News
Posted on: 13/08/2021Adaptability, Creativity, Courage... and a smattering of Hope.
This year, following the cancellation of exams, Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5 qualification grades were awarded through a robust and rigorous process, overseen by Trust and School Senior Leaders, against a national standard and approved and awarded by the exam boards.
At the end of what has been an extraordinary week, we are delighted to congratulate all our students on the resilience and character they have shown throughout a difficult and disrupted academic year. Notable achievements have been seen as students from our Danes Educational Trust secondary schools received their GCSE, A Level and Vocational qualification results and we very much trust that they may look forward to exciting opportunities in the future to come. We are immensely proud of them all.
Fantastic results include 13 A Level students who each achieved a minimum of 3 A*s. At St Clement Danes School, Oleg Tretieu attained 5 A* grades, Louis Ertl 4 A*s and an A* in his EPQ and Francesca Dann and James Moran 4 A*s each. Meanwhile at Chancellor’s School, Max Lee attained 4 A* grades and Harvey Buhagiar and Sophie Lucas 3 A* grades and an A grade each. Louise Newman from OSA attained Distinction*, Distinction* and A* and will now go on to read Physiotherapy at Leeds Beckett. From Elstree Screen Arts, Iona Godfrey attained Distinction* in Specialist Production Make up, Distinction* in Forensic Science and an A grade in Mathematics A Level, while Sophie Sanderson and Sadie Smith both attained a Distinction* in Music Performance and Distinction* in Music Technology and a Distinction in Level 3 Art and Media UAL respectively.
Exceptional progress was also seen including, from Chancellor’s School, Ellie Richards who will read Mathematics at Exeter and from OSA, Luke Hobbs who will read Biology at Nottingham.
Students from across our secondary schools will, as ever, be reading the full range of subjects at some of the country’s most prestigious universities including Bristol, Durham, Imperial College, UCL, LSE, Manchester and Edinburgh. From St Clement Danes School, Louis Ertl will study medicine at Sheffield, Katie Bugler will read Law at Cambridge and Ellie Moriuchi English Literature at Oxford. We are equally delighted that at Elstree Screen Arts, a specialist educator in the Creative Arts, Communication and Technology, 100% of Key Stage 5 students are progressing to meaningful destinations as diverse as the Centre of Screen Excellence, Elstree; Eden Project, Cornwall; The Institute of Contemporary Music Performance; Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and Escape Studios to study a range of subjects including Marine and Natural History Photography, Game Design and Development and Costume Construction.
Our GCSE and Level 2 students are no less to be congratulated. For their achievement, underpinned by sustained endeavour, the following students should be recognised. Eight Grade 9s and one Grade 8 were attained by Ahmed Hamid at OSA while the results of Janelle Obcena, Ethan Pledge, Georgie Elmer-Roads and Luke Brockwell displayed exceptional Value-Added as a result of their 5 years of education at our Hatfield school. At Chancellor’s School, Joseph Kleiner-Mann attained 11 Grade 9s while 5 students achieved, on average, two and a half grades higher than their target grades: Daniel Wootton, Raina Ramadhin, Liam Hummell, Stanley Young and Keira Hearn. Also deserving of special congratulations are Loren Sloan and Lucca Ndefo from Elstree Screen Arts who each surpassed their target grades, attaining, between them, 18 Grades at 7 to 9. At St Clement Danes School, four students - Isla Smith, Magarishi Chandra, Rishi Patel and Maya Chudasama - each achieved a clean sweep of Grade 9s and Lucy Fairhurst and Cora Pearce each achieved eight Grade 9s and one Grade 8.
The grades our students have achieved are a tribute to their own hard work, sustained energy and conscientious approach throughout two years of academic study and the exceptional, intelligent and compassionate support provided by their schools and teachers throughout the pandemic.
No less laudable is what our students have shown themselves to be: adaptable, creative and courageous. May their futures be bright always.
Posted on: 5/07/2021Today, Danes Educational Trust launch 'The Partnership' to provide exceptional teacher training for graduates and career changers who have chosen to become teachers.
Having been a Teaching School for 9 years under the expert leadership of Josephine Valentine, today is the day we say a fond farewell to our Alliance and welcome our new strategy through Danes Educational Trust: ‘The Partnership’.
As the first Monday in July, this is traditionally our Joint INSET day when over 500 of our Alliance colleagues have joined together to share best practice; to listen to key note speakers such as Andy Buck, Alison Peacock and Martin Robinson, and to remind ourselves of the power of collaboration and system leadership. This is a day we have had to forego for two years now in light of COVID and, as such, it is a remote goodbye to our Alliance’s strategic partners Dr Challoner’s High School, The Chalfonts Community College, St Michael’s Catholic High School, Beaconsfield High School, Croxley Danes School, Queens’ School, Parmiter’s School, Chessbrook ESC, University of Hertfordshire, Herts for Learning and, of course, our Lead School, St Clement Danes.
Enormous thanks go, in particular, to Ed Conway and Nick Daymond, both National Leaders of Education, who, along with Josie, had the vision and will to forge a partnership that has had such significant impact. An impact most apparent in colleagues’ professional development; the recruitment of fabulous teachers to schools across Hertfordshire and beyond, and, most importantly, the life chances of those children beyond our Alliance schools who have benefitted from school to school support programmes and the expertise of our Specialist Leaders of Education, senior leaders and expert colleagues over time.
Despite an obvious sadness at the end of our Alliance, we are however mindful that the strength of our partnerships remains and, as such, we are delighted to announce that, having been granted Lead School status for the delivery of Initial Teacher Training, Danes Educational Trust will continue to work in partnership with University of Hertfordshire and our Bucks Hub, Dr Challoner’s High School for Girls, to recruit our next generation of teachers across both secondary and primary phase from September 2021. Information relating to our programmes, key contacts and recruitment process may be found here.
We look forward to welcoming applications to TRAIN TO TEACH at our schools.
We are equally delighted that we will continue to work with Best Practice Network (partners since 2017 in the delivery of legacy NPQs) through roll-out of the Early Career Framework across our Danes Educational Trust: ‘The Partnership’ schools. Forty-five Early Career Teachers are due to join our schools from September 2021 and we look forward to providing them with high quality, bespoke support through our twelve trained facilitators drawn from senior leaders and lead practitioners across our schools; our suite of mentors and coaches and, of course, our colleagues at Best Practice Network itself.
If you would like to continue to follow us, we are now on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook @DanesEdTrust. We look forward to you joining us in the next phase of our work and ongoing development together.
Posted on: 16/06/2021Chancellor's School address equality, equity and diversity across school community
As schools went into the first COVID lockdown and before the events surrounding the death of George Floyd, very few members of Chancellor's School would have been able to articulate an accurate definition of such words as micro-aggression, unconscious bias and cisgender.
What a difference a year makes! Over the course of the last year, Chancellor’s has undertaken something of a mini-revolution in how it addresses equality, equity and diversity (EED) across our entire school community.
They have taken a forthright and forensic approach to promoting equality, ensuring equity and celebrating diversity. Crucially much of the work has been led by students. Firstly, Sixth Formers who initially challenged the school to explore micro-aggressions within the local community and more recently, the whole-school staff and student working parties, who are collaborating to raise awareness across a number of different platforms, such as race, gender, sexuality and disability.
Already this year they have successfully promoted a ‘cultural calendar’, celebrating different aspects of school diversity through form period activities, weekly lock screens, library reading recommendations and presentations, newsletter and bulletin articles and physical displays. Black History Month in October and LGBT+ History month in February served as an opportunity to improve the community’s race and gender literacy, while whole school surveys helped them to understand the day-to-day challenges that different members of the school community face in relation to race. A highlight of the programme was a thought-provoking whole staff INSET on micro-aggressions and diversity awareness.
Their next phase of work is building on these strong foundations to establish a robust and resilient EED legacy across the school. The students have created an ‘EED Charter’, thier expectations of a rights respecting community to be observed by anyone belonging to or joining the school. Furthermore, they are challenging subject leads, as they reflect on their curriculum planning, to identify where they can fully embed Creators, Perspectives, Content and Visuals in their schemes of learning. On a pastoral level, Chancellor's School are looking into further tackling period poverty and providing extra channels of communication to capture the school experience of all students and as they welcome the construction of a new Maths and PE block, they are requisitioning a vacated space for a reflection and wellbeing room for all students. They continue, wherever possible, to engage with local diversity organisations and are creating a monthly vlog to record the ongoing work they are doing. They are very excited that this work has caught the attention of a local MP, and look forward to welcoming him into school when the opportunity arises to share the substantial work.
This is a never-ending programme, that can and should always be enriched and enhanced, but, with a fantastically committed team of students and staff on board, CHancellor's School community can be confident they are already beginning to make a tangible and sustainable difference.
Posted on: 16/06/2021OSA Y8 Students Graduate from the Brilliant Club
Twelve year 8 students at Onslow St Audrey’s School in Hatfield have celebrated their virtual graduation following a university-style tutorial programme with a PHD tutor from King’s College, London.
Organised by the education charity ‘The Brilliant Club’, the students took part in ‘The Scholars Programme’ where they took on the challenge of becoming ‘Disease Detectives’ and completing a series of virtual lectures with their tutor. To graduate, the students then had to independently research and complete a 1500-word university-style assignment, which were submitted and marked by the university tutor. The programme was a resounding success, with half of the students achieving the highest grade of a first, and the other half achieving a 2.1 qualification.
Due to the lockdown rules, students took part in a virtual graduation-style celebration event alongside schools from up and down the UK, receiving certificates to mark their fantastic achievement and to congratulate them on completing the course.
Every student gained an insight into what university style learning looks like, taking part in confidence-building discussions with university staff and students and why they might want to apply in the future. Completing the programme was no mean feat, especially since the students had to complete the sessions during the spring term on top of their lockdown learning timetable at school. Mr. Finn, who was running the programme, said, “I am delighted that they have completed this at such a difficult time. The amount of resilience they have shown to keep up with the workload and the degree of challenge was inspiring. It has been a pleasure to work with them and I have been lucky to be a part of the process”.
Each student studied with their PHD researcher on the topic of contagious diseases, logging into virtual sessions and completing homework alongside their research from home. At the end of the course, they were given a deadline upon which they had to submit their assignments on how to tackle an outbreak of Malaria in Mali, Africa.
Year 8 student, Daniel Tual said, “The programme was challenging and fun and it was great to have the chance to learn about something that we wouldn’t normally do at school. I feel that getting this university grade puts me one step ahead, and if I choose university in the future, I am prepared for it”.
Posted on: 20/05/2021Equality, Diversity & Inclusion at Danes Educational Trust
In 2018 when our Trust was on the cusp of expanding beyond its original 2 schools, we brought together key stakeholders – teachers, support staff, governors and Trustees - to identify what is important for us and what we want our legacy to be. Out of this vision day, we identified 6 core values which underpin everything we do, one of these values is “we provide equality of opportunity and experience for all”.
It wasn’t until May 2020 and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement that we really reflected on how well we were living this value and whether there was more that could be done to advance equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in our schools.
St Clement Danes school decided to lead the way on auditing its current EDI practice with a view to achieving an external benchmark that would quality assure its commitment to equality. In part, this was in response to the challenge from current and former students demanding a more inclusive environment, a challenge welcomed by the school. The benchmark chosen was the Equaliteach Equalities Award which includes a rigorous audit of EDI practice aligned to Ofsted’s inspection framework: Behaviour and Welfare, Leadership and Management, Personal Development of Pupils and Teaching and Learning.
In order to bridge identified gaps, the school created a new, compelling vision for EDI: “At St Clement Danes we are committed to ensuring equality of education and opportunity for all pupils, staff, parents and carers and embracing the difference they bring to our school community. We want everyone in our school community to experience kindness and respect; and to be treated with the dignity they deserve”. The vision is supported by robust equality objectives, an EDI staff working group and an EDI student group. All staff have received training on the Equality Act, Unconscious Bias and the Public Sector Equality Duty and further training in partnership with Equaliteach is planned for the Summer Term.
The school has shown such energy and commitment to achieving the award that it has achieved it in just 8 months, a process that usually takes 18 months and is testament to the efforts of those involved in particular, Sarah Doyle, Assistant Headteacher.
Looking ahead, we would like all schools in our Trust to participate in the Award to ensure that all of our environments are ones where there is equality of opportunity and experience for everyone enabling all members of our community to be the best they can be.
Marianne Barlow
Head of Human Resources
Read more about the work done at St Clement Danes School as part of the audit in the article on their website.
Posted on: 29/04/2021Old Dane publishes debut novel
Simon Elson, who studied at St Clement Danes from 2012 – 2019, has published his first book ‘Hades Forest’ which will be available to purchase on Amazon from 1st May.
Simon spoke to Rachel Brindley, our Trust Improvement Director and Simon’s English Literature A Level teacher about publishing the book:
“I chose to self-publish the book so I can keep a greater percentage of profits per sale. Self-publishing also means that I don’t have to sign a contract that forbids me from ever switching genre for the rest of my writing career. I was offered a contract by a few small and medium-sized traditional publishers, but I turned them down. We will see if that decision pays off!”
He told Rachel her teaching continues to inspire him after leaving St Clement Danes:
“Thank you so much for two amazing years of teaching. The more time passes since my SCD experience, the more I look back on it with a grin like a Cheshire cat. You really inspired in me a passion for writing and reading that I didn’t know I had, and as you can clearly see, that has had a lasting impact on me far beyond school. Whether my writing is a success or not, I still find immense enjoyment in literature, and that’s mainly because of you. Thank you!”
We wish Simon the very best of luck with the launch of ‘Hades Forest’. You can order a copy on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3dEdFtz
_________
Blurb from ‘Hades Forest’
Five tribes fight to the death
Only one can survive
In a dark vision of the near future, the Holy State of Borea is indoctrinating its citizens. No one is allowed to speak out against the government.
But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire for freedom - not for Perry Benson, at least. While his wife falls more and more in love with the state's regime, he searches for a way out.
His path forward becomes clear, and he escapes to a distant forest. The repressive state cannot find him here – yet he is not the only one living between the trees.
Perry must fight for his life, and unravel the government’s secrets… before he is killed by one of the five tribes of Hades Forest.
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