Pedro Ignacio Rodríguez Hernández

KS2 Maths Coordinator

 

So, your child’s school already has a comprehensive, coherent and cohesive curriculum, which you take for granted is underpinned by purposeful CPD; the school generates healthy interest and offers enough opportunities to attract and retain quality teaching staff; there is a sound and sensible set of values that percolate through school life; the student body grows steadily; internal and external data endorses the efficacy of the school’s daily practice; there are sufficient channels of communication to guarantee all stakeholders the chance to share their suggestions; the facilities meet the standards and adapt to curricular needs. In other words, you seem to have chosen a great school for your child… but you still want more.

Well, this is the time for you to find the virtue in the little interstices of the school’s structure. Pyramus and Thisbe did not consider a little crack in the wall a cause for concern, but as an opportunity for love; likewise, we can think of the small spaces in between the bricks of the educational edifice as opportunities to make the organisation grow through marginal gains.

Before this ‘gap filling’ can strengthen the quality of the educational offer, there are three indispensable ingredients: inspiration, resources and support. Inspiration is in fact in the eye of the beholder. It is not solely the school leadership’s duty to inspire. Those who want to be inspired will be inspired by pupils, colleagues and managers. However, they will be more prone to seek for inspiration if they know that their organisation is eager to support through resourcing. And yes, by resources we mean time, money, adaptability and staff involvement. School staff are bold in sharing their modest proposals if they know that the aforementioned elements are available.

What can therefore be the icing on the cake of your school’s educational offer? Enabling young people to join youth organisations and clubs and to sign up for all sorts of competitions and awards. Great schools not only looking outwards to external providers for all of the above, they also organise their own.

Some examples of very compelling external offers the ELIS schools take part in:

  • The Duke of Edinburgh International Award Programme
  • The Maths Talentum contest organised but the University of Murcia
  • Scientific Olympiads, organised by several Universities
  • The Maths Olympics organised by the Sociedad de Educación Matemática de la Región de Murcia, SEMRM
  • The Cognita ‘Make a Difference’ Challenge

And a few examples of our internal programmes:

  • Student Councils
  • Reading clubs
  • Art clubs
  • Chess clubs
  • Cross-curricular competitions
  • A Cognita interschools online Maths competition
  • House competitions
  • Fashion shows
  • Sports competitions, including the ELIS Cup…

This sort of enterprise allows the soft skills, that often linger deep in many subjects, take front stage. They also help schools put the spotlight on their values, making them not just the means, but also the target of their actions. This tributary range of programmes can smoothly foster those cross-curricular contents that may be hard to embed in the mainstream lesson, where the curriculum is at times rigidified by the need to cover the main objectives. In addition, internally led programmes often allow for vertical collaboration among pupils of different ages, something that has proven to be effective to improve behaviour for learning, and to further foster a sense of belonging, consolidating school culture and helping those pupils who don’t always shine in ‘normal lessons’ to shine.