The Foundation Fund works closely with seven schools across the local area that have high levels of disadvantaged children on their registers. Through working with delivery partners, the Foundation Fund provides children with additional support with foundational reading, writing, oracy, and mathematics, as well as emotional and behavioural support. Our ‘In the spotlight’ series shines a light on the delivery partners who support our vision to improve children’s lives. This month, we sat down with Ed Harker from Brighter Futures.
Can you tell me a bit about Brighter Futures?
Brighter Futures provides specialist emotional and behavioural support to children across Bath and North East Somerset. We do this through a mixture of bespoke services including Education Psychology, assessments, therapeutic interventions, leadership consultation, counselling, staff supervision, Thrive Approach training and support for schools, nurseries, and other organisations.
Last year we were appointed as one of the Foundation Fund’s delivery partners with a focus on improving emotional and behavioural outcomes for vulnerable and disadvantaged children. Since then, we have had a presence in all seven schools for at least one and a half days a week, helping to tackle any immediate concerns and working on building long-term capacity.
How has the pandemic affected the way you work with children and schools?
During the lockdowns we had to be as flexible as possible in the ways we work with schools, moving online where appropriate and creating activity packs to be shared at home, but trying wherever possible to maintain direct contact with the children and staff we work with.
The longer-term impact of the lockdowns is now becoming apparent through the rising emotional, behavioural, and speech and language needs of the children. This impact is disproportionately affecting children from vulnerable and disadvantaged families.
The pandemic also continues to affect staff who are off sick due to Covid or related illnesses, and it’s proving incredibly challenging for schools to secure the staff cover they need; senior leaders are often having to cover lessons. It’s now more difficult to recruit Teaching Assistants and Learning Support Assistants: jobs which are crucial in providing front line 1-1 support for vulnerable children. All these factors are increasing workloads for everyone, putting a big strain on the whole school system.
The Foundation Fund’s work has started at a time when schools most need this support and we’re making sure we adapt our services to meet their developing needs.
How are you working with schools supported through the Foundation Fund?
We worked with the seven schools to create a core offer that’s consistent across all schools, but flexible enough to meet their very different needs.
Our core offer is a blend of several approaches; consultancy from a Brighter Future Co-ordinator, working closely with the school’s senior leaders on short, medium and long-term strategies for emotional and behavioural development; a Thrive Practitioner working with individual children or groups; an enhanced educational psychologist offer, enabling schools to use EP expertise to address issues they wouldn’t be usually be able to tackle due to a lack of capacity; relevant professional development; and weekly forest school group sessions. These outdoor sessions have been particularly popular as children respond well to being in a different environment using different learning techniques.
The Thrive approach is at the heart of much of our work and is used in most BaNES schools. It’s based on neuroscience, attachment theory and child development and helps us to profile children and classes and create action plans to work with them to best support their social and emotional wellbeing.
What are your key objectives/ what are you trying to achieve by working with the Foundation Fund?
Our overall goal is to help improve emotional and behavioural outcomes for disadvantaged children across the seven schools. This can be measured in a variety of ways, including rates of exclusions, and attendance levels.
As well as improving children’s immediate outcomes, we want to help build the schools’ overall capacity, so they have the infrastructure in place to be able to effectively support emotional and behavioural development beyond the Foundation Fund support. We are actively looking for ways to build and share good practice across the schools, creating a supportive network for this type of work.
Values of kindness, courage and trust are embedded in the history of St John’s Foundation and we champion these, as well as equality, diversity and inclusion. This June, as well as throughout the year, we support members of the LGBTQIA+ community in Bath and North East Somerset.
We celebrate people coming together in celebration and are committed to empowering unity and solidarity in our community
In February 2020, St John’s Foundation launched its ambitious ten-year strategy, alongside the creation of its new Foundation Fund – a fund established with the specific aim of narrowing the key stage 2 attainment gap for children living in Bath and North East Somerset.
The Primary Empowerment Programme is one of the Foundation Fund’s workstreams that is focused on providing children with additional support with foundational reading, writing, oracy, and mathematics, as well as emotional and behavioural support. This programme is working with seven schools across the local area that have high levels of disadvantaged children on their registers. In 2021 by working together, the schools and St John’s identified six delivery partners who could provide additional support to these disadvantaged children.
Our spotlight series shines a light on the delivery partners who are working alongside the Primary Empowerment Programme schools to provide readers with an update on the work being delivered to improve children’s lives.
This month, we sat down with Cerys Stevens, Teaching and Learning Consultant at Bristol City Council.
Can you tell me a bit about Reading Recovery?
At Bristol City Council, we believe all children can learn to read and write. To make this belief a reality, we run a literacy intervention programme for children aged around six experiencing the most difficulty in literacy learning. The aim of the Reading Recovery programme is to help each child reach their age-related expectations for reading and writing within 12-20 weeks. Each programme we undertake is bespoke to the child we are working with, and specially designed to meet their exact needs. We have high expectations for each pupil enrolled on the intervention and we use careful observation and highly skilled teaching to ensure the programme’s success.
Our teachers become expert literacy intervention teachers through an on-going professional development programme. The investment for schools is a fantastic opportunity as it supports those children who have slipped through the net and are struggling to catch up. The expertise of the Reading Recovery teacher is a valuable resource for the whole school.
How did the pandemic affect the way you reach children and help them with learning?
This is a big question, with a few different answers. As we know, during the pandemic, the gap between disadvantaged children compared to their better off peers, widened. The time spent by disadvantaged children in school is crucial. There are now more children for whom Reading Recovery should be treated as essential.
That’s why we did our best to continue our work with our children, in person. Many of the children we teach were still at school every day. For those that couldn’t come in and were learning at home, our teachers delivered lessons remotely. This wasn’t quite the same as our face-to-face lessons, but everyone did their best. In other cases, our Reading Recovery teachers invited pupils into schools specifically for just their lessons.
It is essential the programme is prioritised as it is resource intensive, so there is a strong desire on the part of the school, the pupils, and us to minimise wasted time. For some pupils this is their chance to access the help they need to learn to read and write.
Why are you working with the Foundation Fund?
The vision of the Foundation aligns closely with our own. We work with children who need the most help and support, which is exactly what the Fund has been set up to achieve.
Because of the long term nature planned for our intervention, we can evidence with data the progress we make with each child and the development they’ve made. We have many case studies demonstrating the impact Reading Recovery makes to a child’s happiness and wellbeing. For example, one little boy who was enrolled on the programme found it difficult to be in his classroom due to his frustrations. After 12 weeks of Reading Recovery he was able to join his classmates, and he considered himself a learner. It was wonderful to see and hear. Although the intervention’s main focus is ensuring children meet their age-related education expectations in reading and writing, seeing the wellbeing of children simply improve is so meaningful.
Eight out of every 10 children who complete the intervention catch up with their classmates. The programme has been running in the South West for 20 years which has enabled us to learn lessons from the past and sharpens our awareness and monitoring of the present, to fine tune our efforts.
When I heard about the Foundation Fund through my colleague, we reached out and shared our data and were lucky enough to be awarded a position as Delivery Partner.
How will you be working with the Fund?
We are working with the Foundation Fund in a few different ways. The schools within the programme are already engaging so well with us. The teachers we started training in September are already halfway to gaining their qualification. This means that when they are qualified their school will have a Reading Recovery teacher in it permanently to work with children who are struggling.
Secondly, we’ve been busy observing children in school and carrying out reviews of reading provision. We want to understand the attainment and progress of pupils, and how we can best provide provision to them in learning to read. From here we will be supporting the best possible way for each school on its own journey. This will be by providing professional development opportunities for staff to support their pupils in the area of development that is most important to them at this time.
What are your key objectives/ what are you trying to achieve by working with the Foundation Fund?
Our key objective is to get the children we work with reading and writing in line with their peers. How hard or easy this will be depending on the starting point of the pupils, which is why our programme is bespoke to each child’s strength and needs. I have seen children make up to 2 years progress within the 20 weeks, which is such an achievement.
The Reading Recovery programme has gone from strength to strength with 8/10 of our pupils meeting their age-related expectations within 20 weeks. I wanted to share some feedback with you from children in the programme.
Teacher: “How did you feel about reading when you first started with me?”
Child 1: “I was shy, I was not that good at reading. I feel good about reading now. I can read now. I get better when I read with you.”
Teacher comments: “It’s so nice that Child 1 can access the intervention now. It’s taken a barrier away from their learning.”
Teacher: “Do remember how you felt about reading before we worked together? What did you do when you were asked to read?”
Child 2: “I felt cross. I used to run out the door.” This is true. Child 2 was finding school very difficult to manage. They had very low self-esteem and would bang their head with their hand and regularly shout ‘I can’t do this’. They were also regularly running out of class.
Teacher: “How do you feel about reading now?”
Child 2: “I feel good about the reading. I can read books now.”
Child 2’s teachers have noticed a vast improvement in their attitude to learning. They have also been working hard in class to help them see themself in a more positive light. There is a lot more positivity in them and they haven’t run out of class for a month or so now.
In February 2020, St John’s Foundation launched its ambitious ten-year strategy, alongside the creation of its new Foundation Fund – a fund established with the specific aim of narrowing the key stage 2 attainment gap for children living in Bath and North East Somerset.
The Primary Empowerment Programme (one of the Foundation Fund’s workstreams that provides children with additional support with foundational reading, writing, oracy, and mathematics, as well as emotional and behavioural support) is working with 7 schools in the local area with high levels of disadvantaged children on their registers. Working together, the schools and St John’s have chosen six delivery partners that will most support disadvantaged children.
Our new spotlight series will shine a light on the delivery partners and schools that the Primary Empowerment Programme is working with and provide readers with an update on the work being delivered to improve children’s lives.
This month, we sat down with Caroline Hamilton, Managing Director of White Rose Maths.
Can you tell me a bit about White Rose Maths?
White Rose Maths is made up of a passionate group of maths experts (we’re all maths teachers at heart). We support the education sector by producing schemes of learning, assessments, and resources to help teachers and provide training to help better their approach to maths teaching.
For the last 12 months we’ve also been part of the National Tutoring Programme, working directly with disadvantaged children across England to make up for the learning time lost due to the Covid-19 closures.
How did the pandemic effect the way you reach children and help them with learning?
When the pandemic started, we had to react very quickly, switching our attention to home learning. We made all our ‘home learning’ lessons available for free online and every lesson came with a short video showing parents how to help their child complete the activity successfully.
Our approach was incredibly successful, reaching a huge number of children and our reach was like nothing we had experienced before. We had 70 million views and were in the top 1% of Vimeo users.
We were so successful in our approach that we won the Bett Covid Response champion award and the Best Covid-19 Community Award for our response and were shortlisted for another two.
How did you hear about the Foundation Fund?
St John’s reached out to us and raised our awareness of it. There was such a synergy between our work and the Fund that we went through the bid process to apply to be a delivery partner.
Why do you think it’s a good match?
White Rose Maths has various initiatives that help disadvantaged children which is why so much of our content is free. When we heard of St John’s and its Foundation Fund, we thought it was the perfect fit. Although we are a global organisation, having such a localised area of focus is a new approach for us and working with deprived or ‘opportunity’ areas gives us a specific goal to achieve results.
How will you be working with the Fund?
So far, we have met with all the seven schools individually to understand exactly what they need. We wanted to provide bespoke training based on the information we gathered so we worked with the headteachers to understand what they needed. Since those initial meetings, we have advised on action plans.
One common theme that emerged from all schools is that they want to upskill their Teaching Assistants so that they can lead on our tutoring packages. This will reduce costs in the long run and prove more beneficial to schools – their training begins at the end of February.
What are your key objectives/ what are you trying to achieve by working with the Foundation Fund?
We have a few key objectives to achieve. The first is, our early years focus and wanting to see key improvements in continuous provision and teacher questioning. The second objective is to upskill Teaching Assistants. We want to give TAs access to the National Tutoring Programme, which helps pupils make up lost learning time during Covid.
Aligning our initiatives with the Foundation Fund helps both White Rose Maths and St John’s reach a higher number of disadvantaged children and have a greater positive impact on their lives.
Exciting British Artist Dan W Griffin today announced ‘Dignitastic! Where Art Meets a Terminal Lung Cancer Diagnosis’, an exhilarating new art exhibition at 44AD Artspace Gallery in the beautiful Roman Spa City of Bath.
To celebrate, he is gifting the city’s Royal United Hospital a unique work created exclusively for the staff and patients of the Oncology Department. The presentation will take place at the hospital in August at a time to be confirmed.
A LIFE TRANSFORMED; FIRST BY A TERMINAL DIAGNOSIS, AND THEN BY THE ONSET OF A DEVASTATING PANDEMIC & LOCKDOWN
Diagnosed in January 2020 with an ultra rare form of lung cancer, Dan, a filmmaker, had barely begun to come to terms with the finality of his existence when the Covid pandemic struck and the nation entered the surrealism of lockdown. “It had crossed my mind that the Apocalypse was upon us” Dan said, “but I had thought the same thing when a corrupt orange sociopath and former game show host was elected to the US presidency. I didn’t know what was going on with the world, I just had an impulse to paint. And so I did.”
Dan’s work is greatly inspired and influenced by the natural world and the elements, consistently reflecting a parallel between his own stark reality and the raw, brutal power and stunning beauty of the Earth. “My artistic mission is, and has always been to fill my life with colour. Not all cancers are terminal, but each and every diagnosis is, for patients, their families and their friends, dark and often frightening. It’s not much, and I wish I could offer more, but I hope my work can introduce a little colour to the darkness; perhaps a little optimism, a dash of positivity to us all.”
Dignitastic! Where Art Meets a Terminal Lung Cancer Diagnosis is Dan W Griffin’s first ever public exhibition. It opens August 24th at 44AD Artspace Gallery at 4 Abbey Street in the beautiful Roman Spa City of Bath for five days. Private and One-on-One Guided Views are available. For more information or to apply, please contact the gallery, or visit the website.
When hearing of the government’s education recovery package, I couldn’t decide which I considered more significant – the fact that the circa 1-billion-pound package was only a tenth of the recommended spending amount, or that the government’s (voluntary) chief advisor on education recovery, Sir Kevan Collins resigned once the announcement was made.
Arguably, you don’t get the press exposure of this without both of these elements; that an advisor can feel so disappointed by a decision that he moves away from an opportunity to continue to influence policy that support children, something he has worked hard on all his life, or that the government can offer 12 billion pounds less than what has been asked for education recovery.
Perhaps Sir Kevan’s estimate of requirements for supporting children was overly ambitious considering the current climate and clamber from all circles for extra funding.
Funding is often the reason that educational programmes and activities fail, the reasons for this can generally be put into two categories. Firstly, external funding may be sourced for a programme to run for a set period of time, one, two, three years if lucky and then that funding ceases causing a programme to stop and the opportunity of full impact not to be realised.
The second, which relates to the government’s education recovery package, is that not enough funding is received. Schools and programmes that receive limited funding will struggle to make a positive impact on the lives of disadvantaged children compared to those setting with more funding.
As we’ve seen educational inequality has worsened significantly during the pandemic. This wrecks opportunities for young lives; diminishes the creative and innovative talent available for future economic prosperity and will increase the future demands on an already exhausted and expensive statutory services.
This is why St John’s joined 240 other leaders from across the business, education and charity sectors by signing an FEA-led open letter, urging the Government to invest further in their stated intention of helping pupils.
St John’s is just at the beginning of our educational funding journey. Questions of amounts of funding, sustainability and long-term impact will lead us to continually challenge ourselves and our decisions as to how we can best serve children and communities.
– Sam Gillett, Head of Delivery and Impact, St John’s Foundation
“I look forward to the sessions and feel a sense of family and belonging despite being apart from so many of my own immediate family. I am and always will be so grateful.”
Our lives are lived at such a pace these days; we go from one meeting to the next, one phone call to the next, barely stopping to breathe.
I’d been introduced to a brilliant breathing technique by a friend of mine who is now a Life Coach, and I found it so helpful. The technique enabled me to slow down and be calm, even when faced with stressful situations.
I began to think that if I found it this helpful, then others would benefit too, so I created Breathe&Begin. It started exclusively as an offering to the staff at St John’s and then due to demand, it expanded to include a wider community around Bath. The concept was to help people to engage with the day, in a focussed and calm way. Each day would offer a short, themed reflection, with quotes (from businesspeople to world leaders), a verse from the bible, finished with a prayer.
After just a few weeks of hosting in-person weekly sessions with a small group of people, we found ourselves in lockdown.
I decided to establish an online Breath&Begin community to for new and existing members to join. Via the St John’s Facebook page I began to lead sessions Monday to Thursday mornings, mostly with about 20 – 30 people engaging with it each day. After the first lockdown ended, I went from four days a week to Tuesday and Thursday mornings. During the times of isolation people found the sense of community helpful:
“Jacky’s Breathe and Begin sessions have been such a help and comfort during the long months of lockdown. Her soothing voice and her breathing technique along with her pertinent and thought-provoking quotes and prayers have taught me to relax and start the day in a positive and uplifting way. Jacky has also helped to alleviate loneliness and the feeling of isolation the pandemic has brought and to appreciate the small things and blessings we still have.” Elspeth
“Logging on and seeing Jacky’s smiling face welcoming you is such a lovely start to the day. With her soothing voice and non-judgmental air, you allow yourself to be drawn away from the world of deadlines and commitments and to just concentrate on being present. We were all so excited when Jacky joined St John’s and she’s such a great advocate for bringing people together, even in times when we are separated from one another” Cathy
It’s been a privilege getting to know some of the people who have been regularly tuning in. Many of us found focusing hard during lockdown due to the external noise around us and many participants found finding ways to do this useful:
“Often at the beginning of my working day I feel quite overwhelmed.… Breathe and begin has been a gift as it grounds me in God and calms my body too through the breathing techniques. The overwhelmed state often results in a lack of focus and then can result in a disabling panic which in turn means I achieve little which can be a vicious cycle… There is a real benefit too in not being expected to do anything but just be and to be ministered too…. Thank you…” Ellie
We all need to ‘belong’ and that was pretty hard during the lockdowns. As we ease out of this third lockdown, we’ve started back in the Chapel on Tuesday mornings, but as Breathe&Begin has become a community in its own right, the Thursday mornings continue online. Everyone is welcome, and I’d be delighted to see the two groups grow.
Just slow down.. and breathe…
Reverend Jacky Wise
Making a real difference to the people, organisations and infrastructure in Bath and North East Somerset has always been St John’s guiding principle. For the last 847 years, we have used our activities, funding and knowledge to positively impact individuals in our community.
Last February, our strategy evolved to not only focus on the wellbeing of older adults, but to also support every child, under the age of twelve, to grow into a healthy, happy and educated member of our community. The introduction of this strategy has set us on a new and unknown trajectory and had us asking the question ‘How do we accomplish such a challenging feat?’
We started by structuring the Foundation Fund around four specific areas of focus; nutritious food daily; safe spaces to go outside of school; support for behavioural and emotional needs and extra educational support. We decided to focus on these four key areas to help us achieve our vision of significantly reducing the local authority’s disproportionate educational attainment gap (this is the difference between the educational levels of children in deprived communities compared to better off peers).
However, to have the biggest impact on the most children possible, we knew we also needed to align with partner organisations that shared our ambition.
The importance of partnership working cannot be understated – a shared vision and an overarching purpose drives results and creates more opportunities for those that need them the most.
One of the organisations that we have partnered with and supported through funding and shared knowledge, is Bath Recreation. Alongside the Medlock Charitable Trust, we are working together to help shape their newly-launched Glasshouse Academy Programme.
The Academy aims to support cohorts of children from Year 5 to Year 13, through regular out-of-school sporting activities. The recreational programme helps develop values and skills that will serve children as they go through life.
Leading the charge on the Glasshouse Academy programme is Bath rugby legend, Matt Banahan. Matt will be guiding children to make good choices, on and off the sports field. His professional career and first-hand, personal experiences make him the perfect person to lead such an initiative.
Sports development is the main feature of the programme, yet not the only one; the Academy hopes to support children as they reach further education, apprenticeships, or employment and equip them with the necessary skills for a successful future. The programme has been designed to create opportunities, to raise aspirations and to release potential. These ambitious goals align whole-heartedly with those of St John’s Foundation Fund.
Working alongside Bath Recreation helps us both achieve our long-term aim of bettering the lives of children in our community. Together we can develop local networks and identify future initiatives that support disadvantaged and vulnerable groups. We continue to build connections with local schools, helping us to identify their needs and understand how we can best support them through The Foundation Fund.
Cressida Cowell: Children’s Laureate leads call for £100m primary school library fund
This recent article, that made national news, highlights how the level of a child’s literacy is a key indicator of how well they will go on to do in later life, with those with poor reading and writing skills far more likely to struggle than their better-read peers
Why is ring-fenced funding needed?
Astonishingly, there is currently no statutory provision for school libraries, with funding for libraries dependent on the specific budget of schools, multi-academy trusts, and local authority budgets. This causes a large gap to widen between schools from communities with higher deprivation levels and those from more affluent areas.
The sort of books deemed ‘reading for pleasure’ tend to be near the very bottom of priority lists for school funding as they do not form part of the general early year’s curriculum and so are not able to be read by young primary-aged pupils. Unfortunately, schools are forced to use their limited resources wisely and those books not on the curriculum are the first casualties. This can mean that children from poorer backgrounds don’t get the opportunity to read ‘interesting’ or ‘exciting’ books such as Cressida Cowell’s How to Train Your Dragon. This, in turn, can make it very hard for children to develop a real love of reading, instead of seeing it as a chore that must be endured not enjoyed. Those children unable to hone their ‘reading for pleasure’ skills are unlikely to develop their literacy skills to the same level as a child who is an avid reader.
Where does the funding come from for ‘reading for pleasure’ and stocking libraries?
The wealthiest schools have sufficient budgets to be able to pay for good libraries and books to fill them and other schools that may not have their own resources but are located in affluent areas also tend to benefit from that affluent community. This is commonly achieved through local Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs). PTAs from wealthy neighborhoods are able to generate large amounts of money through fundraising and sourcing funds from more affluent families and friends. They also tend to have better connections to businesses and networks to further help source resources for their schools. Schools situated in more deprived areas are not able to raise large amounts of money from the families of their children, nor do they generally speaking have good connections to businesses or wealthy benefactors. Even when schools from disadvantaged communities do receive literacy support from funders and bodies such as the Department for Education, this funding is generally not given to pay for reading resources but, rather, staff time, training, and development.
St John’s funding
Recently, we awarded funding to a number of local schools from deprived communities and we gave the headteachers from these schools the freedom to use the funding in any way they wished that they felt would best support the children. Almost all of the schools chose to spend a portion of that funding on books, which is very telling and just goes to show how little resource is available in this area. Even so, the books that were purchased were educational, ‘decodable’ books and texts, not the reading-for-pleasure books such as ‘How to train your dragon’.
By way of conclusion, we wholly endorse the ring-fencing of funding to bolster/create libraries for schools from deprived communities. It would be a hugely valuable initiative and help level up the playing field when it comes to children’s literacy and education.
