Community Plan

2022 - 2024 Community Plan

Community within the Trust

The Marches Academy Trust’s vison is ‘Achievement Through Caring’. We believe that our children are part of our community of learners and as such we work hard to create a sense of belonging and connection in our family of schools. Our staff across the Trust work hard to form effective partnerships within each of our communities; it is this work that makes each school unique as each community has its own character.

I have put together examples of how each of our schools are building strong foundations in their communities that will help the school community to evolve and best serve the children. We also do all that we can to support all our children and young people to contribute and strengthen their own communities.

The Trust has strengthened Local Governing Bodies (LGB) and built upon the lines of communication so that our Governors from all schools in the Trust feel connected and more importantly an integral part of the journey of the Trust.

Our Trust has connected with Health, Police and Social Services in Shropshire to ensure that our children and communities are getting the support they need to thrive.

The Trust has a successful partnership with Shrewsbury School. We are sharing good practice in maths, careers, Sixth Form, ExpertEd and the development of talented sports people.

All schools are looking at ways to connect with their communities from open days at Longlands Primary School where the community were invited in to spend time in the social farm to The Marches School holding a Kindness Week, where they took cards with messages of gratitude to members of the Oswestry community.

The Trust continues to build on its partnership with Shrewsbury Town in the Community. This benefits our children in the Trust and the wider community.

We are fortunate that the Rotarians based in each of the areas that our schools are located in are proactively involved in supporting our schools through mock interviews, mentoring and fundraising to support special projects.

Our schools continue to play a vital role in collecting and distributing food parcels to their communities.

Sarah

Sarah Finch CEO, The Marches Academy Trust

To provide students with the best experiences, supporting them to be ready for the challenge of being an adult in the world today, we enhance the school experience with close, positive relationships with our community, tapping into the rich talent of experience, skills and inspiring role models in our local community including, including amazing opportunities from local decision makers - councilors and MPs, who speak to students and listen to their views on key issues affecting their futures, most recently about changes being made in the towns Bid Oswestry Project, with students keen to see improvements to sustainable and safe walking and cycling routes to school.

We are proud to share and showcase the incredible talent that our student body have with our community too which is why we get out to say hello, to sing, dance, play and entertain as well as being a venue space for other groups to celebrate their talents.

Pearson Headteacher

Alison

The Marches School

Our Community Plan

Action / Aim Time Frame

Our community coming to us

Continue to support local charities. This includes giving them the opportunity to present to students and then be voted as the annual charity that the school will support. Charities continue to be invited to fundraising events.

2022- onwards

Local businesses given the opportunity to sponsor school events. The local community continue to sponsor and support a number of the school's end of year awards. Members of the community are invited to the events to share the celebrations and this gives the opportunity for the school to thank the community for their support. The community has also supported other school events with sponsorship historically, for example the fete in 2020.

Continue to develop the strong links with our two local Rotarian Clubs- both offer significant support to the school which will continue. They support our Year 11 students with CV writing and every Year 11 receives a Mock Interview- a great experience for later in life when they will attend interviews "for real".

2022- onwards

Continue to develop strong links with the local council- this includes ongoing process of giving students opportunities to meet and question local MPs. Groups of students from various year groups have also been a full part of the consultation process with The Futures Oswestry Group who are making changes/developments in the town. Students have collected student voice from the wonder school body, fed back on current plans and made sure the voice of young people is heard in the future planning for their town. This partnership will continue into 22-23.

2022- onwards

2022- onwards

The school will continue to host the students and parents from local Primary Schools at Primary Athletics events- as well as being a useful event in terms of Transition it is another way of getting our wider community together for a lovely sporting event.

Going out into our Community

All Year 10 students will attend a work experience placement, the vast majority will be within our local community. Following a break caused by the pandemic we are incredibly excited to get this huge opportunity for a whole year group of our students to be out in the community developing skills for future careers.

2022- onwards

Continue to give students opportunities to visit and interact with the local Museum- building on the current exhibition called "Lockdown Diaries" that gave a students view of life in Oswestry during lockdown. All Year 7 students have had a first visit to the library to learn about the history and culture of the community.

2022- onwards

Continue to develop the relationship with the Youth Market- held in the local market, giving them real life experiences of making items that they sell to the local community and donate the profits to our charity. This has been an excellent way of developing positive interactions between our students and the community.

During our annual Kindness Week where students will focus on being kind to themselves, their peers, other people in school but also being kind to the community. We will continue to run the Kindness Walk where students visit the local community and hand out small gestures of kindeness. This was very received.

2022- onwards

2022- onwards

School to continue to host (both on site and in the community e.g. the church) musical events like the Christmas Concert and Summer Serenade. Showcasing the school's talent to members of our community.

2022- onwards

2022- onwards

Case Studies

Kindness Walk in the Community

As part of “Kindness Week” students went into our local community and spread kindness, including chocolate treats and personalised Kindness messages.

Local MP Visit

Local MP Helen Morgan, with our Marches own Alumnus, Alex Wagner, Helen’s local aid. Students studying politics and others had the opportunity to ask some very topical questions about women in politics, the cost of living and the challenge of accessing services in a rural area.

Chelsea’s Story

Our community stakeholders, including parents, external agency professionals and young people from other education settigs were invited to community performances of Chelsea’s story which gives a hard hitting but crucial message about child exploitation.

Town Council Visit Louise Humphries and David Clough from Oswestry Town Council, visited The Marches Gardening Club, to see what we do and to discuss our participation in the 2022 Oswestry in Bloom event. They also visited our eco site and learnt more about our eco group and the important environmental work that we do at the school.