Royal Grammar School case studies (15)

Impact of partnership work done in 2025 (ISC annual Census 2026)

• 105 state schools involved
• 2001+ state school pupils involved
• 2000 staff hours given

Impact Statement

A wide range of RGS partnership activity took place in the academic year 2021-22: we reached over 7000 students and 300 teachers from over 75 schools. This was achieved across 50 separate projects and streams of work.

We track recurring interactions, these are defined as interactions occurring at least half-termly, and many occurring as often as weekly. Of the 7,000 student interactions, over 5,500 were recurring in 2021-22. Of the CPD activity with teachers around half were recurring.

Over 23,000 student-hours were delivered, and around 1,500 hours of CPD for local teachers. We have 13 members of RGS staff as current governors in partner schools and 2 in Director / Trustee positions. 

In September 2022, we reflected on our work over the past year, producing a Theory of Change as an impact evaluation framework and strategy document. This was built on 4 pillars as internal Outcomes: developing teachers; outcomes in STEM; literacy at KS2; and building cultural capital and aspiration.

Literacy at Key Stage 2

Over 100 RGS Sixth Formers took part in our 1-1 reading support programme, visiting 18 primary schools on a weekly basis. These sessions reached over 3,000 local students. The Sixth Form volunteers received training in phonics and safe-guarding before building strong relationships with children in their placement schools. Both the Sixth Formers and the primary children get a great deal from this programme, which is well established over many years. 

Our BorrowBox scheme continues to grow: under this scheme, a box of Class Readers is loaned, resources added by the partner teacher, before being returned to pass on to the next school. The scheme reached 240 students across 8 classes this year, with students from Key Stages 1 and 2 benefitting from shared teacher resources and recently published books from exciting, diverse authors. We hope to grow this scheme by doubling the boxes in 2022-23. 100% of participants in this scheme said they would use it again.

We were delighted to donate 300 books to a partner secondary library in the summer of 2022. This link will be ongoing and we look forward to working collaboratively in the future.

Outcomes in STEM

We were delighted to welcome a new externally-funded partnerships teacher to our team: Dr Steve Bunce joined as Robotics Partnership lead, working out of our EDT department. He joins Tom Williams in Physics and Sarah Sharp in Maths as dedicated Partnerships teachers, working partly in RGS, and partly in local partner schools.

Maths projects in numbers: 
> 250 students  
> 31 schools 
> 2,200 hours of teaching 
>  93% recurring opportunities 
> 49% girls and 51% boys 
> 9 teachers taking maths CPD  
 
The Projects  
Higher Tier Maths GCSE - in West Newcastle, we have worked on a weekly basis with students in Y10 and Y11 to improve attainment through a variety of taught lessons and intervention groups. A number of these students were able to access Higher Tier GCSE as a consequence of their work. 
  
AQA Level 2 Certificate in Further Mathematics - In partnership with Westfield School and the Reece Foundation, we run a weekly virtual course to teach the AQA Level 2 Certificate in Further Mathematics to Y10 students from seven schools in the North-East. We teach the same course in person at a secondary academy in Sunderland.    
 
Enrichment Clubs - Twice a week we run enrichment clubs at a local Technical College for students in Y9-11. Consolidation and problem-solving then lead to exploring a wide variety of interesting and unusual topics. 
 
 University Admission Test Preparation – we have worked with the government-funded Advanced Mathematics Support Programme (AMSP) to provide weekly problem-solving sessions for Sixth Form students preparing to take university admission tests in mathematics. Students travelled from as far as Morpeth, Hexham, and across county borders from Carlisle to attend sessions at the RGS.   
  
Bright Sparks - we have run half-termly Bright Sparks events for more able Y9 mathematicians to explore fun Maths topics beyond the syllabus with 12 schools taking part in the programme this year, averaging 60 students from seven schools at each event.   
   
Physics projects in numbers 
> 2373 hours delivered including...  
> 2267 pupil hours (number of pupils x number of hours; academic intervention; CPD related shared or lead sessions; extra and super curricular) 
> 81 teacher hours  
> 18 schools 
 
The Projects   
 
Intervention groups– in partnership with the Newcastle Futures University Technical College, we have been delivering challenging, thought-provoking real-world STEM projects. 
  
CREST Awards - British Science Association Awards, recognising and rewarding independence in problem solving and scientific approaches to problems and challenges.  We hope to work with Beamish Museum on a 1950s Radio Project that will require problem solving and investigation in a real-life, historical context.                                
 
Real Life Physics – at two schools, we have delivered practical projects to enable students to learn through research, design, build and evaluation cycles.     

Science Week Takeover –at a local Primary Academy we supported a Science Week Takeover.​   
 
Teacher CPD –at a Secondary Academy, we have been directly supporting staff with specialisms in other areas of the curriculum to teach Physics. This has been through face-to-face and remote provision.  
 
Curriculum Development - We have collaborated with a local Primary school in reviewing and re-launching their Science Curriculum and worked with a secondary Academy on their A Level Physics provision.  

We have loaned equipment to a local school to facilitate the development of their curriculum. With a new Robotics partnerships teacher joining us in September, this will be a growing strand of our work.

Computing

This year has seen over 1000 students engage with our Computing Outreach programmes.

Our Digital Schoolhouse sessions have been running weekly – beamed into Primary classrooms around the region in Autumn and Spring Terms, it was great to welcome students back into school for ‘in-person’ workshops in 2021-22. 10 schools have taken part in these termly mornings off timetable to develop coding skills. In one session of Pac-Man game design, our Head of Computing taught to 4 remote classrooms, reaching over 100 students.

We have launched an e-sports pilot with 4 local schools, impacting all of their Year 5 and 6 students, using funds from our Digital SchoolHouse work to buy devices, we also provided training for the teachers involved to implement the programme. We will offer this scheme to more schools next year following this successful pilot.

Our Reece Foundation- funded boxes of Lego have facilitated innovation and creativity in Primary Schools setting up First Lego Leagues extra curricular clubs in 10 schools. We aim to host an expo for FLL junior in school next year, co-ordinated by our new Robotics outreach teacher.
We supported 4 secondary schools in entering CyberFirst Girls this year, and will look to build on our successes in Cyber Centurion by offering support to schools in setting up this challenge.

As part of our newly awarded Gold Cyber-First school accreditation we will grow our ‘cyber’ outreach next year, to build on our aim to inspire the next generation of coders, software gurus and design engineers through our ‘maker’ approach to Computing.

In Computing, partner Primary schools have benefitted from CPD sessions and the loan of equipment to facilitate First Lego League sessions, MicroBits have been distributed in a similar way, and perhaps most excitingly, we have been able to fund the purchase of Nintendo Switches for our e-sports pilot via Digital Schoolhouse.

Developing Teachers

As well as more traditional CPD, including workshops, teachmeets and PGCE placements, we have worked with partner schools on curriculum development, with the long-term aim of embedding a new subject or club in a school.

EPQ - Our Head of Projects has worked closely with a local High School to develop their EPQ course, which launched this year, with 8 students.

Classics - Thanks to funding from Classics for All, we have worked with an Academy to offer Latin GCSE with a group of Year 9 students. We worked closely with a colleague at the partner school to embed the subject as part of the curriculum offer at GCSE: this teacher is now equipped to bring a new group through Y9 alongside taking the current Year 9s into Year 10.

Physics - We have worked with a local Primary school in reviewing and re-launching their Science Curriculum and Tom Williams has worked with a secondary Academy on their A Level Physics offer.

Debating – We are working with 2 partner schools to upskill teachers to offer Debating Clubs. Teachers and students have joined our clubs to gain confidence in starting a club. We hope to build a network of schools to offer competitions in time. An exciting project for all involved!

Cultural Capital and Creating Opportunities

In Classics, we introduced students from a local Primary to the ‘Groovy Greeks’ . In addition, we have worked with 2 local secondary schools to upskill non-specialists to deliver Latin GCSE by joint-planning and observing lessons delivered both remotely and in person.

Art Week at an Outer West Primary School saw 4 RGS Sixth Form Artists working with students from 4 classes – sharing their projects while also supporting the Key Stage 2 students in their work.

This is Creative Enterprise (TICE) is an innovative programme in partnership with Northumbria University: 20 students from a partner secondary joining RGS students for workshops and masterclasses. 

Battle of the Bands was back with a bang: local schools including 5 partner maintained schools took part in this brilliant event.

Our Storytelling project was up and running again, with students from Year 9 Drama sharing their stories in a workshop at a local 1st School. We also supported this school with their summer show, through tech and teacher support.

In Modern Languages, our Spanish Assistant volunteered at a local school, speaking with students to hone their skills one day per week: in the course of this work, she saw around 270 young linguists.

Swim Club was a huge success this year – building on a pilot last summer term, we invited students from 4 of the Outer West Primary schools to RGS for blocks of 5 weekly sessions. SCITT trainees volunteered at the sessions to learn from our swimming coaches: a truly impactful project for students and future teachers while making the most of RGS facilities.

In Hockey, we facilitated the In2Hockey challenge tournament organised by School Games. RGS staff and students took refereeing duties and also helped coach the teams for this high-quality event, giving young students a taste of Hockey. 104 students joined us from  6 local Primary Schools. The winners benefitted from some coaching as a an after-event J

In the Autumn Term, we were delighted to welcome Hashi Mohammed to speak at our termly ‘RGS Talks’ event – we streamed the talk to partner schools, and were delighted that the broadcast reached around 750 students. We hope to offer similar opportunities in the future.

We have continued to support the Royal National Children’s Springboard Foundation with their pilot ‘SpringForward’ scheme. This project puts Looked after Children in contact with an experienced teacher-mentor to support them through the UCAS process, both before and after application. Three members of RGS staff have been involved in the scheme, from development of resources through to mentoring young people.

More generally, we offer UCAS Support to partner schools where requested and where there is need. This year, we have helped students with UCAS Applications and Interview practice for Russell Group University courses in Medicine, Maths, Economics, Veterinary Science and Classics among others.

Three prospective Medics from a local partner school joined our workshops remotely in the summer term.

In future Impact Reports, we will be able to report on the progress of these students and to support even more students at this crucial juncture in their lives.