December Newsletter

December 2017 Edition

Newsletter Welcome to this term’s edition of the Red Rose Teaching School Alliance newsletter; we hope it will provide you with a quick snapshot of the alliance’s recent activities, as well as outlining a number of CPD and leadership opportunities available in the New Year.

Continued Professional Development Red Rose’s Inaugural Humanities Conference Tops 100 The alliance notched up another huge success on the 27th October, hosting the first ever Red Rose Humanities Conference. A staggering total of over 100 History, Geography and Religious Studies teachers came to the event, representing schools from across the North West. An impressive range of guest speakers joined them - including university lecturers, serving teachers, exam board representatives and several other organisations, like the Philosophy Council and the Royal Geographical Society. Delegates were spoilt for choice on the day, with sessions ranging from Q and A to lectures. Perhaps the best indication of the success of the event comes from the overwhelmingly positive feedback from the delegates with 100% rating the conference as good or outstanding. Due to the conference’s success, the Red Rose TSA is looking at hosting a similar event next year.

Twilight Programme Goes from Strength to Strength By the Christmas holidays the alliance’s CPD twilight programme will have already hosted 20 sessions with presentations from 10 local secondary schools on topics ranging from ‘Getting Boys Engaged’ to ‘Literacy for Learning’. 2017-18 is expected to be a record year, with more sessions, more delegates, more presenters and more schools involved than ever before.

A huge thank you to all those who have given their time, expertise and enthusiasm to make this programme such a success. With another 37 sessions already calendared for the spring and summer term, this is truly exciting time for the Red Rose alliance and its partners.

A quick reminder that all bookings must be made through Mrs Jane Prescott (Teaching School Administrator) by emailing jprescott@bishopr.co.uk. Please ensure bookings are made at least 7 days before the session is due to take place, as presenters are informed of numbers to allow them to prepare the appropriate amount of resources. Cancellations must be notified to Jane Prescott and should be avoided where possible, to avoid inconvenience to the presenter.

January’s Events are listed below:

The Magenta Principles Training Day Mike Hughes, author of ‘The Magenta Principles’, recently put on a fabulous training day at Bishop Rawstorne, with a number of alliance partners attending. The Magenta Principles is an umbrella phrase that refers to a philosophy and an approach to teaching based upon the premise that learning should be both exciting and engaging. More specifically, the phrase represents a pedagogy underpinned by an unshakeable belief that: • • •

Learning is the consequence of thinking…therefore our job is to get them to think Language is central to thinking…therefore our job is to get them to talk Learning is an active process…therefore our job is to get them doing

All delegates found the day inspiring and useful and a number have already been trying out the principles in the classroom.

Leadership Development The new NPQ suite of qualifications on your door step Looking to develop your leading edge? Are you ready to step up to leadership? Then the new NPQML and NPQSL programmes are for you. These newly structured qualifications are for anyone seeking recognition in their current management role or for those aspiring to move into a new management position.

There are 6 content areas for each NPQ level, which set out what a leader should know and be able to do. The areas are common to each NPQ, but the knowledge and skills within them increases in sophistication, depth and breadth progressively through each NPQ.

As a satellite provider for Tauheedul Education, and looking to work in partnership with another local teaching school alliance, we are bringing together a top table team of experienced and successful leaders, to ensure the best possible delivery of these exciting new courses.

Watch out for more details of the courses we’re going to be delivering in the New Year.

School to School Support We anticipate another busy year for our SLEs, with both Bishop Rawstorne and Penwortham Girls’ currently supporting a number of local schools and with both Lead schools being part of a Multi-TSA bid to secure funding for the provision of a literacy focused closing the gap strategy. Although our original SSIF application was unsuccessful, the bid has been revised, strengthened and re-submitted. If successful, this far reaching bid will see the Red Rose Alliance working in partnership with 5 other TSAs, as well as the local authority to support literacy development in 12 local secondaries. We hope to report the good news and a successful bid in the New Year (fingers crossed!)

Congratulations to the following teachers who have been designated SLEs:     

Carol Woodhouse – Head of English (PGHS) Nicola McDermott – Head of SMSC, PSHE and RE (PGHS) Rebecca Honeyman – Head of Science (PGHS) Liz Brown – Assistant Headteacher (Pendle Vale) Jennifer Hornby – Head of Mathematics (Byrchall High School)

Initial Teacher Training Our current group of 15 School Direct trainees are now half way through their first placement in our cluster schools and all seem to be making good progress. Moreover, with UCAS now open, recruitment for our 2018/2019 cohort is in full swing. Our focus this year is on recruiting more trainees, in particular into the category 3 shortage areas – computing, maths, MFL, physics, geography and RE. If you are aware of anyone who is interested in a career in teaching, please ask them to contact Helen Winter at Bishop Rawstorne (hwinter@bishopr.co.uk), who can support with school experience days and any other general enquiries.

Finally, we appreciate any feedback we get from our partner schools, so if you have any comments or views, please feel free to contact us.

Helen Winter and Ben Ward