We Collaborate

The Trust shared their curriculum model to wider stakeholders at a recent national seminar sponsored by ASPE and University College London (UCL). Professor Dominic Wyse introduced the seminar held with representatives from HEI’s, OFSTED, ASPE, MATs, Greater Manchester Learning Partnership and schools. The Education Learning Trust introduced the theme of ‘pupil agency’ led by the CEO and our learners as they shared their understanding of ‘choice’ and how this impacts on their own wellbeing and opportunities within their learning environment. A full conference on Children’s Agency will be held in Greater Manchester to further develop this theme with UCL and ASPE.

Gemma Norman has recently had an article published in the Chartered College Impact journal, which was written with Dr Yana Manyukhina and Professor Dominic Wyse in ‘Pupil Agency in action: Developing Curriculum and Pedagogy’.

All of our schools are the heart of their local communities and our students embrace their role as socially responsible young citizens.

We have been building our partnership with Hatherlow United Reform Church. The children have had the opportunity to meet Reverend Alison and are looking forward to the many visits down to the church that we have planned for this year, which will be kindly facilitated by members of the congregation who are keen to share their love of this wonderful local building. 

Last half term, Reverend Alison joined us at school for a Harvest assembly, from which the children learnt a lot about what used to happen in their local community. In return, we were keen to show our wider learning and support the church with Remembrance. Inspired by the clay poppies from the Tower of London that have recently taken up residence at Media City, children and staff in our school community each created their very own, unique poppy to be displayed at Hatherlow on Remembrance Day. Almost three hundred poppies were taken to the church on 11th November. 

Over the course of the partnership the MU Foundation has had a significant impact within the school and wider community. Manchester United donated food bags to each for the families most at need from February to Easter and Christmas hampers for a number of Werneth families.

Each Friday the MU Foundation provide a Street Reds session hosted at Werneth School for young people aged 8-18 years. These sessions are attended by around 60 participants from across the area each Friday evening, and provide a safe and structured environment for young people in the local community.

The MU Foundation partnership includes a full time member of staff based in the Academy delivering several programmes including mentoring, business enterprise, girls football, maths interventions, reading interventions, careers support, trips to offer wider experiences and Ball Assistant opportunities to one student each academic year.

The Kingsway School regularly meet and support with our local ‘Friends of Scholes Park’ community group where many events are organised for local families and schools, these include litter picking, wild flower and spring bulb planting and we are looking forward to working with an urban graffiti artist in the new year.

The Kingsway School is a frequent contributor to the newly established Cheadle Post. This free community newspaper distributes over 4,000 copies to local businesses and homes each month. This gives us a fantastic opportunity to showcase some of the amazing activities that regularly happen in our school.

Our DofE students continue to make us proud by volunteering in many different local organisations as part of their award. These students are a remarkable group of young people who continue to impress us with their dedication and commitment.

Our vision is that each of us will Flourish and Inspire others. One way in which we do this is by supporting our local community. By using our Superpower of Kindness to help, and the positivity that comes from this, we can create small ripples of thoughtfulness that then builds into a wave of positive action.

Each class supports a charity helping local, national and global needs. However, each child is also challenged to help their local community independently, and as expected, their response to this call to action is impressive. There are many examples of each ripple; one of our ex-pupils is working alongside our Site Manager each week to keep school in good repair, collections are made for our local food bank, children cook healthy meals for extended family, there are litter picking campaigns by families in nearby parks and children have been helping to serve in their local café.

Each of us know that individual, small contributions creates a cared for and happy community and our children know that this can grow from their kindness. This is the Meadowbank way.

During the national school closures, Gatley Primary School worked with its local community to hold a device amnesty in order to support children in the school, the Trust and in our local community, to have the devices they needed to access vital online learning.

We worked with local marketing expertise to advertise this and with our local food bank as the drop off point for the devices. Martin Dawes also invested and worked with us to launch devices bank.

This highly successful venture saw the community come together and support of families, and many others, through a high volume of kind and generous donations. These were distributed to children at Gatley Primary and Bredbury Green Primary as well as other local schools in Gatley. The community spirt and generosity was overwhelming and we are proud of the role the community and the school played during a period of such challenging times.