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Training to teach

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Trainees 2017

Churchill Academy’s cohort of trainee teachers 2017

This week I’ve had the privilege of working with our newest cohort of trainee teachers, who have started their teaching practice placements with us. Training the next generation of teachers is a vital part of the work of the Academy, and our school community is enriched by the new ideas and energy that our trainees bring to us each year.

I always wanted to be a teacher. My Grandad, both parents, my cousin and my uncle are teachers; it’s our family trade! As a teenager I did summer jobs teaching music and drama on performing arts and activity camps, and I did work experience in local schools. I went straight into a PGCE (postgraduate certificate of education) from University. I promised myself that, if I didn’t enjoy it, I’d stop – but I loved it, and I’ve never looked back.

Even though I trained as a secondary English teacher, my course began with a two-week primary school experience. Where better to start than right at the beginning? I went to a primary school on the outskirts of Nottingham and worked with a mixed Year 5/6 class. I started with some small group work. I remember helping the class teacher hand-crank the Banda machine to get my worksheets off to do some technical accuracy work with a group of six hand-picked students. Here’s my crib sheet from my very first try at “proper teaching”:

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Hand-cranked Banda-machine worksheet from pre-photocopier days, in purple ink with red pen notes from my younger self!

And then, in the last days of the fortnight, it was time to take the whole class. I was going to get them to do some creative writing based on a piece of music. I cranked the Banda machine, I planned my lesson with the class teacher, I psyched myself up. Then, the class teacher stepped out. It was over to me.

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Worksheet from my first ever full-class lesson

I don’t remember much about the lesson, if I’m honest. What I do remember – what I’ll never forget – was the debrief with the teacher afterwards. “How do you think it went?” she asked, kindly. “It was okay…” I said, hesitantly. “And were you comfortable with the noise level?” she asked. A sure sign of a skilful teacher: giving me the opportunity to learn from failure and improve. Here’s what I wrote in my evaluation:

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Evaluation of my first lesson

“I learned that success does not come from rushing into things, but from taking things slowly.” The first lesson wasn’t brilliant, but the second was better. I learned, very early on, that it’s okay not to get something perfectly right first time, provided you learn from it and do better the next time. This has stayed with me to this day.

My primary school experience journal ended with a series of reflection tasks. The final question was: “How do you now see yourself as a beginning teacher?” Here’s what I wrote:

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How I saw myself, as a beginning teacher, in 1996

“Ahead of me now I see a lot of hard work; an almost infeasible amount. However, my work with LF has given me a set of goals, and another role model to emulate, and my enjoyment of the experience has proved that no matter how high the mountains of work, the reward of a child proud of his or her success or achievement makes it all worthwhile.”

Nothing has really changed since then: there is still nothing better than seeing a student proud of what they’ve achieved. I’m quite envious of our new trainees: they have so much to look forward to.

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If you’re thinking of a career in teaching, there a lots of ways to get into the profession. We run School Experience Days at Churchill where you can find out what it’s like to be in the classroom, and learn more about routes into teaching. For more details, see the “Train with us” page on the Academy website.

Alternatively, the Get Into Teaching website gives all the information you need about training to teach. There is a free Get into Teaching event in Bath on Saturday 11th November 2017, where colleagues from Churchill and a range of local providers will be on hand to answer any questions about teaching or teacher training. Click here to register.

Churchill’s Vision: to set no limits on what we can achieve

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Vision and Values

Churchill Academy & Sixth Form’s Vision and Values

Last month I wrote about Churchill’s new values of kindness, curiosity and determination. These values underpin our vision: to set no limits on what we can achieve. Our intention is to unleash that unknown potential that sits within each and every one of our students. We try to ensure that there is always a next step, always an extra challenge, always that encouragement to push yourself further. But we also take time to build confidence, because often the biggest barrier to students’ achievement is not the grown-ups around them telling them they can’t but that nagging voice inside their own mind which says “I can’t do it.” Or “I’ll never be as good as them.” Or “it’s too difficult.” Our whole ethos and approach here at Churchill is to equip students with an inner voice to talk back to themselves, so “I can’t do it” becomes “I can’t do it…yet.” “I’ll never be as good as them,” becomes “I’m going to learn how they do it so I can do it too.” And “it’s too hard” becomes “this is going to take time and effort, but I’m going to learn how.”

GM Phrases

This approach underpins our guiding purpose, to inspire and enable young people to make a positive difference both whilst they are here at the Academy but, perhaps more importantly, after they leave us. An education at Churchill Academy & Sixth Form provides young people with the knowledge, skills, character and confidence to make their own positive contribution. If we do our job right, the world our children will build will be better than the one we live in now.

The vision and purpose lead us to our end result. We have the highest expectations of achievement and progress within the curriculum, because achieving the best possible qualifications brings with it the benefit of choice. But achievement is more than that – it’s about young people finding their identity, their voice, and the self-confidence and determination to take the next step and make their mark.

These principles, underpinned by our values, guide our work at Churchill. We thank all our staff, students and families for supporting us in working towards these ambitious goals.

The new Science and Technology Building

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Group Crop

Science and Catering students Hannah, Caitlin, Jasmine and Shannon joined me, along with Laurence Wright and Ashley Mutch from H. Mealing & Sons, on Monday for the official “cutting the ground” ceremony for the new Science and Technology building.

This has been a really exciting week! We found out back in April that we had been awarded £3.9 million as part of the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s Condition Improvement Fund to replace the ageing facilities in Tudor with a brand new building. Since then Mr Branch has been working flat out in collaboration with our architects, Quattro, the legal team, building contractors, the planners and the Science and Technology staff to finalise the plans, schedules and designs for the building. Finally, on Monday, work began with the first diggers starting the excavations.

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I got to sit in a JCB!

A bigger project

We already have experience in developing a new build with the Alan Turing Building, but this is almost twice the size. At almost 14,000 square metres, the new build will contain twelve new Science laboratories and two new catering classrooms, along with the necessary prep rooms and offices for staff. A Science block brings with it all kinds of challenges that “normal” buildings don’t have, including fume cupboards and gas taps, but also facilities for the safe storage of nuclear materials and hazardous chemicals. And we are determined that the catering facilities will be state-of-the-art too, with all-new equipment for our students to cook up a storm with!

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Shannon, Caitlin, Hannah and Jasmine wanted a go too!

A look at the plans

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One of the highlights of our visit to the site compound on Monday was a chance to look through the plans. From the landscaping that is going to take place around the building, to the plans for the pathway to get access around the Sports Centre, and particularly to the room plans, it was amazing to see the drawings of how the building will look. The contractors have also marked out the footprint of the building on the ground this week – it’s going to be huge.

What’s next?

Later this year we’re going to be running a competition with our students to choose the name for the new Science and Technology block. Students will research famous female scientists, and present to Senior Leaders and Governors their pitches for why they think our building should be named after their chosen individual. The most persuasive presentation will win! We hope that this will provide inspiration for students using the building over the next sixty years to pursue innovation and excellence in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) and overcome the inequality which is currently a big issue in that sector.

The third and final phase of our Tudor block project will be the demolition of the existing building, and the redevelopment of the site where the building has stood for over 60 years. We had the first planning meeting about phase three this week, as we prepare our next bid. By the end of 2019, the whole Academy site will look very different indeed!

Behaviour for learning

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08_Chapter 8 Figure 3

Churchill Academy & Sixth Form’s Attitude to Learning Scale

This year at Churchill we have made behaviour our number one priority. We wanted to build on our already high standards to ensure the very best behaviour and conduct from all our students, all the time.

In March this year the government published an independent review of behaviour in schools. The report’s author, Tom Bennett, says:

“A student’s experience in school remains one of the most insightful indicators of later life success in any one of a number of metrics. For many it is the best chance they will ever have to flourish. How they conduct themselves at school is crucial to that experience. Helping them develop good behaviour is therefore one of the most important tasks a school faces…

…Whatever one believes the aims of education to be, all of [them] are best realised in schools where good behaviour is the norm, and antisocial, selfish, or self-destructive behaviour is minimised.”

It’s hard to argue with Bennett’s conclusions. Here at Churchill we believe that good behaviour is the foundation upon which a successful education is built. It’s a minimum expectation that students at Churchill will be polite, well-mannered, and tolerant, but we expect not just compliance but active participation in learning and taking responsibility for the choices they make. That’s why we use the Attitude to Learning Scale (pictured above) alongside the Code of Conduct (below) to help our students understand our expectations of them.

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Churchill Academy Code of Conduct

The Code of Conduct lays out our expectations of student behaviour in, around and beyond the Academy; the Attitude to Learning Scale helps students understand the things they need to do in lessons to ensure they are making the most of their opportunities to learn and make progress.

Each subject reports on Attitude to Learning in every progress check, but teachers can now reward students for demonstrating “Highly Motivated” attitudes in lessons at any time through our new rewards system. Similarly, whilst students may receive concerns for breaking the Code of Conduct, we are now placing an increased emphasis on giving rewards to those who consistently meet or exceed our expectations. Our aim is to use this positive reinforcement to ensure that those students who behave well consistently are recognised for their part in building a culture where exemplary behaviour and attitude to learning is the norm. It is this interplay between behaviour and attitude to learning that ensures the best chance of success in school.

Our staff and students have responded brilliantly to this new focus. Since the start of the term, our 1481 students have been awarded a staggering 8335 reward points for attitude to learning alone, alongside over 2000 for excellent classwork and homework and 1148 for demonstrating our values of kindness, curiosity and determination or making a contribution to Academy life. In total, across all categories, our students have been awarded 12,794 reward points in three weeks!

It’s safe to say it’s been a good start to the year.

Churchill’s Values: Kindness, Curiosity, Determination

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Valuescropped

Our values are what we judge to be important in life; they are the principles and standards that govern our behaviour. We spent the summer term thinking long and hard about what we valued, and what we should value, as a school. A group of sixteen staff volunteers worked together to develop our ideas, before representatives from each of the main school tutor groups and the Sixth Form council offered their views.  The Governing Body formally adopted Churchill Academy & Sixth Form’s new values in July 2017.

The values are designed to guide our behaviour and decision-making in everything we do at the Academy. Our three values are kindness, curiosity, and determination.

Kindness

At Churchill, we are kind to one another. This means that we are considerate and generous every day, caring for one another and doing everything we can to make sure everybody else has a good day at school. Kindness reinforces our shared sense of community; it builds trust and respect; and it ensures that we take our social responsibilities seriously.

“A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees.” (Amelia Earhart)

Curiosity

At Churchill, we are constantly curious and hungry for new learning. We value enquiring minds and a spirit of exploration. The desire to know or learn something new motivates us to try our hardest in everything we do.

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled” (Plutarch)

Determination

At Churchill, we are persistent and relentless in the pursuit of our goals – both academic and personal. This determination to keep going when learning is difficult, and to come back and try again when we struggle, helps us to succeed.

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” (Thomas Edison)

 

Thank you to all the staff, students and Governors who contributed to the work on our vision and values.

 

 

The Alan Turing Building

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1928, Alan Turing, aged 16 (cropped)

Alan Turing at age 16 (1928)

It is with great pride that we have named our new Computing, Business Studies and Social Sciences building The Alan Turing Building, in honour of the great war hero and father of modern computer science. Alan Turing died on this day, June 7th, in 1954.

Who was Alan Turing?

Alan Turing was born on 23rd June 1912, and is widely credited as the founder of computer science. He is best known for his work at Bletchley Park in the Second World War, where he and his team of codebreakers successfully cracked the Enigma Code used by Nazi Germany to communicate with its Navy. His work is thought to have shortened the war by two to four years, saving between 14 and 21 million lives in the process.

Alan Turing was educated at Sherborne School in Dorset, and later at King’s College, Cambridge. Whilst at Cambridge, Turing came across an unsolved mathematical problem – the question of Decidability, the Entscheidungsproblem. Turing set out to work out whether there could be a definite method by which it could be decided whether any mathematical assertion was provable. In order to answer this question, he came up with the idea of the Universal Turing Machine – a theoretical machine which would follow the instructions laid out by a “programmer” in order to complete mathematical tasks. In other words, he invented the idea of a computer.

Four-rotor German Enigma cypher machine, 1939-1945.

A German Enigma cipher machine (source)

It was this theory which was turned into practice at Bletchley Park. He created a machine called “Victory” in the Spring of 1940 which was able to crack the German military code-machine, Enigma. By 1943, Turing and his team were cracking a total of 84,000 different Enigma messages every month – two messages every minute. Every time the Germans introduced a new code or cipher, Turing’s machines were able to crack it.

 

Turing’s Bombe computer, rebuilt at Bletchley Park
Rear view of Turing’s Bombe computer

Turing’s Bombe computer, rebuilt at Bletchley Park (source)

Following the war, Turing worked on developing his code-breaking machines into universal computers, paving the way for the technology revolution which has transformed all of our lives. But nobody at the time knew of the contribution that Alan Turing had made to the end of the war, as his work was classified top secret until 1974.

Turing had been openly gay since his time at Cambridge. However, homosexuality was a criminal offence at the time, and he was arrested for gross indecency and came to trial in March 1952. He did not deny his actions or defend himself; he said he saw no wrong in being gay, and told the police he believed homosexuality should be legalised. Rather than go to prison, he accepted a form of “chemical castration” – a year-long programme of hormone injections designed to suppress his sexuality. On 8th June 1954 his body was found; he had taken cyanide poison. The coroner’s verdict was suicide.

Homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967, and in 2013 Alan Turing received a royal pardon, removing his criminal record. He is now widely recognised as a war hero and a pioneer in Mathematics and Computing.

Why the Alan Turing Building?

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The Alan Turing Building at Churchill Academy & Sixth Form, opened June 2017

Turing represents the best of British innovation, using his expertise in mathematics to solve unsolvable problems, save millions of lives, and change the face of technology. He also represents equality, refusing to hide or be ashamed of who he really was, no matter what other people thought. In both ways, Alan Turing has changed our society for the better. We hope that the students educated in this building, dedicated to Computing – the subject he invented – along with Business Studies and the Social Sciences – will embody the same spirit of innovation and equality, and go on as he did to make the world a better place.

Inside the Alan Turing Building

These photographs, taken during the final fit-out of the Alan Turing Building, show the Smarter Spaces colour scheme designed by our students. This light and airy space, equipped with brand new computers and interactive displays, will be a superb facility for our students today and far into the future and, we hope, a fitting tribute to someone whose story we think everyone should know.

Election Education Issues

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Ballot box 'is key to democracy'

As I am sure you know, the Prime Minister has called a General Election on 8th June. As with any General Election, there will be many issues which will be at stake when the nation votes. I would like to take this opportunity to make you aware of the major education issues of the moment, and their impact on Churchill Academy & Sixth Form. My hope is that you will ask the candidates about these issues, find out where the different parties stand on them, and use what you find out to help you when you decide where to place your “X” on June 8th.

Issue 1: school funding

School Funding

This is the major issue facing schools – including Churchill – at the moment. Schools have been on a “flat cash” funding arrangement for several years. This means that the amount of funding we receive has remained exactly the same with no prospect of any increase. However, from this “flat cash” we have been required to pay out more as cost pressures continue to rise. For example:

  • Pay rises and rising costs due to inflation have been unfunded.
  • Employer contribution on teachers’ pensions rose 2.38% from September 2015 – this has been unfunded.
  • Main band National Insurance employer contributions increased in April 2016 by 3.4% – this has been unfunded.
  • A fund called the Education Support Grant (ESG) which Churchill received as part of academy funding dropped from £140 to £87 per pupil initially, and has now been removed completely.

In simple terms, we have to pay more out but we aren’t getting any more in. The government has repeatedly said that education funding is at record levels, but the only reason they can say this is because there are more pupils in the system; the per pupil amount has not gone up. The government has also consulted on a new National Funding Formula for schools. Churchill actually stands to benefit from that formula if it is introduced as planned next year, but not all schools will do so as the amount of money in this system overall will remain the same. We have also been successful in securing grant funding for new buildings. Whilst that funding is welcome – and necessary – it is ring-fenced to the bricks and mortar and does not supplement our educational costs. Overall, the current situation equates to an 8% real-terms cut in the schools budget by 2020.

The impact of “flat cash” coming in with increased cost pressures means that schools up and down the country have less money to spend on education. Less money means fewer teachers which means class sizes get bigger. Larger classes mean less time available for individual pupil support. Less money means fewer opportunities for young people to engage in enrichment activities or educational visits. And less money means reducing the amount of support that can be given to individual students who need it such as those with special educational needs, behavioural issues, low prior attainment or those requiring support for mental health problems. In fact, the Education Select Committee published a report just this week which said “financial pressures are restricting the provision of mental health services in schools and colleges. The next Government must review the effect of the budget reductions in the education sector.”

This is the hard truth of education funding at the moment. We have continued to work very hard to provide the outstanding education that we know your children are entitled to, but without additional funding that will be difficult to sustain. Please make sure that the candidates for election on June 8th hear the message that proper funding for schools is your priority too.

Questions to ask your local candidates on school funding:

  1. Spending on schools may be at record levels, but that is because we have more children of school age than ever before and costs are rising. How will you ensure that school budgets are protected in real terms for the duration of the next parliament?
  2. The nation’s children should be provided with a broad curriculum, great support and enriching activities. Is your party willing to fund schools properly so our children have the same opportunities as previous generations?
  3. The Education Select Committee noted that half of all cases of mental illness in adult life start before the age of 15, and that one in 10 children aged between five and 16 have had a diagnosed mental disorder. What will your party do to ensure that mental health services for young people are properly funded and able to cope with demand?

Issue 2: evidence-based policy

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One of the frustrations of teachers and school leaders is the tendency for government to make policy for education without a firm or robust evidence base. Sometimes, it seems as if their policy decisions are based more on personal experience than on research of what actually works in schools. Therefore, as a minimum, we would ask that any future government provide a clear basis of evidence for any proposals, hold transparent consultation before any policy decisions are finalised, and establish, at the outset, evaluation models that ensure that any proposals will benefit young people from disadvantaged as well as advantaged backgrounds.

The current government’s proposals to allow the the creation of new grammar schools, or Labour’s proposal to provide free school meals for all primary school children, fail this test. There is no evidence that either of these things will help improve the standards of education in Britain. The creation of more grammar schools, along
with, inevitably, hundreds – possibly thousands – of secondary modern schools, will be hugely damaging to the nation’s children. A second class education for the many, particularly, but not exclusively, for those from more disadvantaged backgrounds, is not just educationally unacceptable but morally and economically disastrous.

The current Conservative Government has held a consultation on new grammar schools but refuses to publish the results. Yet the evidence is overwhelming: selection damages the quality of education a nation’s children receives. What we must demand is a high quality education for every child, not selection and privilege for the few. What will make a difference is creating the conditions to ensure that high quality teaching and learning takes place in every classroom in the country, by ensuring a supply of great teachers into a properly funded school system.

Questions to ask your local candidates on evidence-based policy:

  1. What evidence is there that the education policies in your manifesto will make a positive difference to all children, both advantaged and disadvantaged?
  2. New grammar schools mean new secondary moderns. What is your position on creating new grammar schools for the few and, as a result, new secondary moderns for the many?

Issue 3: teacher recruitment and retention

We are very fortunate at Churchill to have a full staffing complement of highly-qualified, expert teachers. However, nationally the teaching profession is facing a significant staffing shortfall: too few graduates are training to be teachers, and too many qualified teachers are leaving the profession.  It is therefore vital that all political parties pledge to celebrate teaching as a great career and improve incentives to encourage more graduates into the profession, by improving career development support and opportunities for teachers in order to retain more great teachers in the profession.

Questions to ask your local candidate: teacher recruitment and retention

  1. Great teachers are at the heart of a great school. What is your party going to do to make teaching a more attractive career to our best graduates?
  2. The current government has missed the targets for teacher recruitment for the past four years. What are you going to do to ensure your party would hit the teacher recruitment targets in the future?

Conclusion: use your vote!

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I recognise that we serve a diverse community which will include the full range of political views. It is not my intention, nor is it my place, to influence your vote. What I hope I have done is lay out the key issues in this election which impact on Churchill Academy & Sixth Form and schools across the country, so that you can ask well-informed questions and make your own decisions based on the answers you receive.

The final thing that I would say, however, is that we are incredibly fortunate to live in a democracy where every citizen has the right to help choose representatives to govern us in parliament. I would urge every member of our school community who is eligible to vote to register by 22nd May and to exercise their democratic right and responsibility to vote on June 8th.

Thank you.

With thanks to the ASCL 2017 Election Manifesto, and the HTRT Doorstep Manifesto, for materials used in this blog.  

Update: 19th May

Now that the political parties have published their manifestos, the SSAT (Schools, Students and Teachers’ Network) has collated their education policies into a side-by-side comparison document – read the comparison here: SSAT Guide to the 2017 Manifestos and Education Policy

How do the new GCSE grades work?

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In the summer of 2017, students in Year 11 will be the first to receive GCSEs under the new 9-1 grading system. They will be graded in this way for English and Maths. In summer 2018, these grades will be awarded for English, Maths, Sciences, History, Geography, French and Spanish. In summer 2019, all GCSEs will be graded this way.

In this blog I will explain what the new grades mean, and how they are awarded. It is quite complicated, but I have tried to make it as simple as possible! I finish the blog this week with “what it means for students” – and this is the most important bit! – so if you get lost, please skip to the end.

Why are the grades changing?

The Government have introduced new GCSE courses for all schools in England. The content of these courses is more challenging than the old-style GCSEs, including less coursework and focusing much more on assessment in exams at the end of the course. The new number grades will identify whether students have taken the new, more challenging GCSEs, or the old-style ones.

What do the new grades mean?

A grade 9 is the highest grade in the new system; a grade 1 is the lowest pass mark. Below a grade 1 is a fail, and will be awarded “U” for ungraded.

In the first year of each new GCSE, broadly the same proportion of students will get a grade 4 or above as would have got a grade C or above in the old system. This has been called a “standard pass” by the Department for Education. If you get a grade 4 or above in English or Maths, you won’t need to re-sit those subjects post-16. The Department for Education has called a grade 5 a “strong pass” which complicates matters. A grade 5 is equivalent (in the first year of each new GCSE) to a high C or a low B in the old system.

Broadly the same proportion of students who would have got grades A or A* in the old system will be awarded grades 7, 8 or 9 in the new system. This means that fewer grade 9s will be awarded nationally than A*s under the old system.

You can see the equivalence of new grades to old in this illustration from Ofqual, the exams and curriculum regulator:

How will the new grades be awarded?

GCSE grades are awarded after all the exam marking has taken place.

Exams and coursework are marked according to the mark schemes issued by the examination boards. These only have numerical marks on – exams and coursework aren’t graded by markers. When all the marks for everyone who has taken the subject in the country are in, then the grade boundaries are decided so that broadly the same proportion of children nationally get a grade 4 and above as would have got a grade C and above, and the same for grade 7 and above with grade A and above.

Once the candidates at grades 7 and above have been decided, a formula will be used that means that about 20% of all grades at 7 or above will be a grade 9. The grade 8 boundary will be midway between grade 9 and grade 7. The same process applies to the other grades (see Ofqual’s explanation here).

In other words, your grade at GCSE in the new system doesn’t just depend on how well you have done – it depends on how well you have done relative to all the other candidates in the country taking the same GCSE as you. If you are the top 20% of candidates in the grade 7 and above group, you will be awarded a grade 9. If you are outside that, you won’t. This will not be the same each year, and will change with each new group of students taking the exams every year.

This is very significant because it means that if, nationally, lots of children do very well in the exam, the grade boundaries will move up. If it is a hard exam, and students nationally do not do as well, the boundaries will move down. This makes it difficult for teachers to predict grades accurately; we have to make our best professional judgment on the information available to us.

What does it mean for students?

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The changes mean that it is impossible for teachers to say “if you do this you will definitely get a grade 5 or above,” because getting a grade 5 depends on how well everyone else in the country does relative to how well you have done. We can’t possibly know how well everyone else in the country has done or is going to do, so all we can do is teach you to get better and better at your own Maths, English, Science, History, Geography and all your other subjects, until you sit the GCSE exam. You have to keep working and pushing yourself to achieve more because what was good enough for a grade 7 last year won’t necessarily be good enough for a grade 7 this year. Don’t settle! You need to keep improving so that you go into the exam at the end of Year 11 fully prepared and confident that you are the best at each subject that you can possibly be – and then you will get the grade that you deserve.

Remember there are posts on this blog to help you to revise effectively, and you can download our guide for families to helping students revise.

Good luck!

 

A step into the future

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I was on duty on the field when I found out. Mr Neale, our Business Manager, came to find me. “We’ve got the new Science and Technology block,” he said. It took a moment to sink in, but then we were both grinning from ear-to-ear and shaking hands. It was the news that we’d been waiting for.

Bid2

It’s a strange experience receiving the news that the Academy has been awarded £3,905,857 in government funding. When I got back to my office, there was an email waiting for me with the subject line “Application Outcome – Condition Improvement Fund (CIF) 2017-18″. The email went on:

Dear Colleague,

Thank you for applying to the Condition Improvement Fund (CIF) 2017 to 2018.

We received requests for more than £1.3 billion for over 3800 projects to this year’s round. Following our assessment of applications, we have announced £466 million for 1435 projects across 1184 academies and sixth-form colleges.

You can view the full list of successful projects at…

The link takes you to a Department for Education website page. Then you have to download a spreadsheet. Then you need to scroll through the spreadsheet which lists all 1435 successful projects, looking for North Somerset…and there it is. Churchill Academy. “Replacement of Science Labs and Design Technology facilities.” We’ve got the bid.

Only about a third of the bids submitted across the country were successful. We are one of only four bids in North Somerset to be funded this year. For the Academy, it’s the culmination of years of hard work. The first bid to replace our ageing Tudor block was submitted in 2014 – and was unsuccessful. Since then, we’ve been working tirelessly to convince the Education Funding Agency that the building – originally built in the mid-1950s for the very first students to come to the new school in Churchill – was in need of replacement.

Tudor Roof

Photographs from our CIF bid showing some of the issues with the Tudor block roof

We’ve had surveys. We’ve had health and safety and environmental audits. We’ve had structural reports. We’ve been up on the roof to photograph the cracks, leaks and gaps. And we’ve put hours and hours into planning for the replacement buildings, working with our architects and our contractors to ensure that every detail was considered and every eventuality planned for.

In the last cycle of funding, we were awarded £1.3 million to build our new Computing and Business Studies block, which is very nearly finished. That project has run like clockwork, with minimal disruption to the Academy, and is due to be handed over to us by the end of April. We will then fit it out with computers and equipment, ready for students in June.

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Computing and Business Studies building – nearly finished!

That building replaces the top floor of the Tudor block, and was called “Phase One.” We submitted “Phase Two” – the replacement of the ground and first floor  – in December 2016. At the top of the submission documents, I wrote a letter to plead our case, which concluded:

“2017 is the school’s Diamond Jubilee year. Our main building has served us well for sixty years, but the students of 2017 deserve better than to receive their education in a building designed and built for the students of 1957. Its replacement is now a necessity.”

All that hard work has paid off. The second phase of the project will go up on the site of “The Cage” behind the Sports Centre, and will include twelve brand-new Science Labs and two modern and fully equipped catering rooms. Work has already begun this week in preparation for the build. Ground will be broken this summer. The first students are due to go into the new facilities at the beginning of 2019. Now all that’s left to do is to bid for the funding to demolish the decommissioned building…

It’s Mr Neale’s last term-time week at the Academy this week, as he is relocating to take up a new role after Easter. He’s been busy tying up loose ends, handing over to those taking over, and in particular seeing our current building project through to completion. I’d like to pay tribute to him here as he leaves us, and thank him for his contribution to Churchill. The facilities that students will enjoy for generations to come are a fitting legacy for him to leave behind – we all wish him well in the future.

Smarter Spaces: colour for learning

/ chrishildrew / 2 Comments

03 09 17

As you will have seen from our newsletter, our new Business Studies and Computing building is nearing completion. As part of this project, we have been working with Smarter Spaces, an education project arm of Dulux, to design the colour scheme for the building’s interior.

Smarter Spaces HD Logo

Smarter Spaces aims to help teachers and children thrive by enabling schools to design building environments to support better teaching and learning. Central to the approach is that teachers and children are involved in design, so they take more pride in their school.

Our students, with the help of Mr Smith and Mrs Foster from the Academy and Yusuf Alharrari  from Smarter Spaces, have been working on the design brief for the interior of the new building since July 2016. The rest of this blog has been written with their help to show you what they’ve done!

The Smarter Spaces Project (by the Smarter Spaces Team)

We came up with the following objectives:

  • We needed to understand what colours had to feature in the new building so it still fitted into the rest of the school
  • We needed to work with Dulux’s Colour Advisor to create two colour schemes
  • We needed to vote on which colour scheme we wanted to use
  • We needed to work together to select what colours to go in what rooms

Factors to consider

  • Needs to fit into the feel of the school
  • The new build will be Tudor House, so Tudor’s red needs to feature in the building
  • We needed to choose colours that would go with the red and with each other
  • It needs to be easy to maintain
  • This is our legacy – what we design now will be passed down to students who come to Churchill for years to come.

We then met with a colour consultant from Smarter Spaces to work on a design that fitted the brief.

Tudor Red

We decided to make the interior doors Tudor red, so that the building had a clear house identity. We also made the trim grey, which is easy to maintain and matches the outside of the Hall.

Red and Grey

The “Teaching Wall”

Inside the classrooms, our Colour Advisor explained that research has shown that the “teaching wall” (where the screen and whiteboard are situated) should be a bright colour, so that attention is drawn to it. The other walls, meanwhile, should be a neutral colour. We also learned that walls should be painted in a single block colour so they are easy to maintain and so that they don’t distract attention from learning.

Choosing a colour palette

Following our brief, the Colour Advisor came up with sets of colours which would work with the red doors and grey trim. Option 1 was bright and exciting, because we told Dulux we wanted our school to be bright and energetic.

Option 1a

Option 2 was fresh and vibrant, because our school is in the countryside and surrounded by nature.

Option 2

We voted – and Option 1 won (just)!

 Choosing the colours for the rooms

Once we had chosen the colour palette, we had to select which paint would be used for the teaching wall in each room. We used the architect’s floor plans to work this out.

groundfloorfirstfloor

Smarter Spaces then helped us to create a visualisation of what this might look like when the building was finished:

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We presented our work to the Senior Teachers at the school – and they loved it! We can’t wait to see it in reality when the new building opens this summer.

Thank yous

As an Academy we are very grateful to Smarter Spaces for working with us, and for donating the paint to the project as part of the deal! They have been fantastic partners to work with and they have helped us to understand the design process, the importance and impact of colour, and to create a legacy for future generations of Churchill students.

Prepared by the Smarter Spaces Team:

  • Molly Ebdon (WRO)
  • Courtney Evans (SNM)
  • James Goodyear-Evans (TPOC)
  • Alfie Laws (WVP)
  • Rowan Vine (HFH)
  • Charlotte Wilkinson (TMR)
  • Charlee Beach (HLCB)
  • Paige Evans (TMB)
  • Katie Ward (SASH)
  • Mr Smith
  • Mrs Foster
  • Yusuf Alharrari from Smarter Spaces

Thank you!