STRATEGIC SCHOOL PARTNERSHIP PROJECT
HIGH SCHOOL DROP OUTS: “One is too many”
Evaluation of Activity 4 SEMINARS & WORKSHOPS - UK
Shooters Hill Post 16 Campus is currently in transition under a new headmaster and is becoming Shooters Hill 6th Form College. Over the past three years, we have conducted and hosted a number of seminars and workshops for staff, students and parents in order to embed our core values of education across all areas of our learners lives and find better, more effective solutions to aide our students in staying in education and successfully completing their studies with positive outcomes.
Staff Training & CPD:
Safeguarding training: All staff are required to undergo safeguarding training and have completed this successfully, monitored by HR, over the past three years. Recently, we have focused specifically on developing risk factors that our students are particularly vulnerable to: FGM (Female Genital Mutilation), Extremism, Gang Crime, etc. This training has been crucial in developing an understanding in teachers as to the dangers and serious risks our students face becoming involved in within our very vulnerable and deprived community. Additionally, making staff aware of these issues allows them to identify when they suspect students may have become involved in, or suffered some of these possible risks. Further, the successful training has allowed for staff to disseminate this to both students and parents, building relationships and strengthening existing relationships, but also opening the door for debates and discussion around real dangers and risk factors facing our students and their families.
CPD – Continued Personal Development: Staff are required each year as a part of the project to undergo a number of hours CPD successfully. During the past three years, the CPD has been focused on several areas: Teaching & Learning, Behaviour Management, and Relationship Building. The training in these areas has been delivered in a number of ways: Internal CPD leaders, external speakers and workshops, staff led debates and workshops and cross-campus peer coaching and triad coaching, where teachers have been provided the opportunity to work outside of their departments with teachers not in their subject teams in order to share best practice and develop new skills. All of this training is designed specifically to increase retention and achievement. OFSTED, our regulating body, deems poor retention and achievement to reflect poor teaching, hence why this has had such an impact upon our improving retention and results.
Wellbeing Days: Over the past two years, we have introduced ‘wellbeing days’. Last year, our first wellbeing day, saw staff enabled to choose their own CPD offsite, allowing people to move in teams to focus on subject specialisms and evidence their development of this through reports and pictures. This year, the wellbeing day was run differently, staff being allowed to choose from a range of activities on offer designed to aid in stress management and work-life balance. These ranged from massage and personal grooming, to physical activities and other activities designed to challenge intellectually. We have learned from this and are disseminating this to students through the widest range of enrichment activities we’ve ever had on offer since the college opened almost two decades ago.
Andrew Buglass
United Kingdom Project Coordinator