The Primary First Trust
A strategic approach for the Trust
The Primary First Trust has ten schools across Bexley, Gravesham and Medway. They celebrate and nurture the diversity and distinctiveness of their partner schools. Their three core values of adventure, creativity and excellence underpin every decision they make and are at the heart of everything they do.
In April 2022, the former SENCO at Westcourt Primary, found they were struggling to accurately track and monitor their children with SEND. Claire contacted iTRACK Education (formerly LCP) to discuss in more detail the iASEND programme and how it could benefit both Westcourt, and all the schools within the Trust.
iASEND was initially trialled by a few members of the Trust who valued the in-depth view on pupil’s progress and the ability to track small steps of progress. They felt iASEND offered a lot more than the service they were already using and three of the schools within the Trust signed up to the iASEND programme.
In July 2022, John Bryant, Curriculum and Assessment Director for the Trust reached out to iTRACK Education to discuss their need for a system that could track all pupils’ progress, including SEND. We demonstrated what we could offer all the schools within the trust. Having had negative experiences previously, it was important to John that the system was right for all schools, so it was decided one of the schools, Lessness Heath, would trial iTRACK for a year. John says: “As soon as I made contact with the team at iTRACK I knew it was going to be a positive experience as the team listened and worked hard to accommodate a number of requests and our bespoke needs. Nothing was ever too much trouble and we all built strong relationships with the team from day 1. iTRACK was clearly what we needed to ensure that assessment could be tracked in each school, as well as across the Trust, to support teaching and learning. Since joining we have seen first-hand the outstanding support and desire to provide exceptional customer service in all areas.”
During their full trial of iTRACK, the leadership at Lessness Heath worked closely with Alice Smith (Education Consultant at iTRACK Education), tweaking and adapting the system to ensure it fit the needs of the school, for both teaching staff and leadership. They were so impressed the Trust decided to go ahead with iTRACK, iASEND and Strategic across all schools, in April 2023.
Since joining, iTRACK Education have worked with all schools on an individual basis to ensure their own needs are included, whilst ensuring the Trust’s standards of expectation are still met. We regularly hold Trust meetings and 1:1 meetings with individual schools as and when needed, offering training for governors and support across all aspects of the system.
Viv Hart, Deputy Headteacher at Westcourt says: “The use of iTrack has transformed assessment in our school. The system is easy for staff to use and also effective for leaders to clearly and easily look at many different types of outcomes. The ability to filter out specific groups and children , especially that fall into more than one category, has been a key tool in identifying where further support is needed and what gaps across the whole school are. Furthermore, being able to assess children out of their year group band has allowed us to demonstrate small steps of progress being made even though the children are below age-related expectations.
Vicki has been nothing short of wonderful. From initial meetings, explaining the system and responding to any questions (however silly they may seem) in such a prompt manner is fantastic. Having one point of contact to communicate with is vital as it allows consistency and helps me as assessment lead continue to develop my understanding of the system.”
