Exeter School case studies (30)

Impact of partnership work done in 2023 (ISC annual Census 2024)

• 20 state schools involved
• 501-1000 state school pupils involved
• 500 staff hours given

Impact Statement

The Music Department provides and hosts annual INSET training mornings for its instrumental teachers, and these are attended by a number of colleagues from the state sector. The department has also been made available at no cost as a regular rehearsal venue for two County Youth Orchestras, as well as the Devon Youth Jazz Orchestra and the Jazz Ambassadors. The School provides storage for equipment and the library for these organisations free of charge and musicians from the School visit two local primary schools, annually, to give lectures, demonstrations and performances for up to 150 students per visit.

The School send the Exeter School Music Partnership teams one afternoon a week to a local maintained primary and secondary school to rehearse their orchestra and develop the young students’ musicianship skills in these schools.

Up to 200 pupils from local maintained and independent schools were invited to dedicated performances of drama and musical productions in both the Junior and Senior schools. In addition, Exeter School hosted and funded an English Touring Opera performance, which was attended by approximately 60 Year 5 children from St Michaels’ School, an event we look forward to repeating annually.

During the year, Exeter School was proud to continue partnering with five local state primary schools: St Leonard’s, St Sidwell’s, St Michael’s, Wynstream and Montgomery schools. Under this partnership, the School’s indoor 25-metre, 4-lane competition standard swimming pool is offered to classes from these schools. The facilities, transport to and from the partner schools to the pool and coaching and lifeguarding, for each to have a weekly 1.5 hours swimming session, are provided by Sports Department staff and qualified pupils. All this is provided free of charge. This has allowed several Exeter primary schools, who would otherwise not have been able to offer swimming to their pupils due to resource constraints, to continue to take part in a substantial programme of swimming and recreation.

The School’s Ten Tors training team partner with local state schools to mentor and provide logistic and training support, this year to three local state schools: St James’ School Exeter attends all of the School’s Ten Tors training events and Launceston College and Bideford College take part in the School’s 1633 Challenge, the culmination of our Ten Tors training.

Exeter School is the hub school for the Exeter and East Devon Ogden Trust Partnership (made up of eight state sector schools, ourselves and Exeter University) whose aims are to increase the number of students taking Physics at GCSE, A Level and at university and to support teachers of Physics and encourage more Physics graduates to become teachers. This included organising a regional Physics competition and regional Physics prizes open to all schools in the area, a Year 7 Space Day for us and three local schools and a trip for us and four other local state schools to visit the Diamond Light Source in Oxfordshire. The School hosted Exoplanet talks for Year 10 pupils and Year 12 pupils including pupils from five other local schools (3 independent school, 5 state sector schools).

The Art Department hosts the annual WESC Art exhibition in the Senior School Gallery in June.

The School produces online materials for the Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching (CIMT), which are freely available and support state schools, those in home schooling and centres working with youngsters not in normal schooling.

The Religious Studies department has supplied the Religious Studies Department, Ryde Academy, Isle of Wight, with resource text books and teaching material together with the extensive IT stored material to help them as they embark upon teaching RS A Level.

The Science Department conducts termly outreach visits to local primary schools. Teachers, Sixth Form pupils and lab technicians provide demonstration talks and activities to promote the further understanding of science to Year 4, 5 and 6 pupils from local primary schools. The Science department also makes its labs and facilities available to local and regional Science and teaching discussion groups such as the RSC and Exeter University.

Two teachers from the School are the leaders for the Exeter Hub of Computing at Schools, a professional body for Computing teachers. The School hosts meetings for teachers from local primary and secondary schools to exchange ideas and provide peer support and training.

The School hosted a Duke of Edinburgh Award assessor’s course for 20 external DofE volunteers in January and now acts as a DofE hub.

Exeter School CCF has supported Devon Army Cadet Force with access to the School’s facilities and weapons to support their training and summer camps.

The Head of Business Studies hosted the Young Enterprise launch for state schools in Devon in September, attended by 11 schools. He also acted as a Centre Lead mentor for the programme for teachers who are new to the YE programme and ran an outreach afternoon in June to try and get more schools involved and to get local business mentors to sign up to help state schools.