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Chestnut Grove expanded its DT provision and improved student attainment, thanks to Wolfson Foundation Funding


Applying in 2021 ‘With our Year 7 intake increasing from six to seven forms, alongside demand to expand our sixth form provision, we had begun building work on a new block. We needed to provide a new IT suite, as well as upgrading the DT computers funded by Wolfson to enable them to support new technologies. While investigating potential


funding options, I revisited the Wolfson Foundation. Grant recipients must wait five years before applying again, but our first offer letter was in December 2015 and the window to apply went up to early January 2021. A quick phone call confirmed that we could apply again. As well as upgrading the


computers, we needed further specialist IT equipment. Since the collation of information had been so useful in our previous bid, I worked with the IT team and DT department again to determine what our needs were and what we wanted to achieve. We came up with the project Back Up – upgrading IT facilities, enabling increased variety, capacity and quality of STEM courses. The aims were to:


n Improve the quality and quantity of purpose designed and furnished spaces for the teaching and learning of IT and STEM subjects


n Increase numbers of students taking STEM subjects at BTEC, GCSE and A-level, particularly in IT and Art, Design and Technology n Increase numbers of students taking STEM subjects at university.


The Wolfson Foundation was by


now using an online portal for applications. So although we needed to supply a comprehensive range of information (such as our safeguarding policy), the portal accepted links to our website for some data. This made things significantly easier and quicker than the form used previously. The turnaround was quick as well


– we were contacted just three weeks later and told that we were one of 20 projects invited to submit a second stage application. (The deadline for this was on the website from the outset, so I had already begun the process of collating the information listed just in case.) We had an incredibly helpful call


with a grants manager at Wolfson to discuss our application and develop ideas on how to make our bid more in line with the required criteria. We were advised to make a smaller but stronger request by removing an ask for desktop computers for a common room, as this element would not be eligible for funding.


The second stage application was


again through an online portal. There were word counts per question, which helped us prioritise what we needed to say, as well as places to upload documents. We subsequently received some


short email questions from Wolfson’s expert panel about how we would future-proof the equipment, and also what internal expertise we had to ensure it could be used to its full potential. The grants manager also emailed us just before the expert panel’s meeting to check that our fundraising drive to match fund was underway. To our delight, we were awarded


the grant of £22,500 in June – and the process of purchasing and installing the new machinery is underway! We are incredibly grateful for The Wolfson Foundation’s support in increasing our capacity for IT and computer science courses, as well as T-levels from 2022.’


The Wolfson Foundation is an independent charity with a focus on research and education. It supports secondary schools with capital funding for science, computer science, design and technology, art, languages, music and performing arts. For more information visit wolfson.org.uk.


FundEd AUTUMN 2021 23


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