Power to Create

Our School Leaders and Governors have spent considerable time considering the elements of each child’s education that will enable them to not only achieve academic excellence, but equally importantly to achieve full and enjoyable lives, not only in the workplace, but in their personal lives as members of their communities.

The development of ‘character’ is much debated in schools. Our schools work together to contribute to the development and expansion of effective approaches for building character, which clearly have a positive impact on educational attainment, engagement, employability and well-being. This is done according to priority by each in their own way, developing strands of character within the Moral, Civic, Intellectual and Performance Virtues (after Aristotle). What all our schools are committed to, as a joint effort, is to ensure expertise in the development of the ‘performance virtues’ of RESILIENCE and CONFIDENCE - these are the two most significant in terms of determining success, particularly for young people from deprived socio-economic backgrounds

In each of our schools, we strive to address the innate curiosity of children and develop confident and creative pupils through an entitlement to an education rich in the arts, design, cultural and creative activities. All subjects seek to foster creative responses, and teachers aim to be creative in their approaches to ensure excellent outcomes for young people. We seek in our schools to encourage powerful thinking and practical action, providing creative solutions to problems across all subjects. Below are articles about our schools work in developing creativity:

Successful people are often very confident, fluent speakers. They were not born that way. We believe that oracy skills need to be taught – a school experience of debating societies, discussion groups and engaging in dialogues with peers, teachers and other members of the community. We seek to ensure the explicit development of skills in using spoken language – as well as literacy and numeracy. We know this has a significant impact on their educational progress, and in the future for work and for full participation in democracy. Research shows that children who are taught these skills perform better in maths, science and so on. See below the types of things our young people and staff are doing to improve oracy skills:

Our Trust school work together to develop the best ways in supporting learners to develop the skills and personal attributes demanded by business and higher education and wider society as essential for success in life – for want of a better term, ‘soft skills’. Each school has its own framework for doing this, such as ‘personal, learning and thinking skills’ or the TRICS (Team, reflective, independent, Creative Learners.) See below specific work our schools have done in this area recently:

We aim for young people to gain technical expertise in whatever their chosen field – clearly this becomes more specialised as students get older and become more specialised in their chosen fields of study, building on a strong framework of skill development in all areas from early years upwards. Our Trust staff collaborate closely to ensure this skill development has progression and the technical expertise to develop it as required at each stage of a young persons learning. All our schools believe in generating meaningful learning experiences that make sense to the young people and have purpose – for example, when they are in the science lab they are a scientist! Our work in this area is supported heavily by RSA Fellows and RSA Royal Designers for Industry, as well as work experience, field visits, visitg experts. Staff CPD is a high priority so that young people have access to the very best in coaching and developing technical expertise, be that in sport, the design workshop or in the laboratory. See below some examples of the many facets of this work in our schools:

Emotional wellbeing is a clear indicator of academic achievement, success and satisfaction in later life. Evidence shows that mental health and wellbeing programmes in schools, can lead to significant improvements in children’s mental health, and social and emotional skills. Our schools develop provision, monitor and intervene systematically in order to do all that they can to ensure each young person’s wellbeing. Our staff teams are also at the forefront of developing effective mental health provision in school, in partnership with the RSA TSA, Pears Foundation, RSA Academies and other partners. See below what are schools are doing to develop wellbeing:See below some examples of the many facets of this work in our schools:

As part of the RSA Family of Academies, our schools commit to developing and publishing a Careers Education, Advice and Guidance plan to share with staff, parents, governors and employers.

Each of our schools commits to developing and publishing an Arts, Creativity and Cultural Education Plan

As RSA Academies we offer an extensive range of enrichment activities to enhance learning in each school, and across our schools.

Information on our student leadership program will be published soon.