Churchill Community College enables pupils to receive Pledge Awards

Churchill Community College enables pupils to receive Pledge Awards

Churchill Community College secured funding from Schools North East’s partnership with the Community Foundation to engage their pupils in a variety of extracurricular activities in order to achieve the Pledge Award.

The overall aim of the project was to support more students to achieve the Pledge awards which are given in areas of Participation, Leadership, Equality & Diversity, Development, Giving Back and Environment.

Community Foundation

The project was funded through a partnership between the Community Foundation and Schools North East.  Schools North East teamed up with the Community Foundation to make over £100,000 of funding available for schools in Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland, Northumberland, and North and South Tyneside.

The funding aimed to support the development of cultural capital through outdoor education, physical activity and sport. Funding was released for projects that focused on providing a broader enriched curriculum to support students in-school learning, raise levels of pride and appreciation of the region, and develop cultural capital within school settings. 

Rewarding students involvement

The project was set up both to reward and recognise those students who get involved in lots of activities of their own choice both in and outside of school e.g. those who play for football teams or are involved in cadets. It was also to try and ensure those who don’t get involved in anything beyond lessons at school and nothing outside of school are encouraged to support to achieve an award  to improve their self confidence and feel a sense of belonging to school e.g. a learning mentor works with a small group of vulnerable students- those with behaviour issues on a termly basis to raise money for charity and support them to achieve a Pledge. In year 1 in 3 terms 260 students in KS3 achieved a Pledge Award 48% of the cohort . Of these 36% were PP. In Year 2 in 2 terms 208 students in KS3 achieved a Pledge Award (36% of cohort). Of these, 40% were Pupil Premium. 

Activities that ran were tennis club, this was linked to the PE lifeskills award. Students who were not involved in any school clubs identified that this is a sport they would like to do. With this funding the school employed a coach as no PE staff had capacity to run this in addition to other activities. Peripatetic Music lessons, despite subsidising music lessons through the music hub for Pupil Premium students. This funding allowed us to support this in order to then support them to learn an instrument and also help with their Music GCSE courses. Drama is new to the curriculum at the school. The funding allowed the school to offer a drama enrichment day for targeted students who had shown potential in lessons but were not doing any drama beyond lessons to develop their skills further and then get involved in an after school drama club. Some students also subsequently chose drama as a GCSE option. An archeology club ran for a group of vulnerable students which happened both on and off site

A sign language club ran for 15 students and a group of 3 vulnerable students with SEND took part in a regional round of a national Go Karting competition. Additionally, the journalism club did a page in the Chronicle.

Lucy Roderick, who led the project said:

“It has been a team effort to achieve this – Deputy Head leading, work being done in tutor time, support from administration with certificates and communication with parents, support from a team of staff to offer activities outside of the school day e.g. a Maths teacher organised  the sign language course and a History teacher organised the Archeology group and the Brilliant Club ( funding for this came from elsewhere not this fund) and governors to help support the presentation events.  Some tutors have put on specific activities for their whole tutor group to ensure that all achieve an award.”

Wider experiences

Chris Zarraga, Director of Schools North East added: 

“It is brilliant that Churchill Community College has used this funding to provide their pupils with these wider experiences outside of the school curriculum. The use of the Pledge award was also a fantastic idea which gave those pupils who may not usually participate the incentive to get involved.”

Churchill Community College is a Schools North East Partner School and they are part of North Tyneside Learning Trust who are a Schools North East Partner Trust. If you’d like to find out more about our Partner School Programme click here.

We love to hear good news from North East Schools, to share your news with Schools North East please tag @SchoolsNE on Twitter or apply here.