Stour Vale professional learning groups provide open, supportive and focused forums for sharing expertise and for learning from best practice, innovation and research within the trust and across the wider educational community. They provide the formal structure within which strong professional networks grow. Facilitated by school-based staff, our professional learning groups are flexible in their approach, meeting between two and six times a year either cross-phase or as separate primary and secondary groups, responding to school priorities. Our current professional learning groups include: school business managers, deputy headteachers, attendance leads, EYFS practitioners, teaching and learning leads, sencos, DSLs, maths and reading leads.