Year 13 student leader of Diversity and Inclusion, Isabel Offor, held the inaugural meeting with the newly appointed student Diversity Committee to discuss and share ideas to build an inclusive environment for all at Brooke Weston Academy.

Speaking about the role, Isabel said: "There are 20 students on the committee ranging from Year 8 through to Year 10 who are all looking at ideas on how to improve diversity and inclusion. 

The first meeting went very well and the input I received from all the students was very insightful. It has allowed me to see issues from their perspective and how to go about improving diversity and inclusion at Brooke Weston Academy.

"I believe it's important to have a diversity committee here at Brooke Weston to allow the student body to embrace ideas that they feel made not be heard, and give them the opportunity to provide an impact that can benefit everyone."

Over the past few weeks, students from Corby Business Academy, part of Brooke Weston Trust, have enjoyed participating in a series of Christmas concerts, performing to more than 2,000 members across the Corby community.

Corby Business Academy (CBA) provided performances to other local schools in the area including Beanfield Primary School and Gretton Primary Academy (who are also part of Brooke Weston Trust) and to Priors Hall School, as well as its own school community, culminating in a grand Winter Showcase which was held on Thursday 15^th December.

The Winter Showcase featured many ensembles from the school’s Music Department including the Concert Band, CBA Singers, Brass ensemble, Big Band as well as a joint effort of 'The 12 Days of Christmas' song sung by members of the audience.

The concert also featured some talented soloists including Corby Business Academy’s Year 11 students Holly who performed a rendition of ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ and Viktor who performed ‘The Snowman’ by Sia.

Other soloists include Michella in Year 8 on the clarinet, Atiya in Year 10 on the saxophone, Grace in Year 10 for her vocals and Courtney in Year 9 also for her vocals.

Simon Underwood, Principal at Corby Business Academy, said: “We are immensely proud of all the musicians who have performed over the past week. They have been such hard-working individuals who have represented the academy extremely well.

“It was excellent to see us all being able to celebrate the Christmas period together and to showcase our students’ talents.

“They did such a wonderful job performing in front of a live audience whilst also helping them to gain more confidence and improve their showmanship.”

At Brooke Weston Trust, we recognise diversity within our workforce and want to create a supportive environment where everyone feels valued and able to be themselves.

We have established our Equality Group in order to create and deliver our strategy on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). The group is made up of employees from each of our 10 schools, who bring together experiences from diverse backgrounds. We come together once a term to review progress made towards our objectives, and put forward ideas, initiatives and robust challenge.

Mark Taylor, Vice Principal at Kettering Science Academy and Chair of the Equality & Inclusion Group, and Santosh Sahota, a member of staff at Corby Technical School (CTS) and one of the representatives of the group, have explained the significance of the work the group is trying to achieve across our schools and how this is contributing to the future vision of the Trust as a whole.

Creating a purpose

Speaking about the vision of the group, Santosh said: “Our individual schools within the Trust have often been excellent at meeting the needs of their diverse communities. However, as a Trust, we’d never had specific benchmarks in place to collate these initiatives taking place across each of our schools and to track their progress. Mark Taylor has done an excellent job in forming this group, ensuring we work as a collective on this issue, can track our progress more easily, that we continue to be proactive and most importantly, that we’re delivering on our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion strategy.”

A work in progress

We are proud of the work the group has achieved in its first year. Mark said: “The group began by establishing our Equality Group Charter which sets out the appropriate behaviour of the group and which we are committed to enforcing and developing over time. We have also created a glossary of terms outlining common language that can be implemented across all our schools and within their curriculum.

“To deepen our learning, we were lucky to welcome guest speaker Dr Paul Campbell, from the University of Leicester, who gave an insightful talk on some of the EDI work they have been doing at a university level, and how we can use this to strengthen our curriculum offering such as diversifying our use of imagery, videos and resources within lessons.”

Santosh added: “At CTS, our student leaders have loved being actively involved with the Global Equality Collective, by helping to design student surveys for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. Students were really pleased with their contribution and wanted to have an active voice in the process.

“We also recently put together a cultural celebration event at the end of term. Our students loved participating in the event to showcase and celebrate the diversity within the school. The event celebrated a variety of cultures and languages through music, dance and song. This included a choir group singing in Polish, a recital in Telugu, a Bhangra dance display and an African inspired dance off.

“Further initiatives as part of the event included our school catering team providing food inspired from around the world which was relevant to the ethnic groups we have in CTS and in form time, we asked students to decorate a print of their hands which we put together to create a world made up of hands that were representative of our students’ different cultures. The response from students was great to see and it really encouraged a sense of unity, inspired students to embrace their differences and backgrounds, gain a better understanding of their culture and build stronger relationships with one another. As a result of this positive impact and the success of the event, it will now become an annual initiative within the school, with the hopes it will become a Trust-wide event in the future.”

The future is bright

Looking to the future, Mark said: “Last year, we ran a school survey to evaluate what we were currently doing well and what could be improved. This year, we have opened this up to all members of staff employed within the Trust with our EDI survey to gain a broader perspective and determine what our priorities should be for the future.”

Santosh continued: “There will always be more we could be doing and at the forefront of our work is our students, with their happiness and wellbeing being our main priority. Therefore, we will also be looking at forming a student voice group at both primary and secondary levels. Not only will this support our students’ needs, but it will strengthen the Trust’s promise to become a cultural centre of education, ensuring our students know how to be responsible and tolerant individuals and how to make a positive contribution to their society.”

Being part of something bigger

Santosh continued: “Being a part of this group has provided me with the opportunity to meet different colleagues from across BWT’s schools. Everyone contributes different ideas to the group, so to be able to collaborate, share best practices and resources, whilst adding value to my own role has been brilliant.

“I’ve really enjoyed making a positive impact here at CTS and inspiring our schools to take on a different mindset towards the subject. My main aim has been to try and shape the perspective of equality and diversity amongst our schools, so they can see it as a celebration and an exciting opportunity for change.”

Interested in supporting our equality and inclusion work?

We welcome and encourage members of staff to become involved in BWT’s equality and inclusion work. There are many ways to do this, whether it's through becoming a representative from your school, participating in our EDI survey or contributing your own ideas.

If you would like to be more involved, please get in touch by emailing: mark.taylor@ketteringscienceacademy.or

At Brooke Weston Trust, one of our core focus areas is helping all pupils to achieve their full potential. As part of this, we are committed to developing an education service that provides equality of opportunity and high achievement for each and every one of our pupils.

Our specialist SEN unit provisions play an important role in delivering this commitment, providing education, support and facilities for over 100 children with Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans at both primary and secondary level.

Gemma Cushing Vice principal and manager of the Special provision, at Beanfield Primary School and Clare Robinson, Unit Manager at Corby Business Academy, have been involved in the successful running of our two unit provisions and we caught up with them to find out about how their important work promotes the Trust’s values of providing ambition for all.

How would you describe the unit provision?

Speaking about the purpose of the unit provision, Gemma said: “The Special provision at Beanfield Primary School offers up to 55 pupils aged between 4-11 years who have Severe Learning Disabilities (SLD) or Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) a carefully structured bespoke teaching and learning plan alongside opportunities for inclusion into wider school life to support our high aspirations for all pupils to achieve, regardless of their starting points.”

Clare said: “Catering for over 75 pupils aged between 11-18, the unit provision at Corby Business Academy offers discrete and personalised care for young people with a range of learning difficulties including cognitive or communication impairment and autism. Many of our pupils who access this provision have complex needs, so it’s important that we offer small group sizes and specialist teaching, enabling them to thrive in an environment that’s inclusive and caring”.

How do you promote an inclusive culture across both the unit provision and the main school?

Both schools adapt the National Curriculum in terms of pace, level and delivery to ensure they meet the individual needs of the pupil, whilst keeping a focus on offering carefully structured access to the main school curriculum where appropriate. Gemma said: “Some of the work at the provision has to be independent from the main school to ensure we’re supporting the specific needs of our children. However, we have always tried to follow an inclusive culture throughout the whole school, allowing us to embed some of our practices alongside mainstream education.

“As part of this inclusivity, we ensure all our pupils at Beanfield have access to a broad, balanced, creative and relevant curriculum. Each of our unit provision classes has a link mainstream class and a link teacher. This allows our teaching staff within the unit to work alongside the main school staff on joint curriculum initiatives, training days and where possible, opportunities to involve main school pupils in aspects of life of the special provision.”

Claire added: “Due to the complexity of our pupils’ needs at secondary level, it’s rare that they will go into mainstream lessons. However, we work closely alongside the main school to ensure our pupils feel integrated into academy life and have access to as many enrichment activities and whole academy curriculum days as possible. For example, we’ve started working collaboratively with our nurture groups at Key Stage 3 and as part of the Platinum Jubilee celebrations, we held a garden party outside where the Year 7 and 8 Nurture Groups joined us. Pupils also enjoyed a recent event Celebrating a 100 years of BBC storytelling and some of our KS3 children enjoyed a collaborative History trip with mainstream pupils. In addition, our Key Stage 4 pupils have been participating in work experience across different areas of the Academy.”

How do you get parents involved with the provision?

One part of the unit provision that makes it an effective learning environment is through the establishment of strong and supportive partnership with the parents, ensuring that the voice of the child is heard and that they get the best out of their academic education. Gemma said: “Many of our children are non-verbal, so in order for us to be inclusive, we have to adapt our learning through the use of objects, symbols and the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS). This means that even if a child cannot verbally speak, they’re still able to communicate their needs, ideas and opinions to us.

“In turn, this helps establish a successful partnership with our parents and carers as the more we can support our pupils to communicate, the more effectively we can provide feedback to parents on progress and attainment.”

Claire added: “As part of our strong focus on the personal development of pupils, it is important to us that we liaise with the parents too as their child moves through the key transitions. This includes close contact and communication so we have a shared understanding of how we can offer our parents support. For example, in lockdown we spoke to parents regularly, conducting weekly well-being check ins. We also have an annual review with parents to assess and discuss their child’s progress against the EHC plan and their academic targets. Working collaboratively with pupils and their parents, we aim to achieve a shared understanding ensuring the best outcomes and life chances for the pupil’s future."

Students and staff across Brooke Weston Trust schools paid their respects to those who lost their lives during special services and initiatives to commemorate Remembrance Day.

Earlier in the week, cadets from all of our Northamptonshire schools, joined Corby Business Academy to participate in a Combined Cadet Force (CCF), Remembrance Parade. Andrew Campbell, CEO of Brooke Weston Trust, attended the event and our newest recruits were presented with half-star badges in recognition of their services with the cadets so far. 

Other activities included a Remembrance assembly held at Brooke Weston Academy. Students who are part of The Brooke Weston Trust Combined Cadet Force led the assembly with a special presentation about the importance of Remembrance Day and why we wear the poppy as a mark of respect. Staff and students observed a minute’s silence as the poignant tune The Last Post was played while the cadets stood to attention and saluted.  

The courage and sacrifice of those who served their countries were also acknowledged with a special mention made to Lance Corporal James Ashworth, from Corby, who was 23 years old when he died in the line of duty. His conduct in putting himself in front to protect his colleagues was rewarded with the Victoria Cross (VC), the first award of honour given since 2006.

At Thomas Clarkson Academy, students and staff were able to gather together as a whole school on Friday morning to mark Armistice Day with a special service.

It has been three years since everyone was able to join the event, which was led by Principal Richard Scott. He said: “It was wonderful to be able to have the whole academy together for such a special event. We have missed the annual service and hope it has prompted our students to ask questions and learn more about Armistice Day and what it means.”

The service included a reading from Assistant Principal, Jon Siracusano who read a touching tribute written by Brooke Scott, a student at the school whose dad Lee died in Afghanistan while serving in the army. Brooke’s mum Nikki founded the charity ‘Scotty’s Little Soldiers’ which helps the children and families of those who have died while serving the country. 

At Kettering Science Academy, Tony Segalini, Principal at the school led six assemblies, one to each year group on the importance of Remembrance Day. Students learnt more about the Pals Battalions, the awful casualties at the Battle of Somme and remembered those from the UK and across the Commonwealth who gave their lives for our freedom.

Students at Corby Technical School held a special assembly which was streamed live to all tutor rooms. This was led by the school’s CCF students who read poetry by Laurence Binyon and John McCrae and observed a two-minute silence following The Last Post. Students then spent time in their tutor groups learning about the significance of Armistice Day and listening to Nimrod by Edward Elgar, which is played at the cenotaph every year. 

At Beanfield Primary School, children who attend various organisations such as Scouts, Rainbows and St John’s Ambulance took pride in participating in Remembrance assemblies. The respect of all the children was highlighted throughout the morning and filled staff with a huge amount of pride.

As part of Gretton Primary School’s annual traditions, the school participated in a fundraising initiative for the Royal British Legion. Donations to the Poppy Appeal helps provide ongoing vital support to the Armed Forces community, ensuring their unique contribution is never forgotten.

Staff and students at Peckover Primary School all came together for a Remembrance service to remember lost ones. Children at the school all made their poppies which they proudly wore throughout the service and also included a rendition of The Last Post which was played by Mrs Tombleson, with representatives from 15^th Wisbech Scout Group attending the service to act as flagbearers.

At Compass Primary Academy, the school also held a Remembrance assembly and a two-minute silence to remember and honour those who lost their lives in World War 1 and the following conflicts. The school invited all children who are in the Girlguiding or Scouting movements to come to school wearing their Rainbow, Brownie, Guide, Beavers, Cub or Scout uniform to act as representatives from their local community groups.