Summer 2017 Newsletter
Our 2017 Essay Writing Competition, which proved a tremendous success last year, is now open. Please see attached details. It is of course exclusive to World Class Schools.
WCSQM Headquarters Update
It has always been our intention to develop into a charity, once we established ourselves. This, we hope, will open our network to more sponsorship and funding opportunities. If we are successful in our application for charitable status, Matthew O’Connor will move from being co-director, to the role of trustee.
We have grown, in less than three years, from 8 to 43 schools, with 20 new schools applying for the award this year. We have also added significantly to our World Class offer over this time. To manage this growth, we are delighted to welcome two new members to our team Melissa Hudson, project manager, and Bronwen Tumani, assessment manager.
New Applicant Schools
This year, we received more interest than we have ever had in application for the Mark. We are really excited that we have selected, from the number of interested parties, 20 new schools applying for accreditation. In selecting the short list of 20, we have actively sought greater national representation, and schools who buck local trends. The 20 schools are truly exceptional. We are currently keeping the list of applicant schools confidential, because their successful accreditation is not guaranteed. Thank you to our current members for the influence of your reputation, which has helped raise so much interest this year.
Re-accreditation for our 2015 Schools
It will soon be time for our tranche of schools who achieved the 2015 award to seek re- accreditation. The process will be based on the one currently being trialled by Hayes School and Clapton Girls’ Academy, to whom we are very grateful.
We want to ensure the re-accreditation process:
- is robust, so that we can maintain the quality of our brand,
- is adding value for students that cannot be added in any other way,
- does not create additional work for staff, but builds on and adds to current outstanding practice.
We will release the re-accreditation materials at the beginning of the autumn term 2017. We are now going to stagger initial accreditation and re-accreditation throughout the year, so re-accrediting schools will have until the end of the the spring term 2018 to submit their materials for re-accreditation. Re-accredited schools will receive as their award, a new plaque, new colour, with both the initial year awarded and the re-accredited year, so the school can celebrate the fact that it has been World Class over a sustained period of time.
Dates for Your Diary
Assessment Centre 10 th November 2017
The assessment centre will take place this year, in Leeds on Friday 10 th November. This is a date for the diary of all colleagues and students who are putting themselves forward this year either as assessors or shadow/ student assessors. Further details will be sent out soon.
Awards Ceremony 7 th December 2017
We are delighted that this year, Churchill College Cambridge has agreed to host our ceremony, in its prestigious Wolfson Hall, on Thursday 7 th December 2017 at 7.00pm. It will be hosted by Dr Jerry Toner, Director of Studies in Classics at Churchill who is judging our essay writing competition. New schools achieving the award, assessors achieving accreditation, ‘honorary mentions’ essay winners, accompanied by their head teachers, will all be invited. Every year, we ask a team of students from one of our World Class schools to host the event. Please let us know if you would like to volunteer students from your school, by emailing Miranda.Perry@worldclass-schools.org
Student Conference July 2018
Exciting news! We are adding to our offer a World Class Schools Student Conference which we are running in partnership with Wymondham College, with a provisional date of 16 th – 17th July, 2018. The conference will be for Year 12 students, from 11 – 18 institutions, and Year 11 students, from 11 – 16. The focus of the conference will be Developing World Class Skills and Competencies to Lead in a Global Economy, and will be led by the students themselves. Those students who led the re-accreditation process for 2015 schools will be asked to share findings from this process and run sessions.
The purpose of the conference is to give World Class students:
- a taster of a further/higher education environment,
- the skills, competencies and experience of effective networking,
- the chance to develop still further their World Class skills and competencies, through running work shops, presenting, etc., particularly those students from 2015 schools re-accrediting,
- membership of a World Class alumni,
- the chance to develop their student voice so they can genuinely impact on school improvement, teaching and learning in a sophisticated way,
- ideas to take back to their school and share with their student community.
Re-accreditation plaques will be awarded to students from our 2015 tranche at the end of the conference.
World Class Discounts
We now have a World Class Directory of Suppliers, with exclusive offers for World Class Schools, that are listed on our website. We would encourage you to take advantage of them. We will be adding to the list of suppliers, so that being a World Class school is financially advantageous.
Heads’ Forum
The minutes of the marketplace Heads’ Forum have already been disseminated. We attach additional materials that support your access to, and use of, ideas shared. Thank you to colleagues who have submitted them.
Recruitment
We would still like to work with some of our schools on how we as an organisation can more formally support with recruitment and retention. In the the first instance, we want to draw up a statement that could be included in your recruitment materials about what it means to work at a World Class school. Please let us know if your school would be interested in working with us on this focus.
Website
You will see that on our Schools Page we have a slider featuring a photograph from our individual member schools, and a summary of what makes them World Class.
If your school is not currently featured on the slider and would like to be, please send us a selection of three photographs, one of which we will feature, and your summing up phrase of what makes your school World Class, to Melissa.Hudson@worldcass-schools.org.
Our website manager is expert at search engine optimisation, so the more you feature on our site through images or text, the more your school is likely to feature in a public search for the phrase ‘World Class School.’
Thank you
Thank you for your commitment and support this year. WCSQM is going from strength to strength and that is because national stakeholders recognise that you are some of the best schools in the country, as do we. We look forward to continuing to work together.
