nationally. She coordinates the Association for Language Learning Leicester Primary Hub. Ellie is passionate about raising the profile of languages through engaging language lessons, school partnerships, extracurricular clubs, designated curriculum days and trips.

You can follow Ellie on X (Twitter) @eccmfl

Ellie also blogs about all things language learning at www.myprimarylanguagesclassroom.com

If you would like to find out more about how you can benefit from the expertise such as Ellie’s expertise to support in school, please contact us on info@gatewayalliance.co.uk

Find out more about our other Curriculum CPD events this year at Gateway Alliance. If you’re interested in subscribing to our Curriculum CPD next academic year, please visit our Subscriptions page!

We are delighted to share with you the first edition of the Gateway Alliance 2024-25 Training & Development Brochure.

In our brochure we have lots of information about the courses, conferences and webinars that are coming up next year. We will publish further updates as the year progresses.

All of these courses and events are now available for you to book on our website. Please log-in into your school account before making any bookings to ensure you are not charged unnecessarily and can access event details on your personal dashboard.

CLICK HERE to view the brochure now.

As Transition Days and Induction Days approach, Juliet Stafford, Evidence Lead in Education, outlines a case study for effective transition from Year 4.

They say that ​a change is a good as a rest” and indeed change can be a very positive influence in our lives bringing with it many exciting new opportunities. However, change can also be unsettling and bring uncertainty and can be harder for some of us to deal with than others. All schools recognise this and proactively put in strategies to manage change for pupils particularly as children move from one school setting to another. Teachers are familiar with the transition from Year 6 to Year 7 and the activities that are planned to ease this movement for pupils – meetings with the Year 6 lead and SENDCO, induction days, information evening for parents as well as summer schools and holiday transition projects. At Etone College, as all schools do, we place huge importance on managing this pastoral transition of pupils into our care but have also looked at transition through a different lens– one that has taken a slightly more extended and broader look.

Several years ago, we started to reach out to our local primary feeder schools to engage them in curriculum projects. Initially, this was in subject areas where we had staffing capacity, namely MFL and PE. Not only did we offer activities to Year 6 pupils but also engaged with younger pupils in Years 4 and 5. We were delighted to host pupils for PE taster lessons where they were able to try out sports and use facilities not available in primary schools. We also delivered language lessons in German, French and Spanish as well as offering pupils a Modern Language Experience Day at our school. These projects provided specialist teachers and enhanced the KS2 curriculum whilst, at the same time, offered fun and exciting opportunities in a secondary school setting, helping to reduce some of the anxiety that pupils might have been feeling around the move up to ​big school”.

Creating memorable experiences

We were keen to make these secondary school visits really positive so took time to think about how we could make the experience a really memorable one. All pupils were greeted and given a warm welcome by a member of Leadership and often Etone pupil ambassadors. We planned for them a relevant and fun session with lots of opportunities for hands on learning often supported by older pupils. We also provided a drink and a snack as well as a certificate and a takeaway learning resource that pupils could use when they were back at school. We recognised that when pupils visited Etone just how important it was to provide warm, friendly and positive experience for them to help ease transition at a later date.

Our Primary Offer

Delighted by the success of our initial projects and the very positive evaluations that we received, we were keen to expand our offer to include a greater range of subjects and work with a larger number of primary schools. I have been really privileged during the development of these curriculum projects to work alongside primary colleagues who have given up their time to support our joint working. Out of these meetings and discussions with staff at Etone came lots of amazing ideas which has shaped our primary transition programme that we are very proud to be able to offer to our local primary schools.

 

Etone slide 1
Etone’s Primary School Offer 

Setting up transition projects such as these does, however, require effective organisation and it is crucial to work alongside primary colleagues to overcome any potential barriers. Where pupils were close enough to walk, transport was not an issue but where they were not, we would offer transport by picking pupils up in our minibus. Time is always a constraint and I was always very mindful of taking the time of my primary colleagues for face to face meetings. Whilst Covid did not bring us many benefits, one thing that I am thankful for was TEAMS which has really helped to facilitate meetings in the last couple of years. Other things to consider are ensuring that you have parent consent for visits, are aware of any medical considerations whilst pupils are on your site and have completed age appropriate risk assessments for all activities. Finally, there is the challenge of releasing staff to lead on these projects and I was very fortunate to be able to draw on both the expertise and goodwill of my colleagues at Etone to offer this provision. However, planning projects once Year 11 and 13 have left or using any staff under allocation can really help.

So what have the benefits been of these projects?

Firstly, they have allowed for curriculum continuity. We have been able to deliver some of the KS2 content in specialist equipped rooms with specialist staff and delight at the pupil awe and wonder displayed as the Elephant’s Toothpaste shot towards the ceiling of the Science Lab or they were greeted by our very own Miss Potter! We have also been able to bridge some of the most common gaps that we find when pupils arrive in Year 7. A great example of this is in Science where we have offered primary school based investigations to strengthen pupil skills in working scientifically – whether this be looking at seed dispersal or circuits – activities have planned to meet the needs of the KS2 curriculum whilst also better preparing our learners for KS3. Finally, as part of continuity, we started to think about how we could best use the time we have with Year 6 learners on Induction Day. Not only did we include a PSHE style lesson which focused on the move up to secondary school and how to cope with the emotions that pupils might be feeling but also planned induction day lessons that focused deliberately on bridging any curriculum gaps. For example, pupils may arrive at secondary school with different expertise in map skills so why not use the time on induction day to tackle this and plan activities to bridge the gap.

As well as the obvious curriculum benefits, these visits to Etone or visits from our staff to primary schools have really helped to dispel some of the myths around secondary school for primary pupils. Getting to meet staff, see inside the school, work alongside older pupils as well as have memorable experiences all builds confidence at an early stage for both pupils and parents alike.

Strengthening relationships and partnerships

As I have already mentioned, I have been delighted to be able to develop some very strong working relationships with primary colleagues. Not only have we supported primary schools but we have truly benefitted from their expertise. This venture really has been a partnership and we have been delighted to benefit from a whole host of opportunities as a result. We have welcomed primary colleagues to provide CPD for staff around the Year 6 curriculum so we can ensure that we provide appropriate challenge at the start of KS3. Schools have kindly hosted SCITT trainees for their primary placements, provided opportunities for our KS3 leads to observe Year 6 lessons as well as host planning meetings to review Y6 schemes of leaning to aid curriculum transition. This has provided invaluable professional development for Etone staff which has then positively impacted on our curriculum intent and implementation.

Part of forging these working relationships and as a follow on from our offer for pupils, Etone also hosted CPD for primary colleagues. This was usually at the request of primary colleagues and bespoke to each school but has again evolved into a package that we can offer for CPD. Whether this be providing training in MFL teaching and learning strategies or how to plan and execute a practical lesson in DT, this professional development has enhanced our primary joint working still further.

Reflecting on the journey

I feel very proud of what we have collectively achieved. Not only have we broadened transition to include Years 45 and 6 but we have done so in a way that supports both the academic and pastoral needs of pupils. We have developed really strong working partnerships cross phase by offering a bespoke package for primary schools to meet their needs whilst being lucky enough to benefit from their expertise. We truly believe that this is a pupil centred approach which aids transition on all fronts.

So, where are we heading next?

For us, we would like to be able to host subject based forums where we can invite several primary schools for curriculum conversations around transition to provide a really powerful opportunity to examine and align our curriculums still further. Also, whilst we inform parents of our events and celebrate them through our website and social media, we are considering ways to involve primary parents more fully in our events and activities. There is much that has been achieved but still places that we can go on this journey. I hope that this article has provided some insight into a slightly different approach to transition to ensure that it is as beneficial as possible for pupils and to ensure that a ​change really is as good as a rest”!

The EEF School Transition Tool can be found here

By Juliet Stafford (Etone College and Evidence Lead in Education-Staffordshire Research School)