Making the grade

EDUCATION WITH SO Magazine

Every month SO magazine brings you a round up of the local and national education stories making the grade…

Pupils’ performances praised

ATunbridge Wells school has been commended for their production of A Midsummer’s

Night Dream in the Independent School’s Association (ISA) Drama Festival.

Pupils from The Mead School were awarded Best Junior Production for A Midsummer Night’s Dream and ‘Best Junior Boy Performer’ for Thomas Gerrish’s portrayal of Bottom.

A spokesperson for the ISA praised the performance: "This production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was absolutely wonderful. I couldn’t fault it. The staging outside worked LOCKDOWN has impacted young children’s language skills according to new research published in April.

A report by the BBC has revealed that more children aged between four and five are needing help with language in school.

The research from the Education Endowment Foundation surveyed 50,000 pupils across 58 primary schools in England and found that 76 per cent of children aged between four and five-years-old needed more help with communication than previous to the pandemic.

To combat the rise in issues with children with communication issues, the government says it is investing £18million in early-years catch-up.

The problems have been attributed to the lack of socialising and the wearing of face coverings.

Children and Families Minister Vicky Ford explained: "On top of the £3.5bn we have spent in each of the past three years on our free childcare entitlements, we have also invested £18m to support language development in the early years, part of our new £700m package to provide extra support to children who need it as they return to the classroom.

This production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was absolutely wonderful. I couldn’t fault it

perfectly and every costume was beautifully thought through. Very well done to the cast and crew for achieving such a high standard and an enjoyable production in these difficult times. I commend you all.”

In order to keep performances in line with lockdown restrictions, rehearsals were held principally online, and the production was filmed outside.

OUTSTANDING

Victoria Hall, Head of Performing Arts at The Mead, celebrated all the performances and everyone involved: “I am sure you will join me both in congratulating our children and having a huge sense of pride in them. What they have achieved this year under incredibly difficult and unprecedented circumstances is outstanding.”

Casting has recently been held for the school’s next performance, ‘Oliver!’ which will be put on at the Trinity Theatre in Tunbridge Wells in July.

Early Years speech and language skills affected by lockdown

FUNDING

"This includes funding to build on the early successes of the Nuffield Early Language Intervention scheme and roll it out to more schools, so that thousands more four- and five-year-olds whose language, communication and literacy skills have been impacted by the disruption of the past year will benefit from targeted support."

But Shadow Education Secretary Kate Green criticised the plans: "Government 'catch-up' plans fall far short of what is needed for children to recover lost learning, including nothing on wellbeing or social development. In addition, their stealth cut to the pupil premium hinders schools' ability to put their own plans in place.”

A HISTORICAL HAUL FOR BENENDEN BOARDERS

Pupils at Benenden School have discovered a collection of wartime artefacts after exploring a disused cupboard in the 19th Century Building.

The historic haul happened upon by inquisitive boarders, Olivia Boyce, Ella Gouriet, Izzy McLean and Hailey McNally, included an array of chocolate wrappers and other packaging from the 1940s as well as letters to Second World War soldiers.

The girls’ boarding school - whose main building, Hemsted, dates back to the 1860s - was used as a military hospital during the war.

A spokesperson for Benenden said: “During a study session in a room in which the layout had recently been remodelled, the Year 10 pupils –– spotted a hatch almost entirely hidden by a wardrobe.

“They pulled the wardrobe out and found the hatchway gave access to a small portion of the eaves.”

Items retrieved included Bourneville, Aero and Milky Way wrappers, a Lux soap packet and packaging from Player’s Weights Cigarettes and Swan Vesta matches.

Hailey, one of the pupils who found the historic items added: “We are living in history. As it’s the time of coronavirus we thought about leaving a face mask inside the cupboard and in 30 years’ time some other girls will say ‘hey, look what I found!’”

How schools have kept an open mind on offering virtual visits

Traditionally if you wanted to see if a primary or secondary school was the right one for your child you would visit it in person.

But the Covid pandemic put a stop to all those important faceto-face interactions for parents, students and teaching staff over the past year. So how did schools get on with transferring their open days to an online experience?

Here four top local educational establishments reveal how they got on…

MALBOROUGH HOUSE “We were pleased to be one of the first prep schools to offer a Virtual Open Morning back in May 2020. It was a challenge to put together a film that gave a true reflection of the school in such a short time with so many other factors to be taken into consideration, but we were very happy with the result.

However, there is no substitute for a physical visit! Seeing the school in action, meeting the teachers and talking to the Head and Registrar allow parents to get a real feel for the warmth and atmosphere of our school. The decision as to where to send your young child to school is as much a gut reaction as a logical decision, and the way you feel about a school can only really be appreciated from being within the environment. GENUINE Therefore, parents have booked private tours when restrictions permitted and we boldly held Open Morning on site in October, carefully limiting the number of visitors at any one time and observing strict social distancing measures. While the visitors wore masks and did not enter the classrooms, they were able to gauge the mood of the place and enjoy a tour with our Year 8 guides – we felt that the day was a genuine success, and we are continuing in this vein with two Open Mornings on 6th and 7th May.

Would we return to Virtual Open Mornings? Not through choice, although we will keep our Virtual School Tour available for those who can’t get to us for any reason, not just COVID. We have benefited so much “Would we return to Virtual Open Mornings? Not through choice, but we will keep our Virtual School Tour available for those who can’t get to us”

this past year from using IT well, not just for teaching the children, but also communicating with home – Parents’ Evenings through Microsoft Teams have been a great success, along with Zoom events and school challenges played out on social media. However, being part of the school community is important to our parents and we are very happy to be back face to face with MHS families for a Summer Term which will see the welcome return of matches and, in due course, other much-loved events.”

Mr Eddy Newton, Headmaster www.marlboroughhouseschool.co.uk

UPCOMING OPEN EVENTS Thursday May 6 and Friday May 7 Open Morning

CLAREMONT SCHOOL

“The Coronavirus has thrown up all sorts of challenges for schools. Learning online has been the most obvious of these and it has forced teachers across the land to re-examine how they facilitate student learning. Schools have learnt a whole new vocabulary including ‘pods’, social distancing and lateral flow tests. There is much that we will, collectively, be very happy to see in our rear-view mirror but, amongst the difficulties, there can be little doubt that schools have found new and creative ways to overcome the problems presented by the pandemic. The proliferation of Virtual Open Days (VODs) are one such example.

At Claremont, where a school visit has traditionally been the mainstay of our recruitment approach, VODs have, ultimately, provided exciting and novel ways for us to talk about our school. Students and staff have been able to develop videos and ‘to camera’ pieces that distil all that is good at the school. We have learnt new media skills, staff have discovered their inner ‘reporter’ and it has forced us to really think about “Importantly, it has given us the opportunity to reach out to audiences that previously would have struggled to attend one of our traditional open days”

what the school represents - amazing learning and giving young people the opportunity to achieve beyond what they thought possible.

OPPORTUNITY

Perhaps most importantly, it has given us the opportunity to reach out to audiences that previously would have struggled to attend one of our traditional open days. While we are slowly welcoming parents back to the school ‘in person’ there is little doubt that VODs are here to stay. Furthermore, the skills that we have all developed in delivering VODs are now being routinely used to ensure that learning in the classroom is richer and more exciting than it has ever been. Even in the midst of a global pandemic there are some silver linings to be found!”

Mr Ed Dickie, Headteacher www.claremontschool.co.uk

UPCOMING OPEN EVENTS Open House Week: Mon May 17 - Saturday May 22

“Looking ahead, we are planning to enhance our open event offer by providing a high-quality virtual tour”

CRANBROOK GRAMMAR SCHOOL “We were delighted to be able to hold a total of five virtual open events last year and very proud of the outcome.

The events were in a very similar format to our ‘normal’ Open Days, minus the tour of course, and they were recorded and made available on our website to those who were unable to attend the live sessions. We were delighted that they were well attended.

SUCCESS Their success was borne out by the number of parents who expressed their gratitude for the efforts we had made to provide such comprehensive information in virtual format.

Looking ahead, we are planning to enhance our open event offer by providing a highquality virtual tour of the School and Boarding Houses as standard. This will be invaluable, even when we are once again able to hold events and tours on site. Overall, they are highly worthwhile, particularly for those boarding families living overseas.”

Mr Will Chuter, Headteacher www.cranbrookschool.co.uk.

UPCOMING OPEN EVENTS Years 7, 9 & 12 Open Morning: Wednesday June 9 Year 7 & 9 Open Evening: Wednesday September 22 - Friday October 24 & Tuesday October 12 6th Form Open Evening - Wednesday November 3

MAYFIELD SCHOOL

“Our virtual open events have been a great success. Although a virtual experience cannot replicate an in-person visit, our virtual open mornings have provided an opportunity for families to find out more about Mayfield, enjoy a virtual tour of the facilities and meet some of our pupils and staff. We were delighted to welcome families from Kent, Sussex and London as well as international families from across the world. As an independent Catholic day and boarding school for girls we have 28 different nationalities represented, making up 20% of our student body. Such a cosmopolitan ethos helps the girls to understand and appreciate different cultures and perspectives, and to value diversity.

“Going forwards we will offer a blend of inperson and virtual events, as this provides more flexibility for families”

over 50 clubs and activities available for the girls to explore in the two activity periods each day, as well as after school and at weekends. And we are especially proud to have recently been voted a Top 20 school for Cricket.

Going forwards we will offer a blend of in-person and virtual events, as this provides more flexibility for families. We look forward to once again welcoming families to our beautiful school – just 10 miles from Tunbridge Wells - and having the opportunity to meet our teachers and girls in person. We will be running further open mornings during the Autumn term, so please do email Shirley Coppard, our Registrar, on registrar@mayfieldgirls.org, if you would like to attend. We hope to see you soon.”

POPULAR

Our Q&A sessions were very popular. We often found it was the girls themselves enquiring, with lots of questions about our extra-curricular programme, as well as sport, music and drama, creative arts and STEM. We have Miss antonia Beary, Headmistress www.mayfieldgirls.org

UPCOMING OPEN EVENTS Open Dates will be announced soon for September and October 2021