NEWS
Dunblane student selected for engineering excellence scholarship
Dunblane High School student Jessica Francis has been selected for the prestigious national Arkwright Engineering Scholarship due to her outstanding abilities in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). With a love of coding, sixteen-year old Jessica started to teach herself to
code when she was just seven using the Scratch educational tool for coding before moving on to the high-level and general-purpose programming language Python. During lockdown, Jessica created a Monopoly predictor program, which predicts which housing properties a player is going to land on; basically playing the game itself. She then created a website for her mother’s business Kirkmillan Consulting. In addition to Jessica’s love of computer science, the engineering
scholarship incorporates wider aspects of STEM skill development including coding. Jessica said, “the Arkwright Scholarship offers me so many
opportunities to develop my skills, including Connect Days where I can meet industry professionals, especially women, to ask questions and explore my potential future career opportunities. It’s fun and I’m
positioning myself well to secure the ideal job in the future. My particular scholarship is sponsored by cyber security company CrowdStrike who will provide me with a mentor. I have to fit these experiences into my normal school week but it’s definitely helping me to develop a special insight into the industry. “I’m not interested in developing games; I want to create things that
are useful. My first Arkwright virtual event involved developing a cat feeder app; I always forget to feed mine!” Arkwright Engineering Scholarships is the most esteemed scholarship
programme of its type in the UK, with over 6,000 Scholarships awarded to date. Run by educational charity, The Smallpeice Trust, the programme is designed to inspire and develop the next generation of future leaders as they continue their journey into the exciting world of engineering.
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https://www.arkwright.org.uk/
School improvement through multi-academy trust’s house system and vertical tutoring
At schools within the Eastern Learning Alliance (ELA), a
multi-academy trust in Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, a house system coupled with vertical tutoring have proved extremely successful in driving school improvement and delivering pastoral care. At ELA school Chesterton Community College, the
introduction of the house system seven years ago has contributed to improved attainment and student happiness at the school. Peter Watts, Deputy Head at Chesterton Community College (pictured), who has been at the school for 18 years and was instrumental in the implementation of the house system, said: “House systems are invaluable in improving school performance. They create small schools, with individual ‘family’ atmospheres, within the larger school. “Through school events to earn points and rewards for houses, students
can get involved and become part of something, they get a real sense of belonging. In this way, students feel motivated to do well at school for something other than their own academic gains. The house system also provides an opportunity for student leadership. Students take a leading role in
events organisation and can become house prefects, representing the student voice for their house. Since the house system was introduced at Chesterton Community College, student attendance has improved as they want to come to school and contribute to the overall achievement of their house.” To complement the house system and improve
pastoral care, Chesterton Community College moved from a horizontal tutoring system to a vertical tutoring system, where five to six students from each year group, who are also a part of the same house, form a tutor group. “Vertical tutoring creates a real sense of
community at the school. The main goal of this system is to enable each student to be known well by at least one member of staff. They know the student, what they enjoy at school and what support they require,” said Peter.
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https://easternlearningalliance.org.uk// Rugby club launches football and women’s rugby college courses for teens
To go alongside its already popular men’s rugby college course, Birmingham Moseley Rugby Club’s academy has introduced football and women’s rugby courses for local teens aged 16+. With these courses, students will have two training sessions and one class a
day for 3 days a week, and will achieve a NCFE qualification, the same as they’d receive at a typical college of further education. During the courses however, they will also have the benefit of competitive games on a Wednesday. Both courses at Birmingham Moseley Rugby Club will begin in September
2021 and are open for enrolment now. Travis McIntyre, who runs the academy, said: “We’re so excited to announce
that we’ll be running two brand new courses from September, it’s something that we’ve been wanting to expand into for a while now and because of the popularity of football and women’s rugby around Birmingham, we’re sure we’ll have some incredible players join us. “We started the academy in 2014, exclusively running men’s rugby courses,
but it’s been so successful that we’re sure we have the expertise and knowledge to replicate this into a football course and, adapt the knowledge
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www.education-today.co.uk May 2021
we already have for the women’s rugby classes. “Our past rugby students have gone on to gain full scholarships at
universities and play in the Birmingham Moseley Rugby Club’s team, so while we are primarily a rugby club, we appreciate all sport and are excited to expand our student base to football, as well as rugby.”
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https://www.wearescl.co.uk/birmingham-rugby
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