Bellingham Community Middle School
Background
Bellingham Community Middle School caters for 160 pupils from
age nine to thirteen and is in partnership with three other
schools: Allendale Middle School; Haydon Bridge Community High
School Sports College; and Samuel King School Technology College,
as the North Pennine Learning Partnership, an early adopter Trust
formed in March 2007. The partnership covers a very large
geographical area with a catchment of 1000 square miles and the
schools are dispersed across the region within two local
authorities: Northumberland and Cumbria.
There had been collaboration between the schools in the past,
but this tended to depend on goodwill and the individual
personalities within the schools. The decision to form a Trust was
taken to continue to further improve educational outcomes for all
pupils through formal collaboration between the schools. Trust
status will be used to effectively ‘glue’ the schools together and
ensure the partnership is sustainable, irrespective of changes of
governors and headteachers.
Vision
‘The whole reason for becoming a Trust is to improve children’s
life chances and to increase their rate of progress through the
school system’, Sue Dowson, Headteacher, Bellingham Community
Middle School
With falling school numbers in the area, collaboration was seen
as an important way of sustaining and enhancing high standards of
achievement for the children, while at the same time making crucial
savings through achieving economies of scale and making effective
use of resources for the schools in the partnership.
The Trust’s vision is to create a learning partnership, linked
to strong external partners, which will extend learning
opportunities for young people in this rural area; a partnership
that is sustainable through collaborative and distributed
leadership across the schools.
‘Becoming a Trust gives my school the required autonomy and
flexibility to meet local needs and this has led to massive support
for the school from the local community’ Sue Dowson, Headteacher,
Bellingham Community Middle School
External partners
In addition to the four schools, the Trust has identified a
number of external partners to help them meet the Trust’s vision
including; Cumbria and Northumberland County Council;
Northumberland College; the universities of Cumbria and Liverpool
John Moore’s; the Institute for Outdoor Learning; North Country
Leisure; the Rugby Football Union and Royal Mail.
Partners bring a wide range of benefits to the school, such as
developing ICT capacity and e-learning opportunities, enhanced
business and financial management of the Trust, support to ensure
that students continue to aspire to lifelong learning opportunities
as well as providing a vital local perspective on the development
of the Trust in areas such as education, work experience and
employment.
Potential partners were initially approached by individual
headteachers, who met with them to share the Trust’s vision and
discuss their possible involvement. Once it became clear that the
benefits of partnership were mutual and their commitment was
secured, an external consultant was engaged to draw up a memoranda
of understanding using the DCSF Trust School Toolkit.
‘It was staggering how quickly the partners came on board. The
schools all share a passion for ensuring that children’s chances
and opportunities aren’t limited, and our potential partners heard
this loud and clear’ Sue Dowson, Headteacher, Bellingham Community
Middle School
It is envisaged that partners will provide staff development
opportunities for teachers, governors, students and other
stakeholders, whilst advising on income generation and better use
of resources. The Trust are investigating with their higher
education partners the potential to offer bursaries and research
opportunities. The involvement of the Rugby Football Union opens up
a whole new area of development for their sports specialism
including raising standards through sport, volunteering,
qualifications, event management, developing role models and
leadership.
The benefits of Trust status
- Cementing existing collaboration to help the schools meet their
vision
- Bring key external partners to the Board
- Additional expertise to the schools’ governing bodies
- Opportunities to investigate additional funding through the
charitable status that being a Trust brings
- The opportunity to work with the National College for School
Leadership to fund a development project for partnership school
management and bursarial support
The benefits to Bellingham Community Middle School in particular
are already becoming very clear:
- There is now a greater capacity to build on the school’s
existing strengths
- We are developing 'leaders' with a range of expertise, rather
than relying on one or two experts
- Shared expertise in teaching
- Shared resources with the other schools - especially at key
stages 3 and 4 - at a time of a falling pupil roll and associated
budget reductions
- Most importantly, greater control of our own destiny and the
ability to respond appropriately to local needs, ensuring
sustainability. The result has been raising the profile of the
school in the local community and the local authority.
Challenges
- The schools being so dispersed geographically presents a number
of obvious practical and logistical problems, nevertheless a new
partner has been identified to support IT systems and virtual
learning
- Having established a vision and signed up external partners,
the next challenge is to get all the legal arrangements associated
with becoming a Trust resolved and in place, solicitors have been
recruited to help us through this stage
- It was difficult to convince some understandably more parochial
school governors that becoming a Trust did not mean a loss of
autonomy or identity. In order to persuade them that the change of
status was for the benefit of all young people, it was important to
get the governors involved early on in the application for ‘early
adopter’ status. The chair of governors attended all meetings and
seminars so that he could share the plans and vision with fellow
governors and reassure them that the school wouldn’t be ‘swallowed
up’ by the high school or any other partnership school; it would
still be very much Bellingham Middle School
- It was a prerequisite for the school to be a truly equal
partner in the arrangement and this philosophy has drawn the Trust
successfully together. Without the heads securing this vision for
equal partnership the whole project would have fallen at the first
hurdle
Top tips
- It is important to be clear about what you want from and what
you can give to partners; the relationship must be reciprocal with
each party being able to support the other’s aims
- The local authority should be brought into discussions at an
early stage so that they can share the educational vision.
Bellingham Community Middle School was able to assure the local
authority that becoming part of a Trust would address their
priorities as set out in the ‘local development plan’ as well as
the problems identified in the latest Ofsted report. By focusing on
educational outcomes, by demonstrating that the Trust would address
problems that the local authority were finding difficult and by
convincing council members that becoming a Trust was politically
acceptable, it was possible to take the local authority with
them
- It is important to be clear about the reasons for becoming a
Trust school, because it is a huge leap in the dark, additional
work, but ultimately very rewarding
‘Be brave, passionate and clear about what you are trying to
achieve; focus on the outcomes for children; seek advice from those
who have been there before’. Sue Dowson, Headteacher, Bellingham
Community Middle School