Aston Pupil Guarantee

The Aston Pride Pupil Guarantee is an overarching strategy designed to promote the achievement of all children in the Aston New Deal in the Communities area that will subsequently impact upon their attainment in a wide range of skills. The guarantee particularly supports the physical, emotional, cultural and technological development of all Aston children. The purpose of the guarantee is to ensure that the pupils access a wide range of activity and involvement that provides them with the experiences and tools to exercise choices that will enable them to become highly employable, contributing citizens within the Aston Community.

Underpinning the guarantee is an emphasis upon a planned drive towards improving learning and employability. The children will learn to organize themselves, work with others, accept responsibility, be creative, develop high esteem for self and others, be creative and recognize that learning is a life long process.

The following Aston Schools have all agreed to deliver the Aston Pride Pupil guarantee.

Secondary:

Aston Manor School
Birchfield Independent School
Broadway School

Primary:

Aston Tower Community Primary
Deykin Avenue J/I School
Mansfield Green School
Prince Albert J/I
Manor Park Primary School
Yew Tree Community School
Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School
Birchfield Community School

This follows a series of consultations. It is implicit that all children should have access to a basic entitlement of planning activity designed to promote their achievement and subsequent attainment. This includes children looked after and children at present excluded from school for whatever reason.

The schools do not expect to be the sole providers of activity but the brokers of this process across the guarantee. External providers within the local community should have access to supporting activity.

The Aston Pupil Guarantee is for pupils of all school age including Nursery.

There are important principles that the Head teachers of the schools have agreed upon so far:

The project will be linked to help support the drive to attain the overall high level outcomes.
The project will have a set of outcomes linked to increasing a skills base that will have a direct impact upon raising standards of achievement and attainment in literacy and numeracy and the broad range of the curriculum.
Each school will be able to map progress over a three year period that clearly indicates the major impact of the guarantee children's learning linked to the high level outcomes.
It is recognised that all of the schools are at differing levels of development and will therefore need differing inputs and resourcing. There are however common strands that have been agreed and provide the basis of the pupil guarantee.

The headings are as follows:

Strand 1 Arts/Performance
Schools will choose from a menu of entitlement and activities for pupils.

An entitlement to access diverse cultural activity in Birmingham.
All children to experience working with an expert in a specified artistic, cultural field.
Entitlement to formal visits per annum to enhance a performing arts tradition.
Children to have opportunities to develop art/design work in conjunction with a youth worker. On site Arts events linked to the Titan Arts Festival.
Gifted and talented children having an opportunity to extend an area of interest or expertise.

Strand 2 Extended Learning
Schools will choose from a menu of entitlements and projects for pupils.

Family group work in literacy and numeracy.
Cross phase liaison particularly family learning working across schools.
Children to be a member of a library and be involved in library based activity linked to an information skills programme.
Provision of Children's University access and University of the First Age provision.
Access to a wide range of learning activities beyond the normal school curriculum designed to raise attainment at Key Stages 2, 3 and 4.
Homework Clubs.
Weekend and holiday learning provision.

Strand 3 Physical/experimental
Schools will choose from a menu of entitlement and activities for pupils.

All pupils to have secure access including transport to a high quality sports, physical activity centre.
All pupils to be provided with basic equipment to ensure safe access to physical activity.
Upgrading of physical education changing facilities.
Upgrading of external facilities e.g. play surfaces to allow extended community usage.
Provision of safe areas' in schools for extended use by students and family groups.
Community access to garden areas.

Strand 4 Technological including ICT
It is anticipated that a large percentage of the funding will be directed to this guarantee area particularly in the Primary schools.

The Need For The Project
The skills base of children through the NDC area is extremely variable, depending upon ICT infra-structure, access to hardware and software and teacher expertise within the schools.

This is exacerbated by the generally low level of ICT knowledge, skills and access within the majority of the pupils' families.

There are however areas of expertise within the NDC which have received national recognition and have been given DfES Pathfinder status. This project intends to build upon a basic entitlement linked into a TILE initiative (Towards Improving Learning and Employability) which guides every child to words acquiring the required workforce skills which will be essential to their future employment.

Brief Description

This is a co-ordinated three year project through all the nominated Aston Pride Primary Schools which will put Information Communication Technology at the centre of the schools' drive to raise standards of attainment and secure the future employment of the children.

The ICT strand is linked directly to support the drive to attain the overall high level outcomes.
The strand will have a set of outcomes linked to an ICT skills base that will have a direct impact upon raising standards of attainment in literacy and numeracy and the broad range of the curriculum.
Each school will have the opportunity to map progress over a three year period that clearly indicates the major impact of ICT upon the pupils' learning linked to the high level outcomes.

It is recognised that all of the schools are at differing levels of ICT development and will therefore need varying degrees of input and resourcing.

These are the common strands that have been agreed by the schools.

The overarching delivery of the project will be managed and administered externally linked into the Pupil's Guarantee. i.e. through a schools' project manager with admin support.
All schools will need access to: enhanced technical support; enhanced expert teacher input.
High level connectivity.
Networking throughout the school to facilitate access to internet and development of an extensive internet.
Software that is relevant to supporting children's learning with an emphasis upon raising standards of literacy and numeracy and cross-curricular learning.
Access to a range of classroom enhancement packages that meet the needs of individual schools. These will be relevant hardware packages that fit into existing resourcing models at the discretion of the school. An example of a leased package is attached.
The schools will have the flexibility to use the funding to enhance and improve existing provision linked to other funding strands i.e.
School Budget Share
Computer for schools (NGFL)
Capital devolved
E-learning credits
Funding sources particular to individual schools.
Provision of PCs/monitors, client licenses, software licenses, system carte, etc. can be provided for a cohort of schools on a learning basis across the NDC area where appropriate. This could be brokered by Edit to enable a high quality, cheaper provision.

Strand 5 Access to an extended guarantee

To maximize the use of extension of existing school facilities to provide wider extended opportunities at different times of the day and week.
Continuing support and linkage to the current Behaviour Improvement Project.
All pupils should have extended opportunities to fulfil their potential in numeracy and literacy.
Use of modern technology for dissemination to the wider public e.g. large rollable screens in halls for presentations.
Provision of team strips with Aston Pride logo and school names.
Community safety strands.Extension of activities and clubs for girls.

It should be possible to track how every pupil in the NDC area has gained from the guarantee