TIMES BETTERBohunt Education Trust Termly Events Review ISSUE 8 – SPRING 2021 – STUDENT VOICE-LED ISSUE! EDUCATION TRUST STEYNING GRAMMAR SCHOOL JOINS BOHUNT Co-Headteacher at Steyning Grammar School, Nat Nicol, said: “We EDUCATION TRUST are committed to ensuring that every one of our students at SGS has the opportunity to reach academic excellence, and to experience On 1 December 2020, Steyning Grammar School (SGS) joined activities that will shape them as young people, setting them on their BET. The transfer followed an extensive review, consultation path to adulthood. and legal process, which saw support from parents, students, staff, and the local community. BET has provided strong interim The educational philosophy championed by BET is completely aligned support to the School since the start of November. with SGS’, and we look forward to sharing resources, opportunities, and best practice expertise. By joining BET, SGS will provide an even SGS will retain its unique identity and is proud to preserve its faith greater range of first-class opportunities for our amazing students, ethos as a Church of England academy. The School will continue to be while retaining the special identity and unique personality of our led by co-Headteachers Nat Nicol and Noel Kennedy, with support wonderful school.” from interim Executive Headteacher Mark Marande – who is Principal at the Ofsted-rated Outstanding The Petersfield School (TPS) in Trevor Cristin, Director of Education, Diocese of Chichester, said: Hampshire. “The Chichester Diocesan Board of Education is very happy to see the fruition of the work with our partners in this complex and ongoing SGS will benefit from BET’s full support, including accessing its range of process. I have every confidence that the future of Steyning Grammar resources and expertise. Teachers and leaders at the School will have School as part of Bohunt Education Trust is very bright.” the opportunity to share best practice with others across the Trust, and students will also benefit from further enrichment and outdoor Paul Wagstaff, Director of Education and Skills at WSCC, said: education opportunities. SGS’ Sixth Form will be relocated to a new “We have supported Steyning Grammar School through the process of site at The Towers and Year 7 & 8 students from Church Street will be converting to an academy within the Bohunt Education Trust, and are moving to the Shooting Field site. Work continues in preparation for pleased to see this process complete today, following the installation of these moves, supported by BET. The facilities which will become a transition interim Executive Board from the beginning of November available will enhance educational offerings for students. to support the School’s move to BET.” There are no plans to change the length of the school day, the logo Neil Strowger, Trust Leader, said: “We are delighted to be officially or the uniform, and BET will continue to work closely with the senior welcoming SGS to BET, after working closely with the School over the leadership team, the Steyning Grammar School Foundation (SGSF) last few months. SGS is well established in the local community and and the governing board. we are pleased that this move has received such positive support. We With the addition of SGS, BET now runs eight successful secondary look forward to continuing to work together as the school enters this schools: The Costello School in Basingstoke, Bohunt Horsham, Bohunt new and exciting chapter as part of our trust.” School and Sixth Form in Liphook, Priory School in Portsmouth, We hope you enjoy this issue of BETTER Times. Please note that The Petersfield School, Steyning Grammar School, Bohunt School all copy was produced ahead of the Government’s 4 January school Wokingham and Bohunt School Worthing. BET also continues to closure announcement. provide school improvement support to City Academy Norwich. IN THIS ISSUE... SGS JOINS BET | FIRST FOR FOOD FUNDRAISER | GROUNDBREAKING FOR BOHUNT HORSHAM | BET LEADER PIECES | NEWS, VIEWS, CREATIVE WRITING AND TRIVIA FROM OUR AMAZING STUDENTS | SCHOOL HIGHLIGHTS | BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW INTERVIEWS | AND MORE… EDUCATION TRUST MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR The start of last term was very strange, with the intensive effort by the Trust Central Team, plus others from COVID-19 pandemic dictating measures in schools such our existing schools, and involved not just SGS governors but as physical distancing and class bubbles, etc. Vaccination trustees from the SGS Foundation (owners of the land upon has, of course, now begun, and we all hope that the which the School stands), the Diocese of Chichester (SGS is a entire population of the UK will have received their Church of England school), West Sussex County Council, the immunisations by next summer. Continued vigilance Department of Education, and what seemed like a legion of remains paramount, but I know that all staff and students lawyers. Neil Strowger deserves congratulation for his patience will be careful – their lives, and the lives of those around and persistence in steering this difficult project to conclusion. them may depend on it! We all look forward to getting SGS brings a new dimension to BET, as a well-established (since back to normality in due course. 1648!) state secondary school of ~2,200 pupils, with both a Again, a HUGE THANK YOU to our staff. Many will not have large sixth form of about 450 students and boarding provision had any holiday since Easter, yet their resilience is an example for around 250 pupils. To assist in the smooth integration into to all, and I know that this has not been achieved easily. Leaders BET, Mark Marande (Principal of TPS), as Interim Executive across the Trust dedicated an enormous effort over the Head of SGS, will spend about 2 days/week at SGS until next summer to ensuring our schools were reconfigured to facilitate summer. Mark, of course, is supported by his Leadership team, safe teaching and learning, whilst all staff have adapted to new who continue with the smooth running of TPS. I am delighted ways of learning where everyone is masked, keeping in bubbles, with this new member of BET, which brings our pupil numbers washing hands frequently, etc. Well done to all. to over 10,000, and is geographically close to our Worthing and The pandemic has restricted severely the numbers of visitors Horsham schools. We look forward to learning from SGS and to our school sites. Consequently, Virtual Open Nights were exchanging expertise to our mutual benefit. instituted, and have proved very popular with potential students Finally, I wish you a very Happy New Year, as we look forward and their parents. ‘Footfall’ (i.e., website visits) was possibly to Better Times soon! higher than for previous physical events! With proper planning, we were also able to continue with Duke DR RAY MORTON of Edinburgh and Bushcraft events, which our students continue to enjoy and from which they benefit enormously. Across the Trust it has been particularly pleasing to see how many students have taken incoming pupils under their wings, smoothing their way into their strange new environment of Big School. I want to offer a warm welcome to the staff and students of Steyning Grammar School (SGS), which joined BET on 1 Chair of the Trust Board December 2020. This was the culmination of many months of 2 BETTER TIMES EDUCATION TRUST MESSAGE FROM THE TRUST LEADER Welcome back - to a new calendar year, after a tumultuous to science teachers everywhere), “If you double the number nine months. I choose this word carefully, as I believe its of experiments you do each year, you’re going to double your etymology - from the Latin tumultuosus, meaning full of inventiveness.” bustle or confusion, disorderly, turbulent - to perfectly Pandemic or not, BET remains an extraordinary place to work. encapsulate the most extraordinary year of our time. We have led in 2020 where government policy has followed. 2020 was full of the typical bustle of a hectic start to a new year We were pioneers in the provision of IT equipment and access albeit with the emerging, yet still distant, portent of COVID-19 in to our most disadvantaged children. We have passed two site the East. We were busy with life rather than taking the auspices. HSE inspections and welcomed two Ofsted visits. We have Bustle turned to confusion a few short months later with the raised nearly £10,000 to feed the vulnerable in our communities. advent of the first, of what would become three, lockdowns. At We have produced research to inform national debate. We are the time of writing, we are again caught in the throes of disorder actively campaigning for reform to assessment nationally as a and confusion as the government seeks to provide a road map founding member of the ‘Rethinking Assessment’ movement. to our safe return to classrooms. Schools are to become mass No matter the uncertainty and vicissitude 2021 will bring - aside testing centres, supported remotely by the Army - yes, reader, death and taxes – we go forward with unshakeable confidence, the Army no less! Time for a new paragraph perhaps, before faith in, and commitment to, the children and communities we this descends into cheap, political point scoring… serve. I hope that you all have found peace and time together with your Happy New Year! families and are slowly invigorating for what will again be a year like no other. Our work must and will go on; it is too important not to. It is certain that we will return to blended learning with attendance in school limited to the exam year groups of 11 and NEIL STROWGER 13, together with key worker children and the vulnerable. We have adroitly managed the unique challenges of being at once in the classroom and online.