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Download our upcoming Listening & Acting Best-Practice Guide, built on real practice from insights shared by 14 school leaders across 11 trusts (winners of Edurio’s National Listening & Acting Awards), covering staff, pupil, and parent voice.
This guide will show you:
- How leading schools build a listening culture
- Practical examples of responding to staff, pupil and parent feedback
- Real improvements driven by feedback
- Leadership behaviours that make stakeholders feel heard
- Communication strategies that build long-term trust
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Complete the short form to get your digital copy when it launches in the Spring Term.
Contributing trusts include
Accord Multi Academy Trust
Avanti Schools Trust
Diocese of Salisbury Academy Trust
Embrace Multi Academy Trust
GLF Schools
Maiden Erlegh Trust
South East Essex Academy Trust
The Co-operative Academies Trust
The Priory Federation of Academies Trust
The Ted Wragg Multi Academy Trust
Trinity Multi-Academy Trust
Inside the guide, you will see three stakeholder groups but one coherent philosophy.
Listening to Staff
How the best schools create cultures where staff feel safe, heard, and empowered to drive change.
- Building psychological safety and open-door cultures
- Communicating priorities and closing feedback loops
- “You said, we did” – making action visible
- Key leadership behaviours: trust, empathy, vulnerability
- Embedding regular listening structures that stick
Listening to Pupils
From school parliaments to suggestion boxes and how schools give pupils genuine agency and voice.
- Formal structures: parliaments, councils, ambassador roles
- Ensuring SEND and disadvantaged pupils are heard
- Teaching pupils about democracy and decision-making
- Sharing back in age-appropriate ways
- Turning pupil ideas into real, visible improvements
Listening to Parents
Building genuine home-school partnerships through accessibility, responsiveness, and dignity.
- Multi-channel approaches: apps, gate conversations, events
- Poverty-proofing decisions and removing stigma
- Training staff for difficult conversations
- Feeding back clearly: newsletters, Dojo, face-to-face
- Balancing openness with professional boundaries
Real words from leaders who live this every day
Listening to staff starts with care. If that is truly at the heart of what you believe, then listening is not an initiative. It is a daily habit.
We built the cost of trips into our budget. Every child receives a Chromebook on arrival. You cannot tell who is in receipt of free school meals and who is not. That dignity matters.
Eight things this guide will change in your practice
- Move beyond the termly survey – How to embed listening as a daily leadership behaviour, not a one-off data exercise.
- Master the “You said, we did” loop – Practical templates and language for closing the feedback loop with all stakeholders.
- Create genuine psychological safety – Leadership behaviours, vulnerability, compassion, accessibility that unlock honest feedback.
- Hear the voices that stay quiet – How top schools ensure SEND pupils, pupil premium families and less confident parents are genuinely heard.
- Turn pupil feedback into civic education – How schools use parliaments and councils to teach democracy through real decision-making.
- Prioritise what to act on and when – Frameworks for urgency, quick wins, and communicating honestly when change takes time.
- Train your team for difficult conversations – Scripts, CPD models and communication policies that protect staff and parents alike.
- Build long-term stakeholder trust – The relational habits that transform one-off feedback into a flourishing school community.
Meet the award-winning contributors
14 leaders from 11 trusts, selected from 140+ school networks on the strength of their listening and acting scores.
John Sisman, Headteacher at Ling Moor Primary Academy – The Priory Federation of Academies Trust – Listening and Acting Award – Staff Feedback
Martin Brook at Lipson Co-operative Academy – The Ted Wragg Multi Academy Trust – Listening and Acting Award – Staff Feedback
Georgina Reid, Headteacher at Marine Academy Plymouth – Primary & Nursery – The Ted Wragg Multi Academy Trust – Listening and Acting Award – Staff Feedback and Pupil Feedback
Jennifer Brimming, Principal at Marine Academy Secondary – The Ted Wragg Multi Academy Trust – Listening and Acting Award – Staff Feedback
Tonya Brook, Headteacher at The Westborough School – South East Essex Academy Trust – Listening and Acting Award – Staff Feedback
Lalita Janssens Joshi, Principal at Avanti House Primary School – Avanti Schools Trust – Listening and Acting Award – Pupil Feedback
Gemma Wills, Headteacher at Exwick Heights Primary School – The Ted Wragg Multi Academy Trust – Listening and Acting Award – Pupil Feedback
Andy Hartley, Headteacher at River Academy – Maiden Erlegh Trust – Listening and Acting Award – Pupil Feedback
Michael Fitzsimons, Principal at Trinity Sixth Form Academy – Trinity Multi-Academy Trust – Listening and Acting Award – Pupil Feedback
Kirsty Rogers at Aureus School – GLF Schools – Listening and Acting Award – Parent Feedback
Elizabeth Clewlow, Headteacher at Co-op Academy Florence MacWilliams – The Co-operative Academies Trust – Listening and Acting Award – Parent Feedback
Ellen Thompson, Headteacher at Manorfield Primary School – Embrace Multi Academy Trust – Listening and Acting Award – Parent Feedback
Oliver Martindale, Executive Headteacher at St. Peter’s CE Primary Academy – Diocese of Salisbury Academy Trust – Listening and Acting Award – Parent Feedback
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