EfL in Multi Academy Trusts

Helping to create a Trust wide overview of what Inclusion looks and feels like providing easy to access evidence that school leaders, central teams, CEO’s and trustees can explore, challenge and celebrate.

“We’ve got quite a range of schools across the trust. What we have as a commonality is the questions – how do we respond? What do we need to structure to be able to meet the needs of that school? It’s the same question. Different answers, same question. And therefore, coming back to structuring the conversation across our schools, those conversations are the same, but the responses are vastly different.”

– David Sylvester, CEO The James Montgomery Academy Trust

The picture across Multi Academy Trusts

Every school in your trust looks different. Different sizes, different cohorts, different learner backgrounds, different SEND profiles, different levels of staff experience. And that’s before you get to the pressure the whole system is under – retention, recruitment, complexity of need, the SEND crisis, tightening budgets.

What’s the same across every school is the question…

How do we meet the needs of these children, in this school, with what we’ve got – and how do we know it’s working?

Trusts need an answer that holds up both at the classroom door, where a teacher needs a system that actually helps them, and at the board table, where trustees need to see the investment landing where they said it would.

“Bring it right back to the child. SEND doesn’t need to be over-complicated; as long as you put your children at the heart, and empower your team to have professional discussions and empower an enquiry approach. Give time and space to your staff to talk to each other, have those conversations and learn from each other through that enquiry.”

– Cheryl Gaughan, Strategic Lead for SEND and inclusion, JMAT

What EfL does for a Multi Academy Trust

EfL is the shared place where teachers, TAs, SENCOs, heads, trust-level leaders, families and external professionals evidence, understand and drive learning for every child – consistently across every school in your trust.

For trust leaders, EfL isn’t another platform to roll out – it’s how a trust vision for inclusion actually gets lived on the ground. It gives every school the same graduated approach, the same reflective inquiry, and the same evidence base. So the conversation about a child in one school reads the same way as the conversation about a child in another, and stands up all the way to the board table.

In one place, EfL:

Gives every school in the trust the same evidence base for the graduated approach – a shared way of seeing, evidencing and acting on each child’s learning.

Creates a common language for SEND and inclusion across the trust – heads, SENCOs, class teachers, trust central team and trustees all working from the same picture.

Lets you target and scale sensibly – start where the need and readiness are, build from those first conversations outwards, and grow legacy and capacity that others in the trust can learn from.

Underpins trust-wide CPD with what your schools actually need – not the most popular buzzword of the term.

Makes cross-school collaboration real – school improvement partners, SEND leads and SENCOs walking into different schools with the same lens.

Strengthens board-level oversight – trustees see how SEND investment lands, with actual evidence, not just anecdote.

Tracks the impact metrics that matter to a trust board – engagement, attendance, suspensions, exclusions, financial strength, academic achievement – all moving in the right direction, at the same time.

Showcase the unique learning journeys of all of your SEND learners

The Evidence for Learning app supports an inquiry-based approach to education and provision, that allows ALL stakeholders in a child, young person or adult’s learning and development to quickly and easily gather photo and video evidence, linked to the individual’s learning goals as well as any key skills frameworks. Observations can be annotated.

1. Build a clear picture and narrative of learning

Easily and quickly combine rich photos/videos with a clear and comprehensive narrative… threading through it all of the appropriate elements in a pupil’s learning. Add links, tags and text notes to your observations, show how your curriculum, pedagogy and support inputs directly align with EHCPs, ISPs, and individualised learning/support plans. Demonstrate the breadth, depth and impact of your curriculum to any stakeholders as well as Ofsted inspectors.

2. Use that picture to be more effective in real-time

As the picture and narrative of learning develops, use it in real time to support professional conversations about learning, as well as key processes such as assessment, planning and looking at how you refine and adapt your practice and curriculum over time. It can also be easily used to create opportunities for authentic CPD across your school and improve how you engage, work with and support families.

3. Improve collaboration (whole team around the child)

Share understanding and planning about each learner across the entire team including the multi disciplinary team and families - giving all stakeholders a voice (especially the learner). Enabling genuine authentic co-production and review, allowing everyone to make better-informed contributions to every learner’s journey and supporting a richer and deeper educational discourse.

4. Raise aspiration and build more inclusive practice

Use the picture of learning to raise expectations for all learners - celebrating every win and building a culture where progress is always visible and valued. As evidence accumulates, it becomes a powerful tool for workforce development: staff see what works, refine their practice in real time, and grow their understanding of how to support every child effectively. Turn your platform into a living CPD resource that raises aspiration across the team and ensures inclusive, effective practice is embedded across the setting.

EfL as a key driver of consistency across the trust

Consistency across a trust isn’t uniformity. Every school still has its own vision, its own context, its own cohort. What EfL gives you is the underpinning system that lets those differences sit alongside each other without the trust losing coherence.

The reflective inquiry cycle at the heart of EfL is what makes the difference. It’s not a scheme. It’s not a curriculum. It’s how staff, SENCOs, heads and trust-level leaders sit around the same evidence for the same child, ask the same kinds of questions, and know what to do next – whether the school is a large primary with high SEND and high mobility, or a smaller school with a different profile entirely.

Consistency across the trust is so desperately needed. To implement conversations between staff in different schools, you need a common language, a common structure, a common system.
Consistency of a system such as EfL enabled us to have those fairly regular but intensive conversations such as, ‘This is what we’re trying to do – let’s have a look at how it’s worked’ , and ‘what has the impact been for this particular child, or this group of children?'”

– David Sylvester, CEO, The James Montgomery Academy Trust

EfL LearningShared Community

When your Multi Academy Trust invests in EfL, your schools join the EfL LearningShared community – a rapidly growing nationwide and international network of specialist leaders and practitioners.

In 2025/26, our events brought together over 2,519 leaders and practitioners for conferences, regional networking and development days, Bootcamps and themed virtual events. Alongside our advisory board, our partnership with EQUALS, and our ongoing engagement with the DfE SEND & AP Directorate and Ofsted, this is where the sector is thinking together about SEND reform, the ‘Every Child Achieving and Thriving’ agenda, and what genuinely inclusive and aspirational provision looks like in practice.

Previous speakers have included…

In the words of Schools

"In my role as curriculum lead, EfL has been integral to everything we do - from our curriculum adaption to our pathways for children in mainstream and SEND. It's given direction and flow to our teaching, helped teachers achieve targets, and been incredible for parents in bridging home learning and curriculum learning in school."

Tollgate Primary School

"The staff have completely embraced this. They tell me they know the children better than they've ever known them before. It's easy to get your baseline, easy to see at a glance where children have come from and what they need to do next. It's wonderful for showcasing great professional practice."

Red Oaks Primary School

"We started with EfL on a small scale so we could see its functionality and workability, and understand how it impacted our workload. We wanted to make sure our children felt comfortable and wanted to work alongside staff to help them understand the meaning and purpose."

Belmont School

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