TIMES BETTERBohunt Education Trust Termly Events Review ISSUE 9 – SUMMER 2021 – ENJOY EDUCATION TRUST BET SCHOOL COMMUNITIES DISPLAY JOY AT STUDENT AND STAFF RETURN On Monday 8 March, students and staff across the BET family returned to school for on-site teaching, supported by a truly superhuman effort in lateral flow testing. The first fortnight of return saw an incredible 26,194 tests conducted by an army of volunteers and staff across our family of eight schools. The immense achievement of safely welcoming our students back was supported by a cross-trust ‘joy of return’ digital communications campaign, with BET ‘welcome back’ balloons festooned at the entrances to all trust schools, and a myriad of warm smiles and cheers. A short film and social media updates spread the good news across our school communities as staff welcomed our young people back to their places of learning with vigilance, calm and an overriding sense of happiness. These are just some of the uplifting images capturing our students’ return after two months of remote learning. The film can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/tJMetZ2ttFc IN THIS ISSUE... BET MAKES NATIONAL HEADLINES | BET KEY PLAYER IN LARGEST UK STUDY INTO EFFECTS OF COVID-19 | BET STUDENTS QUIZ DAMIAN HINDS MP | BET LAUNCHES INNOVATIVE WEBSITES TO SUPPORT WELLBEING AND OUTDOOR LEARNING | CROSS-TRUST CHINESE NEW YEAR | SCHOOL HIGHLIGHTS | BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW INTERVIEWS | AND MORE… EDUCATION TRUST MESSAGE FROM The ImpactEd study into the impact of lockdowns on pupils, in which BET is a major participant, has provided important THE CHAIR insight, enabling targeted interventions at individual level. Phil Avery expounded on this in his interview with Sky News at Reading through the articles in this magazine, I have been Bohunt Worthing, and in his article in Education Business, about impressed by the amazing creativeness of our students our lost connections with the outdoors. Briony Palmer from and staff. Despite the ongoing strangeness of lockdown, Worthing outlined her experience of teaching in lockdown in lessons continued online with high levels of pupil an article in the Daily Telegraph – I am intrigued as to how to engagement. Quoting James Stanley (Horsham Y8), it was manage a Mexican Wave on Zoom! “a bizarre year!” As I have said before, our teachers rose Links between our schools continue to develop, and I am pleased magnificently to the challenges posed by online teaching, that the cross-Trust Mandarin competition took place virtually, maintaining the high-quality education for which they are with enthusiastic contributions from Liphook, Petersfield, well-known. I applaud your resilience and achievements – Worthing and Wokingham. As I have said on numerous well done and thanks to all of you. occasions, Mandarin competence is essential for our future Herculean efforts went into setting up the onsite virus testing survival as a trading nation. Also, we are improving links with process in our schools, thereby enabling a safe return to the other schools. Yet again, the third Question Time with local MP classroom. Again, sincere thanks are due to the small army of Damian Hinds involved students from TPS, Liphook, Steyning volunteers who facilitated this, together with our staff, many of and Bedales, albeit as a virtual session (but just as enjoyable whom have had hardly any break now for over a year. as face-to-face!). Costello’s students demonstrated equal In addition, student wellbeing and mental health has been in confidence and eloquence in their questioning of Basingstoke sharp focus. The new BET Outdoor Wellbeing website is a MP Maria Miller. welcome and extremely helpful facility, encouraging young Just as impressive was the Model United Nations (MUN) people to access the benefits of outdoor activities and learning Conference, in which BET students debted the impact of to counterbalance the essentially inactive time expended in COVID19 and climate change across the world, whilst considering screen-based education. This is complemented and supported global politics, and determining how they, as individuals, can by the new BET training website for the Duke of Edinburgh unite to influence how these issues can be tackled effectively. scheme, which develops resilience and self-reliance through The term ahead will be challenging. Students have a huge tough outdoor activities coupled with important community amount of readjusting to do, but I know that they can rely on volunteering. their teachers and all the BET staff to support and encourage Your efforts and dedication have been widely recognised, with them through this challenge. I look forward to getting back to extensive media coverage. BET leaders have contributed several normal and being able to visit all our schools as soon as possible. excellent articles in the national and professional press. To In the meantime, thank you all again. highlight a few, Neil Strowger wrote a stimulating piece for an important national research study about “What makes a good DR RAY MORTON teacher” – certainly not just being bearded and striding around looking busy! Neil appeared also on Radio 4’s Today programme, commenting on the adverse impact of abandoning of exams, and expended on his comments in a long Daily Telegraph article later that week. He initiated debate about the future shape of education, being perhaps broadened beyond the conventional exam-only based curriculum, in the same paper in February. Chair of the Trust Board 2 BETTER TIMES EDUCATION TRUST MESSAGE FROM THE TRUST LEADER Welcome to the ninth edition of Better Times – both a The promise of summer and better times ahead is an appealing metaphor and semaphore for life in the current lockdown. prospect; this magazine’s semaphoric qualities are the It is 381 days since the first national lockdown at the time signalisation, communication and celebration of the fantastic of writing and is likely to be 400 days or more by the time opportunities and experiences we offer our learners each and you read this edition. How many of us thought at the every day. In times of lockdown and of none. outset that 400 days later we would remain under curfew? As summer unfurls and we look forward to our metamorphosis The number nine – as any of our mathematicians might tell from our lockdown to natural selves - due in no small part to the you – is a very special number. Nine is a composite number, its unprecedented pace of development and roll out of vaccines proper divisors being one and three. It is three times three and against SARS-CoV-2 – it is apposite to conclude with the words hence the third square number. Nine is a Motzkin number. Most of joy of Edward Jenner, in 1796: interestingly of all is the fact that nine is the only positive perfect “While the vaccine discovery was progressive, the joy I felt at power that is one more than another positive perfect power the prospect before me of being the instrument destined to (see Catalan’s conjecture proved by Mihăilescu’s theorem). take away from the world one of its greatest calamities, blended Namely that integers 23 and 32 are two powers of natural with the fond hope of enjoying independence and domestic numbers whose values (8 and 9, respectively) are consecutive. peace and happiness, was often so excessive that, in pursuing The theorem states that this is the only case of two consecutive my favourite subject among the meadows, I have sometimes powers. found myself in a kind of reverie.” Better Times is an apt title for our in-house magazine as we are all striving for a better future: for ourselves, our families NEIL STROWGER and our charges. Struggle is an essential, as well as existential, aspect of being human, whether or not we have faith; to quote Socrates, ‘remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune’. We are all perhaps a little light in the good fortune department at this moment, although we do indubitably have much to look Trust Leader of BET forward to as the days continue to lengthen and the sunshine brings with it warmth and relaxation. We are on the cusp of the lifting of a few of the hardest fetters we face. We shall soon be allowed to welcome visitors to our homes and once more to indulge in the epicurean delights of outside dining. Even the gym has the allure of a siren call to which I shall, in the short term at least, inevitably succumb. ISSUE 8 3 BET KEY PLAYER IN UK’S LARGEST STUDY INTO THE EFFECT OF COVID-19 ON STUDENT WELLBEING DURING 2020 AND THE EARLY MONTHS OF 2021, SCHOOLS ACROSS BET TOOK PART IN THE UK’S BIGGEST STUDY INTO THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON YOUNG PEOPLE’S EDUCATION AND WELLBEING. THE STUDY, LED BY RESEARCH ORGANISATION, IMPACTED, WAS PUBLISHED ON 8 FEBRUARY AND COMPRISED 62,000 YOUNG PEOPLE ACROSS THE COUNTRY. The report identified that GCSE and A-level and a holistic education, led to carefully targeted interventions, an disadvantaged students have been hardest hit by outdoor learning programme, mental health workshops, ‘game- COVID-19. National media coverage focused on the changer days’ designed to get students outside and away from impact on these groups and the ways in which BET schools screens, and literacy interventions. have identified those students at risk and conducted “Understanding which pupils are struggling in which areas targeted interventions as a result. has enabled us to have more impact with less resource. This Sky News visited Bohunt School in Worthing to pre-record couldn’t be more welcome at a time when energy levels and interviews with students and BET’s Director of Education, Philip finances are under strain.