Who We Are

Welcome from Matthew

Welcome to Ivy Learning Trust. We are a family of primary schools in Enfield and Hertfordshire, working together to give children a great education.

As the leader of Ivy, I am privileged to work with an outstanding team of staff who are passionate about getting it right for the children in our Trust. I have seen how collaborative working can help schools to provide a better education for the children they serve.

We formed Ivy in September 2017 with two schools, Brimsdown and Lavender, in order to formalise the already close working relationship between the two schools.

We have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to grow our family to 14 schools. This has enabled us to create a broad and supportive culture, allowing close collaboration between experienced and passionate educators.

As we have grown, we have benefited from the expertise and talents at each joining school. Although each school acts autonomously with regard to teaching and learning, many schools have shared successful techniques and innovations.

If you would like to know more about us and how we work, please get in touch. 

Matthew Kleiner-Mann
Leader of Ivy Learning Trust 

The trust leaders and governors have worked very effectively with leaders to improve the school. Leaders, trustees and governors all know what is working and what they need to improve. The trust has provided tailored support for leaders and staff. Staff feel valued and appreciate leaders’ support for their wellbeing and workload.

Ofsted, 2023

Larkspur Primary School

Our vision and values

Ivy is a charity and our purpose is to provide education for the public benefit. 

We have four guiding principles:

  • We are one family of schools
  • Good education is a birthright
  • We want to make it easy to make a difference
  • We believe local leaders know their schools best

How we work

Within our Trust, we have a team of outstanding staff who work tirelessly to make a difference to children’s lives. We strive to help them achieve this by creating an overarching culture and environment where it is easy for staff to make that difference. 

We encourage each school to best serve its local community in its own way. This means that the teaching and learning at our schools is of a consistently high quality but can look very different, depending on the needs of the children. We pride ourselves on providing an inclusive education that allows all our children to achieve to their highest potential.

Our children love their schools but also enjoy feeling part of the bigger family of Ivy schools. Through joint projects including talent shows, singing celebrations, sports competitions, film projects and spelling bees, we have provided opportunities for children across our schools to have wider educational and cultural experiences.

Our Ivy Parliament is a thriving and influential body within our Trust. Elected representatives from each school meet regularly to give children a voice in educational and social issues. For example, as part of an environmental awareness campaign, they lobbied successfully to ban single-use plastic bottles from all Ivy schools.

Innovation is at the heart of our Trust as we believe inertia is an inhibitor to progressive education. We encourage schools to think creatively about how they can maximise their children’s opportunities to learn. From this we have developed a number of interesting and well received educational initiatives, including our popular Fast Feedback programme, which has reduced staff workload and empowered children to take control of their learning journey.

Find out more about joining our Trust.