The Kimberley School Newsletter October 2015

News@Kimberley Founded 1925 A record of the life of the school, its duties and pleasure, its work and play; a chronicle of endeavour and achievement October 2015 Issue 45# Head’s Lines A bright future in the East Midlands Education Trust (EMET) I’m absolutely delighted that Governors have voted unanimously to accept the invitation to join EMET (East Midlands Education Trust) as a founding partner. We are still completing the legal work but hope to become a fully-fledged member before Christmas. I can see huge opportunities for us in working with similar, high calibre schools; opportunities that are cultural, academic, sporting and organisational. I invited my colleague and CEO of EMET, Rob McDonough, to add his thoughts on this exciting initiative and this is what he had to say…. “I was delighted to learn of the decision by the governors of The Kimberley School to join EMET. The trust presently comprises three schools; South Wolds Academy and Sixth Form in Keyworth, the West Bridgford School and Ripley Academy, with more schools set to join. The inclusion of The Kimberley School will clearly strengthen the trust and the partnership we are attempting to establish. The trust seeks to bring together like minded schools who, through partnership working, aim to make a real difference for the children in our schools. We aim, over time, to find opportunities for our staff to work together collaboratively and to share best practice. By bringing our staff together we want to learn from one another and get to know our respective strengths and improve still further those areas of our practice where improvement is needed. By fostering an open and honest dialogue between our schools and staff, we feel we can support one another to help raise standards across the partnership. We also seek to create new opportunities for students and pupils. By working together it may be possible to offer experiences which are difficult for a single school. Sporting competition, for example, is an obvious starting point along with shared work in the performing arts. But partnership working can also make curriculum enrichment more viable such as a joint foreign exchange or combined ski trips. EMET is also a teacher training provider and can provide for our partnership schools any number of high-quality trainee teachers. This can ensure that The Kimberley School has ready access to high-quality teachers when teaching vacancies occur. This is an exciting new venture, both for EMET and for Kimberley, and the benefits this partnership can bring for the young people in our charge is only limited by our imagination. The challenge for school leaders now is to be creative! Newdigate Street • Kimberley • Nottingham • NG16 2NJ www.kimberleyschool.co.uk Exam Success The results are in and our students have done us proud! The GCSE results are back to where we expect them. If ever there was any doubt about the quality of our provision (I never doubted it, by the way), then the fact that 10 students achieved at least 10 A*/A grades shows that the quality of teaching across all subjects is high. Megan Barnes actually got 11 A* grades and I’ll bet there are very few candidates in the county who could equal that! A levels were similarly satisfying with all those that were seeking a university place being successful as well as others choosing the apprenticeship route. For those that like the stats, at A level there were only 3 U grades out of 186 entries. At GCSE, Maths results were above the national average, as were many others. The English results have returned to around the national average with the examination element being much better than other schools, including “similar” schools. • 0115 938 7000