“If people could really understand engagement, where it comes from and what drives it,
I think we would see significant improvements in areas we traditionally measure, such as attendance, persistent absence and outcomes.”

Jess Easton is Director at The Engagement Platform (TEP), where she leads the insights work, supporting Schools, Trusts and Partners to understand how engagement shapes outcomes for pupils, employees and families.
 
Previously, as Director of CPD, Jess worked with hundreds of schools nationally and internationally to design and deliver professional development that makes a lasting impact in classrooms.
 
SWIFT member schools have the opportunity to work with TEP as an engagement monitoring platform and partnership, including training and ongoing support. Following the publication last week of new research on reading age and perceived control, we spoke to Jess to learn more about her role and the work of TEP. 

1. What personal skills and experience do you bring to your role as Director at The Engagement Platform (TEP)?
I am most proud of having spent over 15 years in education, beginning my career as a Secondary Teacher of Mathematics in 2010 and investing a great deal of time in developing my craft. I progressed through leadership roles, including Head of Department and School Improvement Lead across a trust, before becoming part of the group that founded White Rose Education.
 
In my role as Director of CPD, I found it incredibly empowering to support Schools, Trusts and teachers to deepen their pedagogical knowledge of Mathematics. However, one of the most important lessons I learned was that improving practice in classrooms only goes so far if the wider culture is not moving in the same direction.
 
Often, the limiting factors were not about pedagogy itself, but about culture, buy-in and shared direction across the organisation. That experience is what ultimately led me to TEP, where the focus is on understanding culture, engagement and the conditions that enable improvement to stick.
 
Both TEP and White Rose are deeply mission-led organisations, and that has stayed with me throughout my career. It is genuinely empowering to work with people who are committed to improving education for everyone.

2. What do you find to be most rewarding about working for TEP?
One of the things I have always enjoyed most is building networks and communities. TEP is about connecting people and amplifying the work of those doing incredible things in education.
 
The partnerships we build with schools and trusts, and the sense of community that develops through that work, is hugely rewarding. Hearing the stories of how organisations are using engagement insight to improve culture, buy-in, attendance and outcomes is what really drives us forward.
 
3. With TEP’s emphasis on rigorous research and trustworthy data, can you share an example of which
It might be helpful to start by explaining how we develop our question sets. Our Directors of Research, including Professor John Jerrim from UCL and the ImpactEd Group, draw directly on established research and psychometrically test each question after each of our census windows to ensure it is valid, reliable and meaningful to the sector. We are very deliberate about not asking questions that do not serve a clear purpose.
 
Over time, we refine and evolve these questions. For example, issues around safety have been explored in more depth recently because of how that data was behaving and because of its growing importance across the education sector. Seeing the question set respond to sector needs is incredibly powerful.
 
A good example of the impact of this approach comes from a Trust that joined TEP after running internal surveys using tools such as Google Forms. While those surveys were cost-effective, they did not allow leaders to understand how their results compared to the wider national picture.
 
The Trust believed they had a wellbeing and workload issue, as these scores appeared low in their internal survey. When they engaged with TEP, they discovered that while wellbeing and workload scores were lower relative to other internal drivers, they were actually above the national benchmark. Leadership and line management, however, were below benchmark, despite leaders believing this was a strength.
 
By benchmarking nationally and then drilling into contextualised data, the Trust realised that Middle Leaders in particular were struggling with buy-in to strategy. This prompted a shift in focus towards leadership culture and CPD, rather than continuing to invest heavily in wellbeing initiatives that were already performing well.
 
Uncovering and challenging those assumptions enabled the trust to target its resources more effectively and take a more strategic approach to cultural improvement.
 
4. How is working with Schools and Trusts through SWIFT’s offer benefiting your work at TEP?
We are really pleased to be working with SWIFT in partnership. It enables Schools and Trusts to understand not only the national picture, but also what is happening regionally.

In the South West, for example, TEP supports organisations to see where things are going well compared to national benchmarks and where there may be opportunities for improvement. That combination of reflection, challenge and context is incredibly powerful for leaders.
The region is also benefiting from growing momentum around engagement work in rural and coastal areas, where funding can be limited and insight is particularly valuable in targeting effort and resources effectively.

5. What is your greatest hope for improving engagement in schools and classrooms?
As a relatively young organisation founded post-COVID, my greatest hope for TEP is that engagement becomes better understood across the sector.

We break engagement down into emotional, cognitive and behavioural drivers, from wellbeing, inclusion and workload, to how people think about school and how they act within it. When leaders truly understand these drivers and where they are coming from, engagement becomes a powerful lever for improvement.

If we can help Schools and Trusts get to grips with engagement in this way, I believe we will see significant improvements in the outcomes we traditionally measure, such as attendance, persistent absence and attainment. Ultimately, my ambition is for engagement to be recognised as central to improving education across the sector.

We thank Jess for sharing her insights into engagement and the work of TEP.

Interview by Jude Baylis, SWIFT Executive Assistant

We are pleased to bring you the next EVENTS issue with a featured article, highlighted programmes, courses and events from our delivery partners to support your professional development and enhance the work of your school.

Working Smarter Not Harder: Embracing AI with Mr P ICT (3 Sessions)
The course, led by Lee Parkinson (Mr P), will be packed full of ideas for how to enhance teaching and learning using technology with a focus on emerging AI technology. Find out more and book here
 
Highlighted Courses/Support:

• SWIFT Spring Leadership Forum
• TA Training: New to the role of Teaching Assistant
• Leadership Skills Training Day
• Fully Funded Opportunities from The MTPT Project
• Professional Communities 
• Primary and Secondary Subject Briefing
• EYFS & Primary Courses
• Secondary & Sixth Form Courses
• Other events for your diary
• Improving Oral Language Programme with Devon Research School

Happy new year!
We are pleased to start the year with good intentions and bring you the first UPDATE of 2026.

Whether or not you are a New Year's Resolutions afficionado, Executive Director Martin Smith shares his thinking and what he might say to his younger self in his past role as a Headteacher:

"Commit to being kind to yourself…” 
For example, remind yourself that you turn up each day committed to being the best leader you can be. 
Celebrate and cherish the small and everyday things: a pupil turning a corner as a learner, a parental act of kindness, an Early Career Teacher completing their first term..." 

Devon Research School (DRS) considers three things that schools can start to do about oral language ahead of the response from the Department for Education's to the Curriculum and Assessment review. Also look out for the DRS's Improving Oracy in Schools programme. Book here 

Keen to keeping you safe, with the increase in cyber-attacks to email accounts, our sponsor SchoolPro TLC share their top tips to be super vigilant and what to do if you suspect your staff email account is compromised. Contact them for a FREE consultation to explore how they could support you. Contact here

Nick Wakeling, Director of the Colyton Foundation is our January interviewee and may you enjoy finding out more about his work and vision for this important charity established to ensure that, for Young People in the South West, background is no barrier to flourishing at school, attaining highly and progressing to higher education.

We are pleased to work with the The MaternityPaternity Project (MTPT) to support returning parents to teaching after parental leave. You can read about last year's engagement in their recently published report and sign-up for their training and workshops this year (see page 2). 

As part of our ongoing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) work, the SWIFT Central Teams recently boosted their awareness with training from the Belonging Effect on Cultivating a Culture of Belonging for All. You can read some of the highlights in this issue. 
 
With Census Day on the horizon on Thursday 15 January 2026, our sponsor Educatering is standing by to assist schools across the South West gearing up to ensure pupils enjoy their school lunch and help maximise vital funding allocations. This is a statutory data collection that provides the Department for Education and Local Authorities with key information on pupil numbers, free school meal eligibility and school dinner uptake, all of which drive decisions about school funding for the coming year. It is particularly important for primary schools. Contact here

Understanding January can bring fresh planning and a clearer idea of the support your school and nursery might need, you can check in with our sponsor Exeter Supply Partnership if you are exploring supply options for the term ahead. Contact here

Remember to book for the CODE Maths Hub Conference on Thursday 28 February 2026 with keynotes, Lee Elliot Major, Professor of Social Mobility at the University of Exeter and Sue Johnston-Wilder, Associate Professor at the Centre for Education Studies at the University of Warwick. Book here

We hope like us, you are looking forward to the year ahead and we are excited about supporting you with our programme delivery and professional development offer.

Wishing you a productive end to the first week back!  

“I hope the sense of a regional movement to support under-resourced pupils will have gathered further momentum, and that the Colyton Foundation will have become a ‘go-to’ hub for all schools and other organisations looking to support higher attainers & HE progression within the region.”

Nick Wakeling is Director of Studies at Colyton Grammar School, and Director of the Colyton Foundation, a charity established to ensure that, for Young People in the South West, background is no barrier to flourishing at school, attaining highly and progressing to higher education. 
 
We were pleased to interview Nick to find out more about his work for the Colyton Foundation. 

1. How does your position as Director of the Colyton Foundation draw on your qualities and aptitudes?
The Colyton Foundation exists as a charity to support schools and pupils in the South West to make sure that students - particularly those from under-resourced backgrounds - are able to attain highly and access higher education. My background as a teacher with 15 years’ experience in different schools, has been very helpful in terms of understanding schools as institutions.  The way schools work, the challenges that teachers and school leaders must deal with every day and in particular, working at Colyton Grammar School for eight years, I have gained an understanding of what academically able students need to thrive and succeed.
 
This experience is combined with another huge influence on me personally from taking part in the SW100 Programme run by the Reach Foundation. In conjunction with lots of other schools and Trusts in the South West this provided me with fantastic opportunities to visit incredible schools and to hear from national experts who are doing great things to supporting disadvantaged and under-resourced students to flourish. Drawing on this experience and national expertise in visiting some inspiring schools has played a big part in the development of the Colyton Foundation.

However, what is slightly different about my role with the Colyton Foundation from my previous experience in schools is leading a charity that has grown from nothing. It feels more entrepreneurial in some ways compared to my first experiences as a teacher in terms of forging partnerships, bringing together different organisations, and scaling up an idea to something that is having an impact on the ground, and drawing on a different creative skill set. It has been fun, but also challenging, because there is no safety net of existing systems and institutions to draw upon.

As for my qualities, I would say perseverance and determination, and the ability to have a long-term vision and to put together into a strategic plan in order to get to where we wish to be.
 
2. What have you found to be the most personally rewarding in your role to date?
Following on from question 1 above, it has been most personally rewarding to take something from an idea to a reality. We are now at the point where the programmes are designed are now fully up and running.
 
We have yet to experience this moment, but we will shortly reach a hugely significant milestone when our cohort of 130 Year 7 pupils from 32 different schools across the South West physically come together for the two employer visits organised later this month to Leonardo Helicopters and Spaceport Cornwall. This will be a very special moment because the programme is all about bringing together those students and creating that sense of shared belief and a cohort identity, connecting the students and schools. Previously, we brought the cohort together remotely at the launch event back in October. It was wonderful to see all the students there in their schools waving to each other, supported by their parents, teachers and senior leaders. This brought home that project was up and running. It was real and reaching the students that we want to help access to opportunity. When we are together in person, I imagine it will be even more powerful.
 
Another particularly striking moment was our study visit for senior leaders in November to the University of Cambridge and two high performing schools in London. It was very rewarding to spend time with leaders from schools across the South West who so obviously share a commitment to supporting their students to achieve as highly as possible. It was hugely affirming to spend time in their company and hearing their reflections, for example when visiting Cambridge, commenting how the students were both hugely impressive, and on another level, no different from students in their schools in the South West, who can absolutely achieve the same things.
 
3. What insights are you gaining from working with various partners?
A huge amount!
Our model is fundamentally collaborative: it’s about bringing together organisations with shared goals to pool expertise and resources.  Our work can be so much powerful when we pull together.
 
Our partner universities, for example, are very experienced in widening participation and how to support students at the application stage of the university application process, and this advice and guidance have been hugely valuable.
 
Our partner schools have a highly nuanced understanding of the South West context and specific challenges facing their communities – often linked to rural and coastal isolation. Bringing together these first-hand lived experiences with the university perspective has been very powerful.

Finally, working with SWIFT has been incredibly helpful (and I am not only saying that because I am the January interviewee!). The experience and expertise of all the wonderful SWIFT colleagues in designing programmes at scale for teacher professional development has been instrumental as we have started to get our programmes up and running.

4. What would you wish “a regional centre of excellence for high attainment” to look like?
Our vision is for the South West of England to be seen in the same way as the areas of London – the Borough of Newham is one particularly striking example – which have transformed school outcomes, HE progression and other opportunities for under-resourced young people over the last 10 to 15 years.
 
The context in the South West is very different, with different challenges, but there is no reason that, through the collective effort of schools, universities and the Third Sector, we can’t develop a similarly transformational model. On the one hand, it is about improving school outcomes and progression rates. But it is also about creating that powerful network of organisations and schools with a shared commitment to ensuring all young people from the region can access opportunity.
 
Sadly, there are not many rural areas where these efforts have been successful, and that is why our partnership work at the Colyton Foundation is all the more important and exciting. We have interest from the Department of Education from HE partners looking at our work as a potential model to be replicated and repeated in other areas with similar demographic contexts. I am hopeful the South West can become a model and inspiration for other areas of the country facing similar challenges can help young people to flourish.
 
5. What are your top three aspirations for the Foundation over the next five years?
In five years’ time, “Your Future Story” will have been running for five years, and will have supported 500+ children. Our pathfinder cohort, who have started the programme this year, they will have taken their GCSEs and we will look forward to seeing the impact of the programme on their outcomes, and in our partner schools more widely.
 
I hope the sense of a regional movement to support under-resourced pupils will have gathered further momentum, and that the Colyton Foundation will have become a ‘go-to’ hub for all schools and other organisations looking to support higher attainers and HE progression within the region.

Our work with “Your Future Story” work, which starts support at Year 7 and runs throughout secondary school will, I hope, have fully connected with our partnerships with Atom Learning offering attainment support to all FSM & PP pupils in primary schools, and the support we offer Sixth Forms in the region with applications to the most competitive university courses, to see outcomes for young people in the region improve in all these areas.
 
In other words, there is lots of look forward to over the next five years and every moment will count!
 
We thank Nick for sharing his passion and vision for the Colyton Foundation.
Interview by Jude Baylis, SWIFT Executive Assistant