STOCKSBRIDGE HIGH SCHOOL!

I visited Stocksbridge High School again yesterday to see Steve Davies, the headteacher and Claire Jackson, assistant headteacher, and had a great session discussing the school's involvement in Made in Sheffield.

Steve has recently been appointed as headteacher from his post as senior deputy at Notre Dame Catholic High School, and he highlighted the pressures facing schools in terms of budget and curriculum and the importance of ensuring that initiatives impact on outcomes and on target groups of individuals. Claire has been one of the key people developing the Made in Sheffield approach and she emphasised the impact the programme had on their ambassadors and the need to consider how it might impact on the wider school community. She also thought that we needed to rethink the timing to perhaps develop a Year 8 taster programme followed by a Year 9 and 10 vocational programme with a 'light touch' pathways element in Year 11 which could be targeted at different groups.

Importantly Steve recognised that initiatives like this have come and gone in he past and we agreed that to create a more sustainable model, schools needed to develop a strategic approach which embedded the ambassadors element into the leadership development element and the skills and vocational elements into the curriculum. We also recognised that staff CPD was a critical element to change the culture and attitudes and vitally important where the DfE and OFSTED were promoting such a different model for the curriculum.

The funding of the programme going forward was challenging but a subscription model and a menu of costed activities could be the most helpful approach and one which would enable schools to customise the programme to meet their different needs.