More Than A Score:

It’s time to fundamentally change the high-stakes, high-pressure assessment system in primary schools and make good mental health the basis for good learning.

Primary pupils in England now face SATs and other government tests in five out of seven school years – that’s more formal assessments than in almost any other country.

But the evidence against the current system is growing. Parents, teachers and heads are united in calling for change.

In 2022, only 3% of heads wanted SATs to go ahead. 89% of parents say they would support an alternative. And 1 in 10 year 6 pupils didn’t sleep well in the run-up to the tests.

SATs and other government tests don’t help learning and cause unnecessary stress and pressure.

Let’s speak out for children.

Alison Ali Director/Owner Can Can Campaigns

Alison began her career in journalism, moving into international consumer publishing. Her experience runs from human rights and global finance reporting, to launching premium multi-language magazines and digital platforms for household brand names. She has run her own successful creative agency Can Can Creative since 2006 and, in 2019, launched sister agency Can Can Campaigns to harness the collective’s exceptional skills for greater good.

www.morethanascore.org.uk/

FB @morethanascore

T @MoreThanScore

Insta @morethanascore

TikTok @morethanascore_

Written by Claire Banks and Mick Waters, A Curious Curriculum: Teaching foundation subjects well details the insightful and transformational steps that a school can take towards designing and delivering a rich, rigorous and wide-ranging curriculum. 

Before becoming Director of Education for The Olympus Academy Trust, a cross-phase multi-academy trust in north Bristol, Claire Banks was a head teacher for nine years in an inner-city primary school. Throughout her career she has been interested in social and emotional learning and school climate, which has led to her work on leadership culture. Claire now works on curriculum design and school improvement in a system leadership capacity, offering school-to-school support to school trusts. Her passion for succession planning for the profession has led to her coaching and mentoring on aspiring heads and women in leadership programmes.

Website

www.crownhouse.co.uk

www.crownhouse.co.uk/a-curious-curriculum

Social Media Information

Twitter and Instagram: @CrownHousePub

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CrownHousePub

Details of the Primary Education Summit can be found at www.nape.org.uk/summit

This presentation will aim to inspire listeners to understand why Values-based Education (VbE) is now being considered as the foundation of school culture worldwide. He will explain the key elements of the VbE model and why practitioners love it so much. He will draw on good practice from Primary Schools that find it to be the 'beating heart of their education'. Neil will describe the impact that VbE is having on developing what he describes as ethical leadership and why this concept should be central in the Primary School curriculum. 

Dr. Neil Hawkes is well known as an educator, motivational speaker, broadcaster, writer and social commentator. 

He first gained international recognition when he was a Headteacher in Oxfordshire, where he worked with a school community to devise and implement a pedagogical system that would give children a transformational ethical vocabulary, based on values such as respect, tolerance, humility and justice. Pupils were empowered to be self-leaders, with an active moral compass that affected behaviour, their thinking and the quality of their school work. Values-based Education (VbE) is now recognised internationally as a key dimension in school improvement and enhancing the nature of pupil experience and many schools have now gained accreditation for the quality of their values-based education, including Bannockburn Primary School where the Schiller lecture is being hosted.

Get notified about the Christian Schiller Lecture here https://www.youtube.com/live/aFGja5aYNfM?feature=share

NAPE YouTube Channel

www.youtube.com/@nationalassociationforprim834/

Primary Education Summit

https://nape.org.uk/summit

National Association for Primary Education is proud to present a Primary Education Summit 'Visions for the Future' over two weeks starting on 15th March 2023. This is intended to promote discussion about the type of rich and engaging primary education which will enable all our children to meet the challenges they face now and in the future. This will include the annual Christian Schiller Lecture 'Values-based Education - the beating heart of Primary Education' presented by Dr. Neil Hawkes, eleven pre-recorded guest presentations and four live panel discussions led by prominent figures in primary education. Full details of these are given below. We very much hope that you will wish to join us for some or all of these sessions - and let other people in your school or organization know.

nape.org.uk/summit

www.youtube.com/@nationalassociationforprim834/

Jon Severs is editor of Tes. He was previously commissioning editor at Tes, responsible for the teaching and learning content, as well as policy, leadership and pastoral articles. Before that, he wrote and edited for both trade and consumer titles. 

Jon explains the journey of taking the traditional Tes magazine, which was established in 1910, to their new online delivery which can be more reactive in our modern age.

If you want to contribute to Tes in the way mentioned in the show here are the 2 contacts.

dan.worth@tes.com

helen.amass@tes.com

Prepared for life, not just exams

360 are a dynamic social enterprise developing essential skills for life in young people through an interactive learning approach we call discuss, decide and do.

360 Skills For Life provide scenario-based educational experiences that equip learners with the skills, knowledge and confidence to live active, fulfilling and safer lives in stronger and more sustainable communities.

Experience Skill City, their unique VR environment, bringing to life real world safeguarding dilemmas in realistic but safe scenarios.

Their values

• We listen in order to continually learn and improve
• We connect and collaborate because partnerships achieve more for less
• We put the learner and their needs first
• We empower and challenge rather than instruct
• We engage and involve learners in our development
• We adapt and are flexible when encountering new situations and knowledge
• We include all learners regardless of age, disability, gender, relationship or parental status, race, belief, sex or sexual orientation
• We seek the best in everyone to realise individual and collective potential

• Holistic, cross-curricular education that delivers transferable skills for 21st century life
• Immersive, practical and interactive learning in which users discuss, make decisions and then do, rather than simply learning facts
• Awareness of surroundings to make good risk assessments, confidently make better decisions and deal with individual and collective challenges
• Blended learning where online, in-school and outdoor strands are closely integrated
• Provision of a realistic dilemma-based virtual Skill City as the core resource
• Partnership with other organisations to maximise impact and value

Full details available at www.360skillsforlife.org

The Nature Premium campaign is being led by the Forest School Association (FSA). With around 2000 practicing members the Forest School Association is the professional body and UK wide voice for Forest School, promoting and supporting best practice, cohesion and ‘quality Forest School for all.  

Guidance is being provided by a campaign steering group comprising representatives of key organisations within the outdoors learning industry and conservation sector (campaign partners). 

In addition, the campaign will seek support from allies across multiple sectors. The private sector will be particularly important in terms of sponsoring the campaign and achieving our goal. 

The campaign has been developed and managed on an entirely voluntary basis with the FSA underwriting the costs and FSA directors contributing a huge amount of their time. We recognise that the campaign is more likely to be successful if it has additional voluntary and financial resources. 

The campaign is deliberately independent and simply seeks to increase children’s engagement with nature and realise the huge number of associated benefits. Supporters within the outdoors learning industry will, on their own terms, lay-out and make their ‘offer’ for how the nature premium could be used to support school communities, young people, and families. Each will use their own networks to support the campaign.

Dr Sara Collins is a biologist who completed her doctorate at Imperial College, London while working with the Forestry Commission. Post research she worked for a Palo Alto biotech company focusing on European sales, expanding into Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus. At the same time, she completed her MBA. She took a career break when her son was born and worked as a Visiting Teaching Fellow at Bath University where she wrote and taught a course on developing entrepreneurial skills in biotechnology. Sara qualified as a Forest School practitioner because it took her back to nature and fitted in with her son’s academic year. She is deputy-chair of a national charity and FRSA. Sara has worked in urban, multi-ethnic primary schools in Portsmouth for over ten years and developed the volunteer led Nature Premium campaign during Lockdown I. She continues to combine campaigning with her self-employed work in local schools.

saracollins@naturepremium.org

www.naturepremium.org/

Click to watch NAPE's Christian Schiller Lecture presented by Nancy Stewart 'Cherishing the growth of young children: what early years education can be'

2 online events for the summer term

Mental Health/Wellbeing - How to support pupils with transition to secondary school with Sam Moinet from Student Breakthrough (May 16th)

Ocean Plastic & Climate Change - Join Ellie Jackson author of the Wild Tribe Heroes book series as we invite pupils to write a story based on this topic in a writing festival (June 13th) 

For full details and booking forms please visit nape.org.uk/online-events

The National Association for Primary Education are delighted to announce that Nancy Stewart will present our Christian Schiller Lecture 2022.

'Cherishing the growth of young children: what early years education can be'.

Nancy Stewart is a consultant and writer with wide experience across early years sectors in schools, nurseries, local authority advisory service, and National Strategies where she was Senior Early Years Adviser with a central role in Every Child a Talker. Nancy provided expert advice to the 2012 review of the Early Years Foundation Stage, drawing on her interest in communication and language for thinking, as well as children’s development as self-regulating learners. Nancy co-authored Development Matters 2012, and wrote How children learn – The characteristics of effective early learning. She led development of Birth to Five Matters (2021) as Project Lead for the Early Years Coalition, and is a Vice President of Early Education.

Nancy has earned the reputation as one of the most insightful speakers in the UK, specialising in the field of early years. This event will be of great interest to teachers, tutors, students, parents.

The lecture is free and will be held on Monday 14th March 2022 at 4.45pm.

It is being hosted by Windmill Primary School in Oxford and will be live streamed via zoom.

To book please visit:

https://nape.org.uk/schiller-online-booking or

https://nape.org.uk/schiller-in-person-booking