A* Apprentices!
Winning students show off their certificates with Manningtree High School Headteacher Miss Deborah Hollister
(Left to right: Lois Holness, Ellie Swinbourne, Lilli Green, George Messer, Ben Ward)
Anglia Ruskin University Chelmsford is no stranger to working with highly committed young people who are passionate about what they do and give of their absolute best. On Monday, 24th June, the university played host to a group of highly committed, hardworking and absolutely focused secondary school students who are preparing to take on a really significant personal challenge – that of gaining a Grade A* or a Grade A in their English GCSE!
One hundred and twenty Year 10 students from the eight NEEEP partner schools* and their English teachers took part in an Apprentice style challenge to develop their communication and teamwork skills. Using the University lecture theatre, library and classrooms, each of these aspiring English super stars attended a series of workshops on blogging, podcasting, speech writing and writing for the press. Students used ipads and mobile technology throughout the day to research and create their presentations. At the end of the day these A* apprentices presented their campaign to change the way young people in Essex are represented in the national media. Along the way they got to grips with the concepts and skills needed to gain the highest English GCSE grades.
The event was planned by the English Departments of the eight partner schools working together as the NEEEP English Development Group under the joint leadership of Deborah Hollister, Headteacher of Manningtree High School, and Jonathan Tippett, Executive Headteacher of the Stanway Federation.
‘All of the schools in the NEEEP Partnership are absolutely committed to ensuring that individual students make the best possible progress that they can, and so go on to gain the highest grades possible in their GCSE. This day is about our students working together to achieve more and it’s also about healthy competition between our young people. Alan Sugar would most definitely want to employ these talented young men and women.
Being able to host this event at Anglia Ruskin is really important for us so that we can show our students how close they are to a University education in terms of their ability and location! In all our schools we are absolutely committed to raising standards at all levels and working together in partnership to support our students to succeed. It was a real pleasure to attend the day, to listen to the students’ presentations and to award the certificates.’
One of the participants from the day posted this review on the English challenge day blog:
‘On the whole it was a really good day that was beneficial for everyone. It has really helped because some of us have our speaking and listening exams coming up and this has increased our confidence for these. All of the teachers were a great help. They gave us all of the information we needed to get our work to a high standard, and were very helpful whenever we needed them. It was a great day and I hope that other year 10's in the future will get to experience it.’
Jonathan Tippett talks about the NEEEP Partnership:
‘The North East Education Partnership (NEEEP) was formed in April 2012 with the Memorandum of Association signed in July of that year. It is an umbrella alliance of seven convertor academies based in Colchester and Tendring. Currently, we are educating around 7,500 students and jointly employ around 500 teaching staff. We got together with a very clear focus in mind. We want to ensure that our students get the very highest quality of teaching and learning and to make the best progress possible. By working together the partner schools can exchange best practice, buy-in additional resources and staff and benefit from economies of scale. The individual strengths of each school can be used to support other schools in the partnership so that we go from strength to strength. We believe that we will be able to offer our teachers better support and our students and parents can feel really confident that, as a collaborative group, we are putting our young people at the very heart of all we are doing. We want our youngsters to succeed and are completely committed to doing all that we can to ensure that they do.
This is the second major NEEEP event for students this year following on from the success of the Maths Challenge at Weston Homes Community Stadium in February. I am sure there will be many more occasions like this where we can challenge our young people and celebrate their achievements.’
* Clacton County High, The Gilberd, Manningtree High School, St Helena, The Harwich and Dovercourt School, The Stanway School, Thurstable School and Thomas Lord Audley School
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