Ms. Rosie Lockyear

From City Of London School For Girls

Ms. Rosie Lockyear speaks about the partnership work taking place at City of London School for Girls with other schools in the local community.

Can you introduce yourself and tell us a little about City of London School for Girls?

My name is Rosie, I am the Deputy Head (Co-curricular and Partnerships). I’ve been at the school for sixteen years now, and prior to taking on this role a couple of years ago, I was Head of Sixth Form and Head of Politics at the school. My job encompasses all of the partnership work that we do as well as the co-curricular life of the school: clubs, societies, trips and everything that takes place outside of the classroom.

We’re an independent girls’ school for pupils aged eleven to eighteen, situated in the heart of the Barbican in London. We opened in 1894, and the school provides an outstanding education to able students from all backgrounds, cultures and faiths.

Can you outline the Partnership Programme at CLSG, giving a few examples of partnerships and how much of the student body is involved?

As a school, we’re really committed to fostering a concern for, and engagement with, the wider world, both through our charity work and through our partnership programme. We feel it is so important that our pupils develop a strong sense of social responsibility and social conscience. We want them to be outward-looking and aware of the wider world when they leave the school.

In terms of the work we do, perhaps our closest partnerships are through our relationship with the City of London’s family schools. This consists of one primary school, ten academies (primary and secondary) and four independent schools. We’ve worked closely with them over a number of years, but in recent years some examples would include an online reading mentors’ scheme that we hold with our Year 9, 10 and 11 pupils with some primary school pupils; EAL support for some Afghan refugees; and oracy and maths professional development workshops. Last year, we hosted our first inaugural primary summer school, and we also offer a wide range of support around university admissions, interview support and development of leadership skills.

The students participate as volunteers in some cases, for example supporting the primary schools in after-school clubs, through reading schemes. They also take part in the charity and fundraising work that we do, as well as some of the industry work, along with a collection of students from the other schools. So, for example, this year we’ve co-hosted an event with Schroders, who are very close to our school geographically, and we have organised a programme for Year 9 pupils around how to build a sustainable business where they work together in mixed school groups with those other children in Year 9 from the other family of schools.

Why do you think partnership work is so important for the school? How is this reflected in the school’s ethos?

Our partnership philosophy is based on building relationships, dialogue and reciprocity. We have a really strongly held belief that collaborating and building sustained, impactful, meaningful and mutually beneficial partnerships is central to what it means to be in the school, and to be in and of the city. So, our vision of seeking to inspire pupils to find their space to pioneer is integral to our partnership programme. Our pupils find a renewed sense of purpose and inspiration when engaging in partnership work; they’re seeking to make a difference and make their own way in the world. This programme helps them to do that. So through partnership work, we have a mechanism through which we can truly find our students’ space to pioneer.

Can you give any examples of how student leadership and partnerships are linked at the school? Are there any student-led initiatives?

A lot of our student-run clubs within the school have recently started to build links with other schools, sharing ideas and good practice. They are collaborating naturally around their own interests and shaping what they want to cover within their societies. We also have a number of students who have set up volunteer programmes, for example those who act as reading mentors, and in our first primary summer school that we hosted last summer, we had a number of student volunteers who helped to lead sessions across those three days.

Which partnership has been the most impactful?

Over the last three years we’ve developed a Partnership Forum, which has been led and constructed by our superb director of partnerships, who works jointly with us and our brother school, City of London School. We’ve created a termly Partnership Forum for key staff from across our network to come together to share best practice and make connections with other schools. So, it’s now really well attended and has become a very naturally evolving process, and as a group we’ve come to better understand the needs of the other schools, and how the power of coming together can be mutually beneficial. Out of that has come the primary summer school, our reading mentor scheme, and a whole host of other workshops around sustainability and EDI. We get requests through that forum, which hopefully is a signal that people really respect and value the partnership work that takes place.

How do you measure the impact of your partnership work?

It’s quite varied. The main way is through constant conversations with the people who take part in it, whether that be staff, students or parents, and their impression of the work that we do, and, of course,