The Customer
The Greenshaw Learning Trust encompasses 20 schools at primary and secondary level based in South London, Surrey, Berkshire, Gloucestershire, South Gloucestershire, Bristol and Plymouth.
Established as a multi-academy trust in 2014, Greenshaw Learning Trust promotes a collaborative approach to teaching, valuing the need for sharing good practice and learning from each other, whilst allowing the schools within to retain and develop their own distinctive character.
As their Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Will Smith often says, ‘The Greenshaw Learning Trust is always learning’.
During 2020, Greenshaw Learning Trust expanded their collaborative approach to learning by creating an online remote curriculum that was made available to all secondary schools in the UK.
Their remote learning offering spans over 3,000 lessons, each one including a video lesson and low stakes quiz. The content has received over 100,000 views a day and has been shared in over 100 different countries.
The Brief
The Greenshaw Learning Trust has been a loyal e4education customer for many years and as the trust has grown, and technology has advanced, we have worked with them to increase their online presence and push the boundaries on design and development.
The original brief was to provide a cohesive style for the school websites within the trust, offering them a beautiful new responsive design, striking photography and complementary prospectus artwork providing a consistent online and offline presence.
The idea was to promote trust-wide unity whilst still giving the schools their own opportunity to put their mark on the design, with their branding, social media feeds and links. 
"It was important for us to work with a partner who not only understood the education landscape but was able to translate our ideas into tangible concepts and bring our vision to life. With their dedicated commitment to supporting schools and trusts combined with their brilliant software and proven experience of completing projects to the highest standard, e4education were the perfect fit for our requirements"
- Will Smith, CEO of Greenshaw Learning Trust
After the successful completion of the schools’ websites, Greenshaw Learning Trust wanted to revitalise their own website.
Creating a dynamic new Trust design would effectively showcase their ethos, offer relevant content to different stakeholders, and, following the events of 2020, offer a permanent, robust home for sharing resources to the education community including their remote learning curriculum and CPD.
The Process
After the initial call between Will and the project team, we started pulling together the initial visuals for the new website, sharing ideas back and forth until the final product took shape.
During discussion with Will around the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, we saw there was an opportunity to work together to develop an online remote learning platform on their new trust website.
This project included building a custom remote learning palette functionality within the existing content management system. Greenshaw’s philanthropic approach meant we also made the content accessible to all schools to display on their own website, regardless of their website provider.
"e4education has been supporting the work of the Greenshaw Learning Trust and its schools for many years. Throughout that time the quality of the resources and the responsiveness of the care and support has been truly exceptional."
- Will Smith, CEO of Greenshaw Learning Trust
The Solution
The whole Greenshaw Learning Trust project from start to finish has included a bespoke trust website, 13 school websites (so far), professional photography, prospectus design & print and the creation of the remote learning platform.
Communication was managed efficiently and effectively via remote technology due to the travel restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic, with dedicated project management every step of the way.
The bespoke trust website design includes:
- Introductory pop-up to tailor the experience and content to the user
- Custom meet the team pages
- Bespoke interactive map with multi-pin pop-ups
- Stylised homepage elements taking inspiration from the logo
- Remote learning and CPD palette functionality with video content and quizzes
The lead school website design included the following as standard:
- Full screen image slideshows
- Image-led welcome message
- Mixed news and social feeds
- Calendar sync with in-school Microsoft or Google calendar
- Bespoke map design
- Social media quick links
- Dropdown menus
The lead school website design has since been cloned for the other schools in the trust, allowing them to change the logo, colours and social media handles to reflect their own identities whilst maintaining the collaborative, cohesive overall design feel which identifies them as part of Greenshaw Learning Trust. This solution also makes it more efficient and cost effective for new schools that join the trust in the future.
"Our online presence and outward facing messages have been enhanced and amplified with the depth of understanding that we have found with all of the design and production staff."
- Greenshaw Learning Trust
The Outcome
The way that the schools’ websites have been designed and built provides Greenshaw Learning Trust with a quick, cost-efficient and future-proof way to expand their online presence as the organisation continues to grow.
The trust website has been designed to be easier to navigate and offer content for the Trust’s key audiences including students, parents, staff/governors and the wider community. The new website gives better access to who the Trust is, how it works, the schools and the team. It has also improved the career and volunteer opportunity pages.
Amongst the new features the site contains integrated social media buttons for visitors to easily share articles and view the latest news from the Trust’s Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook channels.
Despite the challenges of the pandemic, the remote learning and CPD offering has been a resounding success with thousands accessing and using the resources.
Overall, the project has reiterated Greenshaw Learning Trust’s most fundamental message that they are ‘always learning’ and that working together, the education sector will always find a way to provide engagement, support and collaboration.
"e4education is a market leader and trend setter when it comes to developing the profile of schools and trusts"
- Will Smith, CEO, Greenshaw Learning Trust
