ALET Education Trust & PAGS

At a glance

6 schools

All operating on a single PAGS platform

1 platform

Replacing multiple inconsistent SEND systems across the trust

Trust-level

Dashboard, leadership sees provision and progress across all schools in real time

Ed:gen

MIS integration, eliminates duplicate data entry across systems

Universal profiling

Long-term roadmap: a learner profile for every student, not just those on the SEND register

The challenge

Activate Learning Education Trust has a clear philosophy: every learner, regardless of starting point, should thrive. Putting that into practice across six schools, each with its own history, systems and approach to SEND, was harder than the philosophy suggests.

When Linda Stevens joined as Director for SEND and Safeguarding, ALET's schools were coming from different starting points. Each had developed its own approach to identifying needs, recording interventions and monitoring progress. The result: no consistent visibility, no shared best practice, no easy way to make trust-wide decisions about resource allocation.

We needed something that tells us what we need to do, not just what we're already doing. A lot of systems we looked at were very good at us being able to say we are doing X and Y to support a student. They didn't actually give us the initial profile. That was the bit that was missing.Linda Stevens, Trust Director for SEND and Safeguarding

How ALET found PAGS

ALET's schools had been moving onto Ed:gen as their MIS. During that onboarding process, Linda saw a demonstration of PAGS. It stayed in her mind. Over the following months, as she audited the trust's SEND provision, PAGS kept coming back as a solution, not just for SEND outcomes, but for cost efficiency, integration, and the trust-wide visibility leadership needed.

Integration was key because we needed a system where we could share information across from PAGS to Ed:gen. Functionality was very important, it needed to be something quite straightforward and simple. And it needed to help us identify what we needed to be doing, rather than just recording what we're already doing.Linda Stevens

What changed

The most significant shift was visibility. For the first time, ALET's leadership team could log in and see what was happening across all six schools, not as a set of separate reports, but as a single real-time picture.

We liked the fact that it has a trust-level analysis. As a trust, we can log into all the schools and see exactly what's happening.Linda Stevens

Inside individual schools, the change was about who held the information. Before PAGS, learner knowledge lived inside the SEND department. After PAGS, it was accessible to teachers, and that changed how those teachers worked.

The knowledge about the students has now come out of the SENDCo. Teachers can use the tools day-to-day. We are seeing more collaboration and less siloed working.Linda Stevens

The long-term vision

ALET's ambition extends well beyond getting SEND provision onto a consistent platform. The long-term roadmap is to move PAGS out of the SEND department entirely, with a learner profile for every student, not just those on the SEND register.

Ideally, we wouldn't have a central label, we would just have a continuum of student need. That's where we want to get to. Everybody is somewhere on that continuum and needs either a little bit of help or a lot more help.

Linda Stevens · Trust Director for SEND and Safeguarding, ALET Education Trust

6 schools across Berkshire, outer London and Oxfordshire

Five things ALET learned about choosing a student support system

Start with identification, not recording

Many systems are good at capturing what you're already doing. The more valuable thing is a platform that helps you understand what you should be doing.

Look for consistency across schools

When every school has a different approach, it's impossible to compare patterns, identify trust-wide training needs, or share what's working.

Make sure your systems talk to each other

Integration with your MIS is not optional. When information has to be entered twice or searched across multiple places, staff spend time looking rather than supporting.

Support classroom teachers, not just SEND teams

If learner plans and strategies are only accessible to the SENCO, the system isn't doing its job. The goal is to put the right information in front of every adult who works with the child.

Think beyond SEND

Every learner has strengths, gaps and preferences that shape how they engage. The most ambitious schools and trusts are moving toward universal learner profiles.

Could PAGS work across your trust?

ALET moved six schools onto a single PAGS platform, integrated with their MIS, and are now working toward universal learner profiling across the whole school. If you're a MAT leader thinking about what consistent SEND provision looks like at scale, this is the conversation to have.

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ALET Education Trust: Building trust-wide clarity around learner needs.