At Thinking Schools Academy Trust, digital innovation matters when it makes a real difference to children and young people. That is why the development of the trust’s centralised learning space is about much more than managing a digital project. Through Cloud Design Box, it is becoming a shared space for learning that helps staff work together more effectively, reduces duplication, connects schools and creates richer opportunities for pupils across all 26 schools in the trust.
The ambition was never simply to build an online platform. It was to create a living resource for the whole trust: a place where curriculum materials, teaching approaches, professional expertise and pupil learning can grow together. Cloud Design Box has helped make that vision possible.
The value of any digital platform lies in what it enables for learners. In this case, Cloud Design Box is helping TSAT shape a digital space around the needs, experiences and outcomes of children.
By creating centralised digital spaces, staff can share curriculum materials, planning documents, lesson resources and project ideas more easily. This means teachers spend less time recreating materials and more time focusing on high-quality teaching. It also helps ensure that pupils, wherever they attend school within the trust, benefit from stronger access to carefully planned resources and more consistent learning experiences.
For children, this creates a stronger sense of belonging to something bigger than their own classroom or school. The centralised learning space is not just a digital destination. It is becoming a trust-wide hub that supports deeper engagement with learning and stronger collaboration across schools.
Cloud Design Box has supported the trust in moving beyond simple information-sharing. Rather than using digital spaces only to send messages or store files, staff are increasingly using them to work together in meaningful ways.
Across Thinking Schools Academy Trust, schools are already making strong use of centralised subject areas and student work tools. This matters because it shows that the foundations for deeper digital collaboration are already in place.
On average, 39% of departments are using centralised subject areas to share resources with colleagues and students. This creates an important structure for a trust-wide initiative such as the centralised learning space, allowing schools to organise materials once and make them available more widely. In practice, this reduces duplication, supports greater consistency and helps expertise travel more effectively across the trust.
Alongside this, 37% of class teams are using tools such as Assignments, Class Notebook and Student Work Folders to support pupil learning. This is especially important because learning should not stop at planning and discussion. Pupils need opportunities to respond, reflect, create and contribute.
Together, these features are helping to build a more connected model of teaching and learning, where resources, ideas and pupil outcomes can be understood as part of a shared trust-wide picture.
What stands out clearly across the trust is that different schools are excelling in different ways. That is a real strength.
Some schools have made particularly strong progress in organising and sharing curriculum resources through centralised subject areas. Rochester Grammar and The Portsmouth Academy, for example, are leading in subject area usage, with 75% and 65% respectively. Victory Academy and Holcombe Grammar are also showing strong adoption. This matters because it enables knowledge, expertise and carefully developed curriculum materials to be shared more efficiently across departments and schools.
Other schools are showing particularly strong use of student-facing tools. Plymouth High School for Girls, Gordon’s Children’s Academy and Maritime Academy are all using student work features in 74% or more of their class teams. This gives teachers stronger visibility of pupil progress and helps them identify where pupils are engaging well, where misconceptions may be emerging and where additional support may be needed.
For the centralised learning space, this is especially significant. A successful trust-wide digital learning initiative needs both sides of strong practice: well-organised shared resources for staff, and meaningful spaces where pupils can actively engage in their learning. TSAT schools are already demonstrating these complementary strengths, creating valuable opportunities for shared practice across the trust.
When teachers can work from shared resources, there is greater consistency in what children experience. When pupil work is completed through digital tools, teachers gain a clearer view of progress and can respond more quickly. When schools learn from one another, effective practice spreads more widely across the trust.
This means the centralised learning space can grow not just as a platform, but as a catalyst for better learning. A lesson sequence planned in one school can inspire work in another. A successful classroom approach can be adapted across different settings. Staff can build on one another’s ideas rather than starting from scratch. Children can see that their learning connects to a wider community of learners across 26 schools.
In this way, Cloud Design Box is helping turn collaboration into something tangible for pupils: more coherent teaching, stronger feedback, richer opportunities to contribute and a greater sense of belonging to a trust-wide learning community.
The data also points to clear next steps. In some schools, centralised subject areas are particularly strong, while student work tools are less developed. In others, the reverse is true. Rather than seeing this as inconsistency, Thinking Schools Academy Trust can see it as an opportunity for schools to learn from one another.
For example, The Portsmouth Academy has built an impressive foundation in shared subject resources, while Plymouth High School for Girls and Gordon’s Children’s Academy are showing what strong student workflow can look like in practice. Holcombe Grammar’s use of Student Work Folders may also offer useful insight for other schools. These patterns suggest that the trust is well placed to encourage practical, peer-led improvement.
This kind of collaboration is especially powerful because it is rooted in real trust practice. It allows staff to see what works, adapt it to their own context and build confidence over time.
For pupils, the benefit is clear: stronger digital practice across the trust means better learning experiences, clearer progression and more meaningful access to the curriculum.
The trust already has strong digital foundations. Cloud Design Box has helped strengthen those foundations by making collaboration easier, resource-sharing more efficient and pupil learning more visible.
As the centralised learning space continues to develop, the trust has an exciting opportunity to tell a wider story about how digital platforms can bring people together around a shared purpose. This is a story about teachers working smarter together, schools learning from one another and children benefiting from richer, more connected educational experiences.
It is a strong example of how a child-first digital strategy can strengthen teaching, improve collaboration and expand access to learning across a family of schools. It reflects the trust’s commitment to transforming life chances by creating the conditions for every child to benefit from strong teaching, shared expertise and ambitious opportunities to succeed.
Through Cloud Design Box, Thinking Schools Academy Trust is using digital technology not simply to communicate, but to collaborate more effectively and improve learning at scale. With 26 schools contributing to and benefiting from this shared approach, the development of the centralised learning space is becoming a model of what trust-wide digital learning can achieve: less duplication, stronger professional collaboration, better visibility of pupil progress and more meaningful opportunities for children to engage in learning that matters.
To find out more about Thinking Schools Academy Trust and how we are working to transform life chances, visit tsatrust.org.uk.