Two New Secondary Opportunities Available

The new opportunities are now available on the Current Commissions page.

Make, Learn, Share Programme 2017-18 - Commission

The Make, Learn, Share (MLS) project is designed to develop digital skills amongst young people and School Communities across Sheffield, in order to assist with learning and enterprise development.

MLS trains Student Ambassadors from Sheffield Secondary Schools in Digital Making. They then cascade their computing expertise, enthusiasm and shared learning into linked Primary Schools.

The aspiration is to create a large scale student ambassador association (14-16 year olds).

This will be done by Sheffield City Council’s E-learning team organising a series of Training events for young people and include learning about the latest technological developments e.g. Writing Mobile Phone Applications (Apps), Robotics Engineering and Utilisation and making the best use of easily accessible technology such as the BBC Microbit and the Raspberry Pi.

The learning materials connected to these sessions will be openly available and feature a mix of digital video content, written instruction and peer to peer support.

This project is part of an international forward-looking co-operation project with 5 other European cities.

Local ‘twilight’ sessions (which are held in Schools) firstly train the student ambassadors who will then deliver learning to targeted others within their locality - this could be younger children from feeder primary schools or parents.

 We have seen three key features as a result of this work:

• Student Ambassadors creating digital products from the initial training sessions

• Ambassadors influencing their peers and an alternative approach to developing an extremely important aspect of the curriculum.

• An interesting and engaging context to practice, refine and develop skills in Literacy, Maths and Employability Skills

Pupil Premium Project - Expression of Interest

Maximising the Impact of the Pupil Premium | Sheffield Secondary Sector

The programme includes:

• Initial Input for school leaders.

• Supported self-evaluation of participating school strategies for tackling education disadvantage.

• Individual half day strategy reviews and reports, led by Marc Rowland and Learn Sheffield.

• Sharing of practice and learning through reports and emerging themes.

• Individual follow up visits and reports, led by Marc Rowland and supported by Learn Sheffield.

• End of phase one programme seminar. Gathering to share learning and impact; Published report.

For the programme to be a success participating schools need to:

• Have a strong commitment to affecting change for all disadvantaged learners.

• Regard the issue of tackling disadvantage as achievable and a core theme which permeates the work of the school at every level; therefore, the programme needs to sit within a long term strategy and the over-arching improvement plan.

• Demonstrate the leadership capacity needed to affect change at both a strategic level and in relation to everyday practice.

The programme also seeks to:

• Strengthen sustained capacity within schools to secure improvement across different aspects of work and from varying starting points.

• Equip schools with a strong evidence base to demonstrate the positive impact of leadership and strategies for change on improved outcomes.

• Strengthen the culture of reflection and evaluation within the school, coupled with the significance of strategic planning routed in a robust evidence base and clarity of desired impact

• Foster closer school to school partnerships and the benefits of a self-improving system beyond the single institution.