The Bristol Primary Training and Support Alliance is a hub for sharing good practice across the city
The Bristol Primary Training and Support Alliance was originally set up as a citywide Teaching School Alliance by three schools who were awarded Teaching School status by the DfE: Ashley Down Primary School (awarded Teaching School status in 2013); Whitehall Primary and Bridge Farm Primary (awarded Teaching School status jointly in 2014) . Each are outstanding schools who work together with a smal
l team of teaching school colleagues to broker support for schools through a range of networking, training and development opportunities and utilising our best practitioners from across Bristol. We have Local Specialist Leaders (LSLs) and Local Headteacher Leaders (LLEs) from primary and special schools across the city who work together to support the city’s schools and to run training and development programmes for teachers, school leaders and support staff. When teaching schools across the country changed at the end of July 2021, the former Bristol Primary Teaching School Alliance became the Bristol Primary Training and Support Alliance, to enable our work to continue, to support the work of the Five Counties Teaching School Hubs and to continue to support schools and their staff. The Bristol Primary Training and Support Alliance is a hub for schools who wish to work together, either on a regular basis or on single pieces of work and provides a cohesive and single point of contact for a high quality school led system of support for our city. We work alongside the Bristol Local Authority and the Primary Heads’ Association of Bristol (PHAB) to ensure we are able to respond to local and national priorities quickly and effectively. We also work together with other organisations, such as the new Five Counties Teaching School Hubs and curriculum hubs to develop a robust and joined up approach to school support and training. The Bristol Primary Training and Support Alliance provides a vehicle for the promotion and development of what is currently working well and could be shared more widely, as well as a forum for new collaborations to form and develop. There are also many schools who have excellent practice to share but who do not have a city wide forum to promote their practice and many schools with similar priorities and challenges who do not have colleagues to problem solve and join with. We welcome other interested schools to be partners in our alliance to ensure a strong and cohesive message and a breadth of support. Our main aims are:
To support, through partnership and collaboration…co-ordinating and providing high-quality school-led initial teacher training (ITT);
To provide high-quality school-to-school support to spread excellent practice, particularly to schools that need it most;
To provide evidence-based training, professional and leadership development for teachers and leaders across their network.
