LEO Academy Trust, Sutton and partner LGfL-The National Grid for Learning win prestigious BETT 2021 Award

Loud cheers rang out at the BETT Awards 2021 last week when LEO Academy Trust and edtech partner, charity LGfL-The National Grid for Learning, scooped the Best School Collaboration Award for their co-development of educational resources for ReadingZone Live and the transformative impact it has had on standards of reading, writing and comprehension across the Trust’s 7 primary schools and 3500 pupils. The BETT Awards celebrate the inspiring creativity and innovation that can be found throughout technology for education and form an integral part of BETT each year, the world’s leading showcase of education technology solutions.

ReadingZone Live which played a key role in raising standards at LEO Academy, now rated Good in Leadership and Management by Ofsted, brings regular interviews and live video conferences with some of the best contemporary children’s authors to London schools. Antony Horowitz, Henry Winkler, Sophie McKenzie, Michael Morpurgo, Julian Clary, Sally Nichols and Lauren Child are among the authors who have already joined the ReadingZone Live programme, helping to inspire young people to explore new authors and genres and to develop their own creative writing.

Nadine Williamson, Director of English at LEO Academy Trust – with the support of Christopher Perrott, Vice Principal at Cheam Common Junior and Isabella Adams, English Leader at Cheam Park Farm Primary –  carefully developed a range of exciting supplementary activities to accompany each book to help further enhance children’s literacy, fluency and comprehension. All resources were piloted and trialled by staff and pupils at Cheam Common Junior. The end result was the creation of a reading resource which engages students with their learning, reduces workload for teachers and has developed new skills and confidence in the staff who curated the content. Staff at a single school or trust would simply not have had the opportunity to work with so many authors or the skill to develop such an interactive resource without the unique collaboration that has developed with LGfL.

BETT Award Judges congratulated LEO Academy and LGfL for their ‘outstanding, detailed and pedagogy-led project, their excellent results and the potential of their resources for wider impact and scalability.’ They went on to say, “Its focus on reading and comprehension feeds into writing skills, and with the additional support for speaking and listening benefits all learners. The materials and scheme are responsive to students, and properly address Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and English as an Additional Language (EAL).  Content is diverse and inclusive to inspire all children.”  They were particularly impressed by the meaningful collaboration between LGfL and the Trust, with the Trust improvement resulting from this project demonstrating clearly how such partnerships can promote a culture of discovery and aspiration among teachers.

ReadingZone Live is the title of the partnership between LGfL and ReadingZone.com and is a website managed by LGfL that features all the partnership activity including the 50 authors from live events and interviews and also the teacher support material that LEO Trust created.

Please click here to view a new video about the collaborative work that LGfL has undertaken with LEO Academy Trust on ReadingZone Live.

Please click here to view a new LGfL case study about the broader collaborative work that LGfL has undertaken with LEO Academy Trust.