LASSP Newsletter - Edition 1

Liverpool Secondary Schools’ Partnership Newsletter

Edition 1

Liverpool Archdiocese Secondary Schools’ Partnership Newsletter WELCOME to the first edition of the Liverpool Archdi- Central (Knowsley, Sefton and St Helens) ocese Secondary Schools’ Partnership newsletter.

East (Halton, Lancashire, Warrington and Wigan) We are a family of 38 Catholic Secondary Schools and West (Liverpool) Sixth Form Colleges located within the Liverpool Archdiocese that operates across eight Local Authorities Our aim is to offer opportunities for leaders and teach(Halton, Liverpool, Lancashire, Knowsley, Sefton, St ers at all levels to support leadership development, workforce CPD and student activities through which Helens, Wigan and Warrington). we can lead and learn collaboratively. Further details For operational reasons we are divided geographically can be found on our website www.lassp.co.uk into three Clusters:

Newsletter—Edition 1 Winter 2015

Continued Professional Development To facilitate our collaborative partnership we hold termly meetings with the Professional Development Coordinators in each school.

The purpose of the CPD meetings are to: 

collate an overview of CPD activity across the Partnership

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provide opportunities for schools to access training/staff development from other schools within the Partnership

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develop networking and the opportunity for ‘school improvement’ support

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collate a register of high quality and outstanding practitioners who have delivered CPD across the Partnership (locally or nationally recognised ‘experts’)

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provide an opportunity to share good practice amongst all Archdiocesan schools and colleges

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provide an opportunity to visit other institutions to observe and learn from their organisational procedures, structures and policies

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provide schools with the opportunity in the future to develop training across a number of schools, sharing costs and expertise.

Already our meetings have provided opportunities for professional development to take place across a number of schools. Further information can be obtained from each school’s CPD Lead teacher.

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Liverpool Secondary Schools’ Partnership Newsletter

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Mathematics Conference One of the first events for the Partnership was the Mathematics Conference held at Christ the King High School in Southport on the 17th December, 2014.

AQA and Pearson/Edexcel both attended this event and presented for nearly two hours each explaining the changes to the new specifications and outlining the support that was on offer. What was particularly positive about this event was that Heads of Department were able to speak with like-minded colleagues about the merits of both specifications.

FurNewsletter—Edition 1 Winter 2015 thermore, the event was hosted by Paul Greenall (Partnership Director) and Steve Callaghan, who was a former Head of Department at St Peter’s, Orrell, prior to taking early retirement.

One participant wrote that the event was ‘Very informative and it was useful to have time to discuss the specs with fellow colleagues. It is a huge decision to make the right choice, but the weight of burden is lessened when the opportunity to share thoughts/queries – so thank you!’

It was felt that further sessions that focused upon the preparation to teach the new specifications would be extremely useful and even more important if a school was changing exam boards. One colleague stated that ‘It would be good to have training for teaching the new GCSE spec especially to the current KS3 (assumed knowledge in prep for KS4)’ The highlight for one Head of Department was the ‘Training and mark schemes for AQA, especially training on how to mark the papers, the Key Stage 3 Curriculum and the new grading system. Certainly the proposed Preparing to Teach Conference looks particularly useful.’

Information about the Preparing to Teach events can be found in a later article.

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Liverpool Secondary Schools’ Partnership Newsletter

Edition 1

English Conference An English Conference was held at Bellerive FCJ Catholic College in Liverpool on the 5th March to consider with other leaders of English the merits of the new specifications to be introduced as part of the DFE’s new curriculum changes. All four examination boards attended the event. There was also an opportunity to network and meet other leaders of English from across the Archdiocese to learn from their organisational procedures, structures and policies.

Each exam board went through the changes and their response to the new framework imposed by Ofqual (the exam regulatory body). Each exam board also outlined the support and additional resources they could give to schools to support the delivery of the specification.

Comments received from the delegates evaluation forms included the following:

Newsletter—Edition 1 Winter 2015

‘I found the conference useful and would most definitely appreciate further conferences to discuss the long term planning and delivery of the new specifications.’

‘Thank you very much for organising this day - it was great to meet colleagues from 1116 and 11-18 and discuss how they approach teaching GCSE and year 7-11 subject progression and planning.’

Further conferences will be organised to support the introduction of other new GCSE specifications - watch this space!

Preparing To Teach the New Maths Specification Following the successful Mathematics Conference in December, two Preparing to Teach the New Maths Specification events have taken place at Hope Academy (AQA) and at Carmel College (Edexcel) both in St Helens, to look in more detail at the type of questions, format, language used and the expectations of the increased rigour of the exam papers.

Sixteen colleagues from across our schools attended the two events and both sessions allowed for purposeful interaction and questioning regarding the papers, assessment and weighting of marks for both specifications. Both exam boards highlighted the offer of support and the resources available.

Schools are able to have exam board trainers/representatives visit their departments directly and both boards are prepared to do training sessions designed to meet the needs of each school. If you would like the contact details of any exam board please contact Paul Greenall p.greenall@rcaol.co.uk or Vikki Borlase v.borlase@rcaolp.co.uk directly.

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Liverpool Secondary Schools’ Partnership Newsletter

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Post 16 Collaborative Meetings In December the Partnership organised the first Post 16 meeting and this was held at St John Rigby, Sixth Form College in Wigan. As with many of our collaborative events the purpose of this meeting is to consider current issues facing schools and colleges, support each other through sharing good practice and to develop subject support. Each meeting will be held at a different school or sixth form college and the second meeting took place at Carmel College in St Helens. At each venue there will be a tour of the sixth form area so that colleagues can look at the provision and ask questions about the structure of the sixth form and the student support on offer.

David Selby HMI was invited to the first meeting to provide information on Ofsted inspections of Sixth Form Colleges and Schools with Sixth Forms. In addressing issues raised in a recent Ofsted December 2014 report he focused in particular on Study programmes stating that:

Newsletter—Edition 1 Winter 2015 ‘Many of the school and academy leaders he had interviewed were unaware of the requirements of the study programmes and implications for sixth form provision; implementation in these contexts has been too slow’.

He also suggested that looking at the increased emphasis on retention and progress (not just attainment) as the key measures were designed to encourage schools and colleges to focus on achieving the best outcomes for all students, irrespective of their starting points.

The second meeting was attended by AQA who gave their interpretation of the challenges of the decoupling of AS and A level specifications.

The meetings have been well attended and we look forward to building on this excellent start.

The next meeting is on the 14th May at St John Bosco, Liverpool.

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Liverpool Secondary Schools’ Partnership Newsletter

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Student Conferences 24th, 25th, 26th March 2015 A key element of our Partnership work is the development of student collaboration across all the 38 schools and colleges of the Liverpool Archdiocese.

One of the key activities this academic year will be a Student Partnership Conference that will take place during the summer term. To support that event, at the end of March pupils from all of our secondary schools came together to discuss British Values at three regional Cluster conferences aimed at preparing students for the Partnership Conference. The theme of the conference is ‘British Culture and Values in the Catholic Secondary School – Our Students’ perspective’ This theme will be strongly linked with a consideration of our Christian values and the delivery of the SMSC agenda. There will be a strong link with the Ofsted framework and the opinions and thoughts of students will be taken into account in helping to shape the direction and delivery of the final conference. A key note speaker has Newsletter—Edition 1 Winter 2015 been approached and we are delighted to have Andy Burnham, the current Shadow Secretary of State for Health, to provide the key note speech at the conference.

Schools now have a responsibility to deliver British Values as part of their curriculum and this is an opportunity to take account of students’ understanding of this topic and how it could be delivered and incorporated throughout the whole school. Four students from Year 10 or 12 will represent their school in the Partnership Confer-

Lord Nash, Department for Education, has stated: ‘We want every school to promote the basic British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance for those of different faiths and beliefs.’

The Student Cluster Conferences were arranged in March at St Mary’s College, Crosby, St Peter’s Catholic High School, Orrell and Broughton Hall, Liverpool. The feedback from students was very positive and their responses included the following: 91% of those attending said they now had a better understanding of how their values impact upon their decisions.

88% stated that they now have greater knowledge of what is meant by British values.

87% understand how Catholic values, personal values and British values are all interlinked.

We now look forward with anticipation to the Archdiocesan Conference that will be held at Langtree Park, St Helens on 30th June 2015 with guest speaker Andy Burnham MP.

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Liverpool Secondary Schools’ Partnership Newsletter

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UPCOMING EVENTS Central Cluster Leadership Programmes Thursday, 30 April 8am -10am St Cuthbert’s Catholic Community College, St Helens East Cluster CPD Meeting Friday, 8 May 9.15am - 10.45am St Peter’s Catholic High School, Orrell Post 16 Meeting Thursday, 14 May 9am - 4.30pm St John Bosco Arts College, Liverpool West Cluster CPD Meeting Thursday, 21 May 8am -10am St Francis Xavier’s College, Liverpool Newsletter—Edition 1 Winter 2015 Central Cluster CPD Meeting Wednesday, 3 June 8am - 10am All Saints’ Catholic High School, Liverpool Secondary Partnership Headteachers Conference Tuesday, 9th June 9am -1pm Wrightington Hotel, Wigan Provisional Meeting for School Student Conference Representatives Thursday, 11 June 2pm - 4pm LACE Deputy Headteachers/Senior Leaders Conference Tuesday, 16th June 9am - 4pm LACE Literacy Across the Curriculum Wednesday, 24 June (all day) Langtree Park Stadium, St Helens Student Voice Conference Tuesday, 30 June 10am - 2pm Langtree Park Stadium, St Helens Science Conference Thursday, 2 July 9.30am - 4pm St John Bosco Arts College, Liverpool

If you have any comments or observations about this newsletter then we would welcome them.

Please forward those comments to Paul Greenall, Partnership Director p.greenall@rcaol.co.uk All dates are correct at the time of printing, but can be subject to change.

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