A Nottinghamshire principal has shared plans for the upcoming year as students continue to thrive despite concerns over the cost of living crisis. Kerrie Henton, principal of Stone Soup Academy, is proud of the school's pupils who have overcome obstacle after obstacle and revealed plans to continue supporting students with a new pastoral sixth form.
Kerrie said: "After two years of Covid the fact that our Year 11s sat their actual exams for the first time in the summer and 93 per cent of our young people achieved a GCSE in English and Maths, is just amazing given the amount of challenges that Covid had given them.
"We had 75 per cent of our young people get 8+ qualifications, including English and Maths, which was a huge thing for us. We have faced challenges for the last few years in terms of Covid, but it is the work we did through Covid and the relationships we maintained throughout that period with our students and with their families that has enabled us to travel through that period and still maintain a high standard of educational delivery."
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Despite the impact of the pandemic and ongoing cost of living crisis, Kerrie explained that the school will continue to offer support to students that have left the school through a sixth form. She said: "One of the other things we are really pleased about is that in this time of challenges for everyone we have put in place a pastoral sixth form, which is incredibly innovative for an alternative provision setting.
"We are not putting on courses because we know Nottingham College can provide a breadth of education in terms of vocational subjects that we can't offer. What we are doing is we have a head of sixth form now who supports our students who leave our academy and who have left the academy so we can continue to support them on their journey, whether they are in education work or training."
The school is working closely with Nottingham College to ensure that young people leaving the school do not become NEET, meaning not in education, employment or training." Stone Soup School are also now supporting students in key stage three, and looking at further ways to train their staff, which includes research being developed by staff members for staff members regarding professional development.
Kerrie explained that the school will be focusing on the development of the sixth form next year as it is still "fairly new" but also have plans to work with The University of Nottingham in the Ingenuity Project, where KS4 girls will learn about entrepreneurial skills, and do another stand up to knife crime event in July.
Kerrie said: "In January we do something called a Stone Soup Award which focuses on how we can support people who were with us who perhaps are on zero hour contracts or are out of work, but have aspirations to do something. Any of our ex students who have left for over a year can apply for an amount of money up to £500 to allow them to do something, it might be to do training, to do a course, or get equipment to do something."
When asked about the current cost of living crisis, Kerrie said: "I think rising costs are a challenge for everyone, but what we recognise is that our students more than most come from some of the most vulnerable and deprived areas across Nottingham, so a good proportion of our students didn't have much before this. What we are doing is we treat every one of our students as if they are free school meals, we don't ask for any justification of that.
"We give them breakfast, we give them break time food, we give them a hot lunch every day and they don't pay for that. Over the Christmas period there is a concern about are they going to be able to eat, so what we have done as an academy is we have linked with Himmah."
She continued: "Although others are experiencing these difficulties I think it's good for students to shine a light on other people, and so we have started volunteering with Himmah on a Monday and a group of our young people go down and help fulfil food parcels so that they can see the struggles that other people are having. As a result of that we have now become a referrer, so if any of our families and young people are experiencing difficulties, they won't go hungry."
Stone Soup Academy is also working with local authorities to make sure that anyone who is in receipt of free school vouchers will continue to get those over Christmas, and the school will also be contacting some of its more vulnerable students over the break to make sure they are ok.
Kerrie added: "It's about continuing those relationships and just caring. We talk about being a Stone Soup family, and we feel like the students are members of our families and we do look after them."
Earlier this year the school was shortlisted for the Times Education supplement wellbeing award and won the EdTech Innovator of the Year award at the National School Awards through its work with virtual reality within the academy. Kerrie explained that the win is "impressive" for an alternative provision school as the national competition meant they had to compete with the entire educational landscape, including primary, secondary, independent, mainstream and other alternative provision schools.
When asked how it feels to win, Kerrie said: "It feels absolutely amazing, but I think it is just a testament to the hard work that we put in every day and really it's this sort of award that underpins our vision of creating an imagined future for the school and the students within it. We are very much with the belief that every child deserves a second chance and that every child can succeed if they have people that believe in them."
The school has done a number of cultural activities and trips throughout the year, and students also attended Broadway Cinema on Friday, December 16, for a special production of an anti-knife crime film they made. Kerrie added: "Even though our students can come from some of the most deprived areas we still feel we should look at how we can support charities, our key charity for this academic year is Emmanuel House, the homeless charity as sadly that is something that can hit anybody."
She continued: "If you think about the learners that come to our academy, and we have over 90 young people we are not a small academy, when you think about them they have all experienced some sort of failure in their life which has brought them to this point and unfortunately that failure can start to define them so when they come to us they can be looking at the floor, not thinking they can succeed and lack self belief. Through the work we do we change all that so they leave believing in themselves and believing that they have a future ahead of them, and we do that through our commitment to ensuring that everyone succeeds and that philosophy of never giving up."
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