Early Years, Primary and Early Secondary School Co..
Early Years, Primary and Early Secondary School Core Skills
Start date: Sep 1, 2016,
End date: Aug 31, 2018
PROJECT
FINISHED
Saint Peter at Gowts School is a vibrant, inner city school with a diverse population. Since the school was classed by Ofsted as 'Requires Improvement', the school has many new members of staff who are new to the area and are keen to learn more about the diverse Eastern European population which the school serves. The school is currently 36% EAL, with this percentage increasing year after year. The key aim of our project is to help new arrivals settle in our school and start to make progress. We can facilitate this by understanding the cultural and educational context from which they originate. Our strategy to develop this knowledge is four half term visits over two years. This will enable key individuals to immerse in the Eastern European culture . A series of visits would allow different teams to travel, with the initial focus being Poland, due to the nature of our school community and the existing link between Lincolnshire and Warminsko-Mazuria, a northern province east of Gdansk. Our key objectives are outlined below.Key Objective 1 - To celebrate diversity and ensure all pupils feel valued and their culture celebrated within schoolKey Objective 2 - To increase the confidence of EAL new starters through increased understanding and awareness of the different educational systemsKey Objective 3 - To increase community cohesion in the Sincil Bank area through EtwinningKey Objective 4 - To increase parental engagement with Eastern European parents through project work, links and greater understandingWe are hoping to facilitate 8 teachers (75% of teaching staff) visiting Eastern Europe to develop partnerships between schools and develop the teachers' understanding, empathy and specifically their knowledge about the different educational systems. The focus of the visits would be how schools develop the core skills of literacy and numeracy. We also hope to explore early years provision, developing an overview of the educational system, school leadership and management, and the possibility of eTwinning and building partnerships between schools. In particular, staff are keen to develop a 'new starter' resource pack, with leaflets outlining the differences between the school systems and what parents and children should expect in their new setting. The impact we are hoping to show will be measurable against our Ofsted priorities and School Improvement Plan. We are hoping to improve EAL parent engagement, measured through attendance at parents meetings and open mornings. We also hope to ease transition of new starters through increased empathy and understanding. We also hope that the project to stengthen our school team, with teachers becoming passionate about teaching in an ethnically diverse school, being passionate about provision, inclusion and community cohesion. This will therefore improve staff morale, pride in our school and also drive school improvement.
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