Abingdon Partnerships How do partnerships differ from outreach? Both are approaches to community engagement and that in itself should be celebrated. However, outreach focuses on the provision of resources for community use - it’s more of a ‘one way’ street. Whereas, with partnerships there is a desire to foster collaborative interactions with the community to the mutual benefit of all. Why is a partnerships programme important? As educators, our role is not confined to life solely within our own School and partnerships provides us with a fantastic opportunity to extend our reach beyond our own walls and into our local community. It enables us to experience and see how other schools work and the different approaches taken to meet the needs of students. If a partnerships programme is effective, it brings with it unparalleled opportunity and a huge number of mutual benefits. For teachers, it can lead to continuous professional development (CPD); as a student, it helps broaden outlook, builds teamwork and leadership skills and, perhaps most importantly, enables young people from different socio-economic backgrounds to work together and socialise. What does partnerships at Abingdon mean? The cornerstone of our partnerships programme really began with the Abingdon Science Partnership in 2016. Since then, that (and the rest of our partnerships programme) has evolved to include an extensive range of partnerships activities; as well as the establishment of the OX14 Learning Partnership, of which Abingdon is a founding member. To give you an indication of the scale of activities on offer, these range from a primary science club which is led by our own 5th Year and Sixth Form students; to our classics department offering GCSEs in Latin to partnership school pupils who don’t have access to it within their own curriculum. We run a shared lecture programme, one of the most recent and successful examples of this was an Eco Debate in May, chaired by MP David Johnstone and Wrap CEO, Marcus Glover. Our mental health and wellbeing co-ordinator runs workshops for parents and pupils on a variety of subjects with recent topics including consent, post Covid anxiety, exam stress and internet safety. How do you measure the success of the programme? Success can be measured in different ways. At Abingdon, we measure the number of student experiences we’ve organised - whether that’s as Abingdon or as part of the OX14 Learning Partnership and then we survey the impact that has had. Three years ago, we measured 5000 student experiences and this academic year, there have been 15,000. Intrinsic to our success though, remains our student voice committee so the pupils themselves have a say in the direction in which they feel the programme needs to go. This helps us to remain relevant. Do you think partnerships help to solve inequality in education? I think it is too simplistic to suggest that partnerships can ‘level up’ education. However, what they are successful in doing is creating a collaboration between a diverse group of people, giving them skills which will help them throughout their lives; and I think one of the real positives to take away is that whatever your personal circumstances, there is a place for you in a partnerships programme and you will definitely benefit from being part of it. 15 minutes with Rob Southwell-Sander, Director of Partnerships 24 September 2022
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTUxNTM1