Teachers View - Withywood Community School

Withywood School is a mixed community comprehensive school in the centre of an inner city council housing estate in South Bristol. The school is the main secondary school of choice for the community and we take most children from our 11 partner primary schools. The area has a large number of unemployed people and suffers from the kind of urban decay associated with social deprivation, low income and low morale. The school is 35 years old and sees the new millennium as a period of growth and opportunity for our young people.

digging holes Barclays New Futures has helped us to provide environment-based opportunities in the community for up to 80 students in Y10 and Y11. These opportunities have been centred on a disapplied curriculum initiative, which has attempted to promote positive work related learning and community environmental awareness. It was hoped that improved employability, key skills and community wide responsibility would result. In most senses the past three years have seen these bear fruit. The students are identified as being less suited to the rigours of a full GCSE examination curriculum and are disapplied from three subjects.

Our local environment has all the characteristics of a green desert as well as having a large number of underused open spaces. The opportunity to introduce community responsibility for environmental change from within the student body has helped the development of better citizenship. Work within our own play areas and those of a number of our partner Primary Schools has been carried out by students assisted by interested adults.

The school has gained positive publicity by undertaking the projects. The students have gained valuable work related practical experience with a community-focused theme. The local environment has benefited from active custodianship and practical improvement and with our partners, a shared ethos of co-operation, which has led to other mutual support. More importantly as we get more skilled our impact will be greater!

The students work readily with a large number of organisations and interested adults within the community. In particular, we work with CSV (Community Service Volunteers), BTCV (British Trust for Conservation Volunteers) and Florence Brown Special School to tease out ideas and pathways and pursue collaborative ideas and joint ventures. These organisations have worked closely with the children and have great experience in this area. We have produced our own plants and concrete products for local gardens, and having borrowed students, equipment and skills from Florence Brown we now run parallel curriculum time, sharing ideas, expertise and projects.

The student's have:

Built block walls.
Made and laid concrete slabs for customers.
Designed, built and installed benches and picnic cables in our own grounds.
Pruned hedges.
Collected, composted and packaged bark for distribution.
Built an indoor propagation unit, providing plumbing, electricity and drainage.

The coming academic year will see weekly workshops in school in hairdressing, painting and decorating and practical carpentry. We have also acquired a very large allotment which, with the help of the Florence Brown students and staff and CSV, we hope to develop into a self managed mini enterprise company

more digging Active involvement is seen as essential to develop the students` group and interpersonal skills and responsibilities. The concrete manufacture, plant propagation and the development of a local practical "hit squad" for environmental improvement depend upon their full involvement. Key workers from the community come into school twice a week and determine short-term objectives with small groups of children. In this way they strive to meet the needs of a group of community carpenters who work with the children each week. The school groundsman also tasks the group and provides work placements in school and in local playing fields and school sites.

The project meets the needs of the Certificate of Achievement in Land Studies and contributes to the students ASDAN Youth Award. Environmental improvement, social awareness and community responsibility are important elements of the wider school curriculum.

A good number of Key Skills have been developed - communication, application of number, working with others, being responsible for your own learning and problem solving. The students' progress is beginning to be recorded in the appropriate ASDAN, Skillpower and Land Studies student profiles, together with the approved practical assessment tests.

As a community school we have embraced a commitment to support community wide initiatives. This project reflects a clear and discernible need and our response is practical - an attempt to make the local environment a more pleasant place in which to live. Our own playground has seen a dramatic improvement even the addition of a 4 metre carved totem pole that appeared last Easter from a holiday project funded by CSV.

Curriculum time is allocated formally and is concentrated in years 10 and 11. There are two groups of 20 in each year and over the course of a 30 period week, they are timetabled 3 periods. The activities are designed to be as practical and as engaging as possible and as close to the world of work as finance, circumstances and local support allows.

For 2002/2003 a dedicated LSA on 3 days a week has been appointed who whilst not having formal building training, does have many building skills. He is also an ex-student! The painting and decorating instructor engaged for a 3-hour session once a week does have formal qualifications and was poached from a local FE college. We are also launching our own hairdressing course run by an LSA who used to be a practising hairdresser. With support of other local talent it is possible to expose the students to a very rich variety of work based experiences far removed from the traditional classroom.

The schools SENCO has embarked on the ambitious target of placing all of the year 11 students on an extended 1 day a week work placement with local employers. A brilliant idea incredibly difficult to manage considering our economic surroundings. He has so far placed 75% of the students.

The essence of our success has been collaborative work - initially with Florence Brown Special School who have years of experience of meeting the needs of some very demanding students similar in many ways to the needs of a large number of Withywood students. The relationship with Florence Brown will continue to flourish. The very nature of our work has led to further collaboration.

The community support we have had has also been superb. This will also grow and is beginning to be seen as interdependent. The more this is reinforced the more likely we will be able to guarantee the quality of the experience and the future success of our students.

Download PDF