Senior Leadership Team

Rob Marsh

Executive Principal

Our vision is to offer the best possible experience for all of the children and young people in our care, and an experience that prepares them for life.

Students and parents are joining the academy at an exciting time. Trinity Academy Cathedral is part of the Trinity Multi-Academy Trust (MAT), a family of schools delivering consistently outstanding education for children and young people across the region. As Executive Principal, I am working with staff and students to translate those successes here. This is about building upon what works, and providing our students with new and exciting opportunities in and outside of the classroom.

Our vision is to offer the best possible experience for all of the children and young people in our care, and an experience that prepares them for life. I work with Miss Gillinder and the wider staff body to have a strong focus upon academic results. These results are what open doors for our young people, build a reputation with their future employers and make a difference within our community. Therefore, I am delighted that our results are the best in Wakefield and have been in the top 10% in the country for the past three years.

At Cathedral we teach our students to embrace our vision statement ‘Everything is possible’. We encourage students to be ambitious and inquisitive in their learning, understanding that resilience is a key quality to develop.

If you are a parent looking for a school that values each child as an individual, and provides an experience that enables them to achieve more personally and academically, then we look forward to welcoming you to Cathedral.

Anna Gillinder

Principal

Trinity Academy Cathedral is a school where we believe everything is possible.

As Principal, I have great pleasure in welcoming you to Trinity Academy Cathedral, Wakefield’s only Church of England Secondary school, rated ‘outstanding’ in all areas by Ofsted in 2022, ‘excellent’ by SIAMS in 2020, and the winner of the TES Secondary School of the Year 2019.

Trinity Academy Cathedral is a school where we believe ‘everything is possible’. We encourage our students to embrace challenge; they know that, with dedication, commitment and resilience, they can achieve incredible things. We place a strong focus on achieving excellent academic results in GCSE and BTEC qualifications. These qualifications open doors, unlock future opportunities and ensure no path is closed off for our students in the future. I am therefore delighted that our results are consistently the best in Wakefield and in the top 10% nationally. These life-changing exam results are achieved as a result of the industrious efforts of our students, as they engage with our broad and knowledge-rich curriculum, delivered by highly skilled, expert teachers who are passionate about their subjects.

At Cathedral, we have extremely high expectations for attendance, behaviour and engagement both with and beyond the curriculum. We invest significantly in the personal development of our students and ensure excellent pastoral care for every child as they move through their secondary school journey. When Ofsted inspected us, they acknowledged our ‘very high standards of pupil behaviour’ and the ‘care, courtesy and maturity’ of our students. This typifies Cathedral students, and we are extremely proud of the way they embody and live by our school values of empathy, honesty, respect and responsibility. We expect our students to grasp every opportunity: attending a wide range of extracurricular clubs through our rich and diverse ‘Involve’ offer; rising to the challenges of our Y7 ‘Odyssey’ and Y8-9 Graduation programmes; enjoying and learning from our wonderful ‘experiences for all’; as well and putting in 100% to ‘every lesson, every day’.

Trinity Academy Cathedral, is also the home of CAPA Juniors, an alternative curriculum pathway which focuses on those with a passion for Performing Arts. This pathway still offers the academic rigour of our main Cathedral curriculum, but allows a real focus on Music, Dance and Drama, with plentiful opportunity for performance. The CAPA shows are incredible, and always prove to be highlights of the year, for both the performers and the audience!

I hope that our website gives you a flavour of what it means to be part of our community. We strive to make our school a place where all members feel a deep sense of belonging, as this is when learning happens, creativity flourishes and success can thrive. If you require any further information or assistance, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Stuart Pinder

Stuart Pinder

Assistant Vice Principal

My role at Trinity Academy Cathedral is to ensure that students have access to a dynamic curriculum with aspirational targets to help them accomplish this.

One of the most important aspects of any school is the curriculum design and subjects and opportunities available to students as they progress from Year 7 to 11. Our school enables each student to achieve their individual potential and equips them with the skills they need to succeed in further education and the changing workplace.

My role at Trinity Academy Cathedral is to ensure that students have access to a dynamic curriculum with aspirational targets to help them accomplish this. I am also responsible for assessment across the academy, ensuring that the assessment of students is fundamentally linked to the teaching and learning in the classroom. This also links to ensuring the accuracy of data so every student knows exactly where they are and what they need to do to improve, which is vitally important when used for tracking and reporting students’ progress to parents across the year.

Ruth Lawson

Ruth Lawson

Assistant Principal

I am a fervent believer that a child’s education should involve equipping them with the skills and knowledge to make appropriate and informed choices after leaving school.

“Inspirational opportunities for aspirational futures” is the vision for our Careers program at Trinity Academy Cathedral for which I am responsible as the designated Careers Leader. I am a fervent believer that a child’s education should involve equipping them with the skills and knowledge to make appropriate and informed choices after leaving school. I am keen to expose our students to a range of inspiring experiences with employers, workplaces, colleges & universities which will raise their aspirations and allow them to lead fulfilled and happy lives.

Robbie Pickering

Robbie Pickering

Assistant Principal

My main role is to develop, introduce, implement, and improve a range of strategies that positively impact Key Stage 4 outcomes at the academy. This consists of supporting with all academic elements across Year 10 and Year 11, as well as the implementation of The Edge and overseeing the organisation of The Summit of Possibilities.

I want all of our students to be able to follow their ambitions once they leave us. Through hard work, commitment, and readiness to be the best they can be, our students can, and do, have incredible amounts of success with us. In many ways, we strive to provide the provision that would be received at a private, fee paying school. Our curriculum is comprehensive, and the teaching is excellent. But I want students to immerse themselves in all of the other opportunities we offer. Period 0, Period 6, Period 7, holiday classes, weekend classes, intervention opportunities and Morning Preparation supports students to excel with expert support, tuition, and examination revision. To compliment this, The Edge combines academic success with skills development and experiences, ensuring our students shine in college, apprenticeship, job, and eventually university interviews.

Jennifer Webb

Assistant Principal

My role as Assistant Principal at Trinity Academy Cathedral is to empower teachers to be the best they can be.

My role as Assistant Principal at Trinity Academy Cathedral is to empower teachers to be the best they can be. My own journey through education was a difficult one, and I know from personal experience that great teachers change lives. The teachers at Cathedral are incredible professionals who constantly strive to learn and improve. It is my job to help them to access and engage with cutting edge research and development opportunities so that we can provide a world-class experience for our young people.

Sam Tipson

Assistant Principal

It is my commitment to ensure that the attendance strategy at Trinity Academy Cathedral supports our community by removing barriers to attending school and challenges students to improve their attendance where necessary.

Excellent attendance is crucial to success at school. To access our outstanding curriculum and personal development offer, students should strive to be in school every day. It is my commitment to ensure that the attendance strategy at Trinity Academy Cathedral supports our community by removing barriers to attending school and challenges students to improve their attendance where necessary.

As Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL), it is my role to strategically lead the safeguarding team, ensuring that relentless support is offered to students and families when they need it most. I also ensure that our personal development offer responds to the context of the school and the community it supports. As senior Mental Health lead, I oversee the Academy response to student Social, Emotional and Mental Health needs and bring together both internal and external support.

Our Christian mission underpins everything we do at Trinity Academy Cathedral. It is my responsibility to ensure the Christian vision we have for our community resonates throughout the academy and our community.

Morag Murphy

Associate Senior Leader

I passionately believe that school life should prepare students to become active and responsible members of their community and wider society.

I passionately believe that school life should prepare students to become active and responsible members of their community and wider society. I lead on the academy’s Christian ethos, form time programme, British values and the humanities faculty. The school’s core values, empathy, honesty, respect and responsibility underpin every aspect of school life. The form time programme promotes these values and allows students to consider how they can put them into practise in their everyday life. The form time programme allows students an opportunity to explore and discuss topical and ethical issues and express their own ideas and opinions. Students develop a key understanding of British values and are given an opportunity to take part in democratic processes such as the national Vote for Schools programme. I work closely with the Academy Chaplain to promote our Christian ethos, while still celebrating the multi-faith community we have here at Trinity Cathedral. I am keen to support students to become active, empathetic citizens as they move forward into adulthood.

Craig Colbeck

Associate Assistant Principal - Pastoral

It is essential that every child feels safe and supported when attending school to achieve their full potential. At Trinity Academy Cathedral we expect all students to display outstanding behaviour and a positive attitude towards all staff, students, and the wider community.

As AAP for Pastoral, I lead our extensive pastoral team to ensure all students are effectively monitored through Behaviour for Learning and Safeguarding systems. At TAC all staff and students live and breathe the core values to ensure that all students are held to the highest standards of behaviour to support themselves and their peers in creating a positive learning environment. Where students meet our high expectations, it is my responsibility to make sure they are praised and rewarded; we want all our students to feel valued for the positive contributions they make to our community. It is the role of my team to challenge students' expectations of themselves and to take the necessary actions to ensure positive changes learnt by students become a habit. We pride ourselves on inclusive practice, ensuring all students are provided with an exceptional education as well as pastoral care.

Megan Brookes

Associate Assistant Principal

I lead on the Key Stage Three pathway; alongside this I implement changes regarding student voice and character development. My role incorporates overseeing transition, the Cathedral Way, Cathedral Odyssey and the Key Stage 3 Graduation Programme with the aim of giving our students a wide variety of opportunities.

The outcomes of any student are not solely based around the teaching and learning that occurs during Year 11 and it is my role to ensure that we have continuity in the high expectations and aspirations developed by primary schools, and that progress and achievement surpasses the expected during Year 7, Year 8 and Year 9. I lead on transition, the Cathedral Way, Cathedral Odyssey and the Key Stage 3 Graduation Programme with the aim of giving our students a wide variety of opportunities to develop a holistic skill set to benefit them in their studies and beyond.

My role regarding character development and student voice endeavours to create well rounded individuals who have the ability to courageous advocate for that which they deem to be unjust. The aim of student's time within school is to end the programme with the skillset needed to progress through life, at Cathedral we believe this continues beyond the remit within the classroom and it is our aim to continue to develop key characteristics such as empathy, honest, respect and responsibility within each of our students.

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