Stoke Park Trust

The drive to raise standards is seen as the key to raising community aspirations and will be approached through layered enhancements to aspects of the school’s specialist areas, 14-19 provision and further community engagement.

Links with the three universities are seen as hugely important in terms of extending horizons by exposing staff and students to world-class resources and expertise. The school believes that the excitement generated around such activities, and the prestige of being linked with three universities will create a “halo effect” for them as they are seen as being at the centre of high-quality, high profile experiences.

Stoke Park is a single school trust based on Stoke Park School and Community Technology College. The school opened as a trust school on 1st September 2008.

Partners:  Aston University, Coventry University, Midland Group Training Services Ltd, The International Manufacturing Centre at the University of Warwick and Coventry LA.

All external partners provide members for the school’s governing body but collectively form a minority. The Trust Board meets three times a year and operates as a “challenging and stimulating think tank”. The headteacher regards them as an invaluable sounding board that allows a high level of challenge and stimulation without necessarily becoming preoccupied by the “nitty-gritty of school management”. No sub-groups have been formed.

Examples of trust impact include:

• The range of activities and inputs to programmes is genuinely impressive and multi-layered. Many of the planned activities, as well as being successful in their own right, have had unexpected and successful “spin offs”.
• An example to illustrate this is found in the plans for a new media course. The school has put together an intervention strategy for disengaged, white working class boys that include an intensive two week media course.
• The Chair of the trust has been researching and evaluating new learning environments on behalf of the International Manufacturing Centre at the University of Warwick.
• A central feature of the school’s technology specialism is around the use of ICT to develop life-long independent learning. .
• Year 13 visit to Warwick University Chemistry department for tutorials with professors; sessions on “theoretical and computational chemistry” using advanced IT systems
• Input to Year 12 and 13 physics course by university professor to work on “Particle Physics”
• STEM science and engineering workshops for Gifted and Talented Year 7s; development of Building Learning Power
• National Diploma workshops for Y9- potential engineers within an ICT environment

Although there are no immediate plans to change the structure or membership of the trust, the trust is exploring ways in which to increase its commercial effectiveness.

“We see the trust as the only really effective way of energising the learning of the community and empowering the community. We will unashamedly use the trust to enable Stoke Park to focus on the most effective and imaginative learning and teaching for the 21st Century”. Guy Shears, Headteacher at Stoke Park School.