Regional partnership groups
“We had a fantastic day at Caterham School, we tackled problem solving tasks and team building activities and enjoyed every second.” Rachael Nicholls, deputy head of Audley Primary School
Increasingly, schools are building bridges across larger areas to create city or region-wide partnerships. These groups, which bring together many different schools, share knowledge and experience to enhance educational opportunities for all pupils and staff involved.
programme of outdoor education for 280 pupils. Those involved took part in a programme of structured sport along with ‘Wildcats’ courses involving confidence building, teamwork and problem solving in the woods at Caterham School.
This year, Caterham School created the East Surrey Learning Partnership – a network with four primary schools and one other secondary school, all in the maintained sector. The schools meet regularly to shape collaboration and have already developed a number of innovative partnership projects. An online INSET programme was created, intended to help tackle the digital divide by increasing the knowledge and confidence of classroom practitioners to incorporate coding into their lessons. Caterham also delivered a twopart whole school INSET on cognitive load to Warlingham School, along with a session on memory and feedback to its primary partners. To compensate for Year 6 residential trips missed due to COVID, Caterham collaborated with its primary partners to deliver a
St Peter’s School, York works with several schools and organisations across the city as part of the York Independent State School Partnership (ISSP). Staff at St Peter’s moved their teaching online last summer, ensuring that their GCSE courses could continue for pupils across York. Pupils in years 7 and 8 also had the opportunity to engage with a number of online events, covering a range of topics including science and religion, archaeology and criminology. The ISSP’s popular Masterclasses programme, which takes places every year, continued virtually in March 2021, welcoming pupils in years 7 to 10 to a variety of classes over the course of three weeks. Each half term, pupils in years 8 and 9 came together for the ISSP’s Maths Excellence Club.
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