Are you aged 18 -25 and living in Bradford? Are you creatively curious and have something to say to the world? Ever thought about directing for theatre?
Sign up for a taster session to our second Introduction to Directing Course!
This November, West Yorkshire Playhouse and Common Wealth will lead a course exploring what directing is and can be. Sessions will be led by West Yorkshire Playhouse’s Associate Artist, Mark Rosenblatt, and Common Wealth’s Co-Artistic Director, Evie Manning. Over five days, we want you to come and be curious with us; 11,12, 23, 25 & 26 Nov. The course is free and there will be some small stipends to cover travel expenses.
There will be a FREE taster session on Tue 17Oct from 6pm – 8pm at Speakers Corner, Ivegate, Bradford BD1 1SA.
If you can’t make the taster, don’t worry – you can introduce yourself however you’d like. Send us a blog, a video or an email to jenny.sullivan@wyp.org.uk by Wed, 25 Oct.
Welcome to the sixteenth edition of Educate Positive, a regular publication which highlights excellence in education and across the district’s schools and settings. In this edition we look at another successful literacy initiative coordinated by the National Literacy Trust Hub in Bradford which is being rolled out to all schools, students’ success at the Rock Challenge, and how thousands of our young people have been educated in outstanding settings for a decade.
Thousands educated in outstanding settings
Thousands of young children in our district have been learning in outstanding settings for ten years. Both Lilycroft Nursery and Midland Road Nursery School have been given the top accolade by Ofsted for the fourth consecutive time.
Ofsted inspectors praise Midland Road for using its funding innovatively “through dance and outdoor play and teachers have woven the areas of learning skilfully into these sessions”.
Lilycroft Nursery School is praised for providing high quality teaching and provision for three and four-year-olds, and a safe, warm and exciting place for children to be. .
The two inspection reports mean that more than half of the nursery schools in the Bradford district are judged to be outstanding with the others all judged to be good.
Programme which tackles intolerance brings another win for Bradford
Bradford Council’s Strategic Manager for Education Safeguarding, Alina Khan, has been named as the 2016 Community Champion for Yorkshire and the North East in the first ever Remembering Srebrenica Charity Awards for the Stand Up Speak Out Make a Difference (SUSOMAD) Programme which has been running in our schools for the last seven years.
Bradford Council’s Strategic Manager for Education Safeguarding, Alina Khan, has been named as the 2016 Community Champion for Yorkshire and the North East in the first ever Remembering Srebrenica Charity Awards for the Stand Up Speak Out Make a Difference (SUSOMAD) Programme which has been running in our schools for the last seven years.
Via Alina (pictured above) and her team thousands of young people in the district have had the chance to be part of this Diversity & Cohesion programme which has helped them to challenge and reject hatred and intolerance.
This year the SUSOMAD work has enabled more than 100 Bradford school pupils to become young ambassadors to help raise awareness of the events in Srebrenica in which more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed.
Judges at the awards, run by the Remembering Srebrenica charity, said Alina’s work had helped inspire younger generations in Bradford to make their voices heard and to learn the lessons from history.
SUSOMAD has also been working in partnership with the Anne Frank Trust UK allowing pupils to help educate other children about Anne Frank’s life and the Holocaust, through an exhibition which tours Bradford schools. Since the launch of this project 1,400 Bradford pupils have become Anne Frank ambassadors and received training to help educate their peers.
For more information please contact Alina Khan, 01274 439384.
Raise in development levels in Early Years
A joint early years project in Bradford has raised low development levels in reception-aged children by more than double the Local Authority average.
The Early Language and Literacy Project was created by Bradford Council’s early childhood services and the National Literacy Trust’s Bradford Hub, in partnership with the Bradford Birth to 19 Teaching School Alliance (led by St Edmund’s Nursery School & Children’s Centre).
The project was rolled out to eight Bradford primary schools, with children’s centres across the district also being invited to take part, which promoted opportunities for joint working and information sharing between them and the schools.
The programme had a significant impact on those eight schools and findings have resulted in:
The number of children achieving a Good Level of Development (GLD)* score increased by an average of 9%, which is more than double the LA increase
The GLD scores across the eight schools increased by 12%
The gap between boys and girls achieving a GLD score narrowed by 18%
The programme was launched in response to the low GLD scores achieved by Bradford children, an issue which was particularly pronounced in schools in Bradford’s most deprived neighbourhoods. There was also a significant gap between genders, with boys achieving significantly lower GLD scores than girls.
The GLD measure is the most widely used single measure of child development in the early years. Children are defined as having reached a GLD at the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) if they achieve at least the expected level in areas including communication and language, social development, mathematics and literacy.
For more details please contact Imran Hafeez, 01274 439246 or Lynn Donohue, 01274 01274 439606.
Great win for Grove House pupils
Children who attend the Additionally Resourced Centre (ARC) at Grove House Primary School entered the Living Paintings Great Cake Bake Challenge and won! The ARC helps children who have visual impairment, and the school’s entry into the competition was inspired by the publication of the latest book from author David Melling creator of Hugless Douglas and the Great Cake Bake.
David will be making a ‘virtual visit’ to Grove House Primary to talk to the children about how he creates his books and to give them a private preview of his latest project.
For more information please contact Grove House Primary School, 01274 636921.
Poetry success for schools
Following a successful pilot in four of our schools the National Literacy Trust Hub has announced that all other primary schools in the district will have access to the Our Stories poetry programme.
The aim of Our Stories is to engage pupils with lower literacy levels by fostering a love of creative writing, with a particular focus on boys. As part of the programme, pupils took part in innovative workshops with local performance poets, who encouraged them to explore their identity, personal challenge and ambitions through poetry.
To build on the excitement of these sessions, teachers were provided with a resource pack containing a wide range of poetry activities for the classroom. Local poets and spoken word artists including Joolz Denby and Dumi Senda donated their work to be included in the pack.
One of the schools involved in the programme was Horton Park Primary.
Data from the school shows:
The percentage of Year 6 pupils writing at the expected level doubled (from 46% to 92%)
36% of pupils are now writing above the expected level
100% of the pupils who took part in the programme made good progress, and 64% made outstanding progress
As a result of the success in the pilot schools, the Our Stories resource will now be provided free to all primary schools for teachers to use with their Key Stage 2 classes. A training session will also be held in the New Year for teachers who are interested in delivering the programme. This has been made possible by generous funding from Bradford Primary Improvement Partnership (BPIP).
There will be a training session in March for schools interested in taking part in the programme. Please contact Imran Hafeez on the number below for details.
The photo shows the pupils on a visit to a local museum using what they saw to inspire their writing.
Parkside student, Jake Taglione, proved that collaborative working between schools and hospitality employers pays off as he won a place to compete in the regional final of the Springboard’s Future Chef Competition in February 2017.
Parkside student, Jake Taglione, proved that collaborative working between schools and hospitality employers pays off as he won a place to compete in the regional final of the Springboard’s Future Chef Competition in February 2017.
The Future Chef programme directly relates to the national curriculum and gives young people a life skill whilst developing their culinary skills and their understanding of nutrition.
Jake’s winning menu consisted of Gressingham duck with flambéed passion fruit followed by chocolate fondant with a stout ice-cream and a caramel tuile.
Annually over 8,000 young people take part in this programme aimed at 12-16 year olds.
For more information please contact Parkside School, T 01535 272752.
Parkside students excel at Rock Challenge
Students at Parkside displayed immense team working when they won three awards of excellence for the soundtrack, entertainment and video performance at the Rock Challenge event recently.
Students rehearsed for hours whether it was for the performance, helping backstage or working alongside the light/sound/video crew. This was an excellent experience for all concerned. Well done Team Parkside.
For more information please contact Parkside School, 01535 272752.
Copthorne receives its Challenge Award
Pupils at Copthorne Primary School made the grade when presented with the challenge of “being the best that they can be.”
The school was visited by NACE (National Association for Able Children in Education) who presented its prestigious Challenge Award at the end of last term.
NACE is a not-for-profit organisation which supports teachers to provide teaching and learning for able, gifted and talented pupils, and also provides challenge for all pupils to help them reach their potential.
The Award was about how the school was challenging all pupils but, in particular, those identified as more able and talented. The NACE assessor visited classrooms to observe lessons, carried out scrutinies of planning and work to ensure that children were being stretched at all times, interviewed pupils, parents, governors and teachers to triangulate the evidence about how our pupils are challenged. The assessor explored the school’s policies, school development plan and subject action plans to ensure that provision for More Able learners and challenge were explicit.
For more information please contact Christabel Shepherd, Head of School, 01274 501460.
If you would like to share some of your success and achievement stories in a future edition of Educate Positive please contact Alyson.hardaker@bradford.gov.uk or ring her on 01274 434673.
Winner of the Love Bradford poetry competition Caiomhe Richards, 11, with her winning entry which is framed inside a Bradford bus!
The winners of a poetry competition who penned verse about life in Bradford now have their entries on display inside 100 local First West Yorkshire buses.
More than 100 budding bards across Bradford entered the ‘Love Bradford’ poetry competition run by the National Literacy Trust Hub in Bradford in partnership with First West Yorkshire, the Telegraph & Argus and the Kirkgate Shopping Centre. The competition aimed to inspire and motivate reluctant writers, especially boys, to do more creative writing.
The winning poems were judged by local poet, Joolz Denby and National Literacy Trust Hub in Bradford Manager, Imran Hafeez and are now on display as posters inside 100 First Buses, across Bradford. There were two categories, one for entrants in Year 3 to Year 5 and the other for pupils in Year 6 to Year 8.
The winners are Caiomhe Richards, aged 11, for her poem ‘Memories’, and Suma Abdulla, aged 10, for her poem ‘Big Beautiful Bradford.’ They also won vouchers to spend at Kirkgate Shopping Centre and had their poems published in the Telegraph & Argus.
Colin Brushwood, Operations Manager at First Bradford, comments: “At First Bus we strive to support our local community, and we were inspired to get behind the competition by the National Literacy Trust Hub in Bradford to celebrate the talents of young poets across the region. It’s a privilege to have Caiomhe and Suma’s work on display on 100 of our buses, and we’re sure they’ll bring a smile to our passengers in Bradford.”
Imran Hafeez, Manager of the National Literacy Trust Hub in Bradford said: “The National Literacy Trust Hub in Bradford is all about providing fun ways to improve literacy skills across the area. Poetry is a powerful way for young people to express themselves which is why we are working with children and families through events, programmes and campaigns to inspire them to give creative writing a go. We hope that seeing their poems published for passengers to read on their journeys will encourage Caiomhe and Suma to continue writing for enjoyment.”
The National Literacy Trust Hub in Bradford is a local solution to intergenerational low literacy in the district, working with Bradford Council to forge innovative partnerships with a range of sectors including business, sport, culture and health as well as voluntary and faith groups. The long-term initiative harnesses community assets to address poverty and unemployment through campaigning and targeted interventions to address priority areas. For more information, see here.
Bradford Parents On The Go 