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Blog posts exploring the importance of effective education partnerships, collaboration and communication within and beyond schools when developing and maintaining high-quality policy and practice for more able learners, and challenge for all. Includes examples of effective school-to-school collaborations, and opportunities to get involved in education partnerships and collaborative initiatives involving fellow NACE member schools and NACE partner organisations.

 

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New College, Oxford: school outreach opportunities
Posted By Daniel Powell, 10 February 2022

Daniel Powell, Head of Outreach and Communications at New College, Oxford, shares an introduction to Oxford University’s school outreach work, including an opportunity to join the college’s own Step-Up-Programme.

Founded by William of Wykeham in 1379, New College is one of the oldest constituent colleges of the University of Oxford. Occupying a large site in the centre of the city, the college is a diverse and welcoming institution which is made up of roughly 430 undergraduates and 360 graduate students. We are looking forward to hosting a NACE member meetup next month on the theme “Rethinking Assessment”, and to working with NACE on future projects.

How is outreach organised at Oxford University?

Oxford University operates a regionalised approach to its outreach work. Each broad region of the UK will have a dedicated consortium of colleges, who hold responsibility for delivering outreach opportunities to schools in those regions. The central university team will also support schools in certain parts of the UK. You can read more about the regionalised approach to outreach here.  

New College is excited to be part of the consortia responsible for outreach provision in Wales. If you are a Welsh state school and are interested in finding out about how New College and the Wales Consortia can support your school, then please do get in touch via oxfordcymru@admin.ox.ac.uk

What outreach initiatives does New College offer?

Since its foundation in the 14th century, New College has been a pioneer for outreach work. As one of the few Oxford colleges to have a motto written in English, rather than Latin, we have always wanted to be known as an institution that is available and accessible to all, regardless of background.  In the last few years, the college has been able to expand the work that we do and we now have a team made up of Daniel, Shelby (the College’s Outreach Officer), and Stephen (the College’s Outreach Fellow).  

In 2020, we formed the Oxford for Wales Consortia with St. Catherine’s College and Jesus College, to support the University in its regionalised approach to outreach. Daniel and Shelby, as a South and North Walian respectively, are aware of the potential barriers that Welsh students may face when considering Oxford, and are extremely keen to support Welsh teachers, students, and parents in any way that they can.

In addition to regionalised work in Wales, New College also delivers its own sustained-contact initiative, the Step-Up Programme.

What is New College’s Step-Up Programme?

Launched in 2017, New College’s Step-Up Programme is a sustained-contact initiative that is designed to inspire and support state school students throughout Years 11, 12 and 13. It is a non-regionalised outreach initiative with state schools and sixth form colleges from across England and Wales currently enrolled on the programme. Broken into a series of steps, the programme aims to ensure that students with high academic potential recognise that Oxford can be an achievable and realistic goal.   

After beginning in a pilot phase with nine schools in 2017, the programme has gradually grown and New College currently works with 30 state schools and sixth form colleges across England and Wales.  As a fully funded programme, there are minimal costs for schools, and sessions take place either in a school setting or at New College.  

As we recognise that applying to Oxford can sometimes feel like an overwhelming prospect, each step of the programme focuses on a different aspect of the application process. We aim to dispel myths, reassure students, and support schools, so that Oxford University begins to feel like a realistic and achievable ambition.

With a group of New College students to support and offer their own ideas and advice, our outreach team works with schools to break down the barriers that students may be concerned about, providing them with the ‘step up’ they might need.  

If you think that New College’s Step-Up Programme would benefit your school and students, you can read more about the programme on the New College website.

How can schools join the Step-Up Programme?

We are potentially looking to expand the Step-Up Programme. If you would like your school to be considered, please register your interest by emailing stepup@new.ox.ac.uk. Interested schools should be state-funded 11-18 schools or state-funded sixth-form colleges.  

Find out more… Visit the New College website, or follow our Twitter (@NewCollegeOx) or Instagram (@newcollegeoxford) accounts for regular updates about life at New College, Oxford.

Plus... We look forward to meeting some of you in person at the NACE member meetup on 23 March 2022. Read more and register here. 

 

Tags:  access  aspirations  CEIAG  collaboration  disadvantage  higher education  Oxbridge  Oxford  transition  Wales 

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10 keys to consistent provision for more able learners in a cluster
Posted By Idris Davies School 3-18, 14 January 2022
Darren Lynch is the More Able & Talented Coordinator and Vulnerable Learner Lead at NACE member Idris Davies School 3-18. In this blog post he shares 10 key recommendations to establish and maintain consistent provision for more able and talented learners across a cluster, alongside an example of a cluster-wide programme for MAT learners.

The context

Idris Davies School is an English-medium, mixed, 3 to 18 school, with around 1,000 pupils. The school draws pupils from a group of villages in the northern part of the Rhymney Valley, in South Wales. In Year 7, pupils also join from five partner primary schools. Around 33% of pupils are eligible for free school meals, much higher than the national average of 17.5% for secondary schools in Wales. Around 72% of pupils live in the 20% most deprived areas in Wales. 

10 recommendations to maintain consistency of provision for more able learners in a cluster

  1. Secure support at leadership level in all partner schools.

  2. Engage colleagues and encourage sharing of personal experiences. Many will have unique stories to tell. Involve colleagues in pupil nominations so they have a vested interest in the growth of their learners.

  3. Take the child, their family and their class teacher on the journey with you. Find the most important ‘cogs in the wheel’ for your individuals. As well as parents, we have taken grandmothers and aunties to universities for the first time as part of our work with The Brilliant Club’s Scholars Programme (see below for more details). All parties can learn from the experience, and each is important.

  4. Know your individual pupils and families. Link with pastoral teams and teaching colleagues to learn about individual circumstances and the bigger ‘picture’ – gaining a wealth of intelligence that will support success.

  5. Prioritise communication to all partners, especially hard to reach families. Some may prefer the traditional written form or telephone call, while others prefer the convenience of electronic communication.

  6. Raise the profile of your provision – promote and publicise around the school community and online using social media. Regular updates and photographs are popular.

  7. Be flexible and resilient. Our provisions have run continually throughout the two-year Covid pandemic, utilising the developments in online learning and online communications. Our high pupil expectations should not waver.

  8. Seek honest feedback and prepare to refine your offer. Some partners prefer an anonymous electronic survey, whilst others welcome a face-to-face conversation.

  9. Identify local role models, be it past pupils or local personalities, who have succeeded from your area. Being able to relate is a powerful motivator.

  10. Identify an individual’s worries and overcome those barriers. We have adapted our provision to increase the focus on issues such a student finance and self-esteem, which our children and families commonly raised.

Example: a cluster-wide programme for more able learners in Years 5 and 6

For the last three years, Idris Davies School 3-18 and its partner primary schools have worked with The Brilliant Club’s Scholars Programme to support more able and talented learners in Years 5 and 6. Each year 24 pupils are selected to engage with the programme, which links them with a PhD tutor to work through a challenging course pitched at a key stage above the pupil’s current stage.
 
For some pupils, the only doctor they may have ever met is in a medical setting, but this programme opens up the world of academic research and gives young people the opportunity to study university-level work in an accessible manner, and to visit leading universities.
 
We have used the programme as part of a cluster-wide strategy to tackle disadvantage, targeting students who are eligible for the Pupil Development Grant, who have no parental history of higher education and who live in deprived areas according to the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (WIMD).
 
Benefits of the programme include:
  • Challenging courses on subjects beyond the curriculum, taught by a PhD researcher.
  • Opportunity to engage with new and challenging topics and ideas – from “Mathematics: Lying with Statistics” to “Anthropology and Archaeology: Making a Museum” or “Business, Brewing and Brawls: the Role of Women in Medieval Towns”.
  • Experience of university-style learning in small group tutorials.
  • Two visits to competitive universities. So far our pupils, their families and class teachers have visited Oxford, Bath, Cardiff Universities. Our PhD tutors have also provided insights on Nottingham, Swansea and Bangor Universities.
  • Develop key university-readiness skills, including self-efficacy, critical thinking and metacognition.
  • Cited as an effective use of Pupil Premium/Pupil Development Grant by Ofsted/Estyn.
  • Supports the school to meet Gatsby Benchmarks 3 and 7; embedded into wider careers programme.
  • Supports KS2-3 transition.
By applying the 10 recommendations listed above, this programme has been implemented consistently across our cluster, supporting our more able and talented learners as they prepare for the transition from KS2 into KS3. 
Read more:
 

Tags:  access  aspirations  CEIAG  collaboration  disadvantage  enrichment  higher education  KS2  partnerships  policy  transition 

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