Support to help academies stage awards event

Schools and academies in the region are being offered support to stage their own internal awards event. Organisers of the Kent Teacher of the Year Awards will provide copies of all nominations they receive related to a specific Academy or Trust which its Governors can then use to select winners for internal awards events. The move is aimed at encouraging schools to help promote the Kent Teacher of the Year Awards even harder in 2017, in the knowledge that this has a benefit within the organisation.

The first organisation to team up with the KM Charity Team in this way is Leigh Academies Trust which has six Secondary and six Primary schools in the county. All data capture for the awards will be handled by KM Charity Team through the teacher awards nomination form and then Leigh Academies Trust will handle its own awards celebration independently of the educational charity.

Simon Dolby from the KM Charity Team said: “Currently we always share nominations with management team at schools as we welcome supportive comments being associated with a nomination prior to the judging panel getting sight of entries. These trickle through to schools as nominations come in over January and February. What we are now intending to do is also send a spreadsheet of all nominations to make reviewing by the Trust’s internal judging panel easier, so this is a relatively easy way for us to support Trusts. The big benefit to both sides is that teacher of the year will receive more nominations and the collaborating Trusts have more nominations being assessed. This cannot guarantee more winners, but cannot hurt at all!”

“And of course it spares Trusts the task of having to admin large elements of the nomination data capture process, as we do this for you.”

Kent Teacher of the Year Awards provides recognition for school management, teaching staff, support staff, as well as volunteers within the school. Leigh Academies Trust has also requested the form be tweaked to allow nominations for students to assist their internal awards. Mr Dolby said: “This is an interesting idea and we will see the response for Leigh Academies Trust. If it is successful we may incorporate some student categories for the county’s school awards in 2018.”

Schools receive a toolkit or suggested narrative, logos and photos to help promote Kent Teacher of the Year Awards on their own website and social media. This can be adapted should the Trust be adopting the ‘two nominations for the price of one’ approach.

Schools, Trusts and Academies wishing to use the Kent Teacher of the Year Awards to support their own internal awards should contact Mr Dolby on sdolby@thekmgroup.co.uk or 07989 164752.

Nominations can be made at the Kent Teacher of the Year website

The generic teacher of the year promotional toolkit is available here

Contact Details

Simon Dolby
Telephone: 07989 164752
Email: sdolby@thekmgroup.co.uk