• A special video message from our CEO
• Staff success story - Digital Champions
• A summary of our #TrustHeroes for the year
• Staff benefit information including  a new Specsavers offer
• Out of office messaging reminder + Safeguarding information

Staff success story - Digital Champions
As part of our education technology strategy, NCEAT has been partnered with Sandringham Research School - a national teaching school which aims to share best practice when it comes to high-quality teacher training. 

As part of this collaboration we have had our first cohort of staff working with Sandringham on their Digital Champions course. This week has been the final week of the course just in time for breaking up!  Staff have had an amazing opportunity to develop their digital skills here’s what two members of staff have said:

“I must admit to being a bit of a luddite when it comes to computers, so I was equally relieved and impressed by the Digital Champions training. It was delivered in a way that was engaging and easy to understand and has offered a number of ways in which new technologies can be brought into my classroom. More importantly, I can see this really improving the learning experience for our students at Duke's and having a positive impact going forward.”  

“Before doing the digital champions course I was fairly confident using technology to support students' learning but couldn’t see how it would work in every day face to face teaching.  Thanks to Digital Champions I now have a better understanding of how and why this will work in my classroom and lots of ideas.  The tools that I have been experimenting with have gone down really well with my students and every day I’m finding new ways to teach and learn with technology.”

All in all this has been a great success which we can hopefully offer to more members of staff in the future!

#TrustHeroes - You're all heroes!
As we rode into 2021, we thought that the worst of the pandemic was behind us, little did we know that we would once again face extensive school closures, more lockdowns and even more home learning! It really has been a year like no other.

Through it all, you have all been absolutely incredible. In a very short space of time, all you Teachers became digital experts, delivering lessons remotely while still teaching the children of key workers in-school; Teaching Assistants, you supported this process and did everything in your power to ensure that our pupils’ were supported; our cleaners put in extra hours here, there and everywhere to ensure the cleanliness of our schools; our kitchen staff put up food parcels for families who were shielding and our Central Services teams kept the show on the road for everyone from behind the scenes.

While we think that every single one of you has done an amazing job and for that, we really can't thank you enough, we did ask you to nominate your own #TrustHeroes and we're proud to say here they are...

‘Our school is now closed for the summer holidays. For any urgent enquiries, please refer to our website ncea.org.uk or leave a message and we will get back to you as soon as possible on our return on Tuesday 7th September.’

Example out of office wording for email accounts as follows:

'Thank you for your email, I am now out of office until Tuesday 7th September for the summer holidays. If you have an urgent query, you can contact us in the following ways:

• All free school meal voucher enquiries: data@ncea.org.uk
• Safeguarding queries/concerns: See website for contact details
• General queries: admin.mat@ncea.org.uk or via our official Facebook page.

These addresses will be checked intermittently and someone will respond to you ASAP. Otherwise, I will respond to your message on my return to work on 07/09/2021.'