Network Learning Community

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Network Learning Community
UNITED

• U
• Need
• IT
• EDucation

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What are we?

• The South Bedfordshire Learning Network Community
  or UNITED is a community of schools working
  together to promote a stronger relationship
  amongst our local schools. UNITED schools
  members include everyone from lower, middle and
  upper schools.

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Who are we ?

• Schools in our community include
• Northfields Technology College
• Queensbury Upper School
• Ashton Middle School
• Brewers Hill Middle School
• Streetfield Middle School
• Dunstable Icknield Lower School
• Downside Lower School
• Larkrise Lower School
• Thomas Whitehead Lower School

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Our aims

• Our main aim is to bring together and promote a
  stronger relationship within our local schools.
  Not just within middle school to middle school
  but also within middle, lower and upper
  schools/colleges.
• Our other aims include
• To reduce the amount of school rivalry when it
  comes to intake. We all run the same curriculum.
  Therefore, it is the students responsibility
  whether they achieve well or not.
• To reduce the amount of stress students endure
  when transferring to their lower, middle or
  upper/college school.

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Our thoughts

• Our thoughts are that we need to create stronger
  lines of communication between our local schools.
• We feel that this large continuous amount of
  effort being dedicated to the steering group will
  one day be pursued by all students in
  participating schools.
• As UNITED is currently still in the planning and
  building stages there is still room for
  improvement, changes and new ideas.
• These new ideas are not just our own but we
  consult pupils back at school and find out what
  ideas they have.

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What it has done

• It has helped the schools to communicate and it
  has brought us together.
• It has made us realise how easy it is to be
  friends with other children who are of different
  age groups (ie KS1 being friends with KS4).
• Children within the steering group are realising
  they posses a larger range of ICT skills than
  they thought.

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How do we do it?

• All participating schools take turns to host a
  half-termly meeting to discuss the progress and
  future actions of UNITED.
• To keep contact between these meetings we have a
  small page linked onto Larkrise Lower Schools
  website.
• All members have a user name and password and we
  can communicate using email.

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What do you think?

• Now, what do you think?
• Do you think your local schools could do this?
• Has your school already done this?
• What would your aims be?
• What will your students think of the idea?
• What will it do for your schools?
• How will you do it?

• We have told you
• What we are
• Who we are
• What we do
• Our aims
• Our thoughts
• What it has done
• How we do it

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Network Learning Communityin South Bedfordshire
Which of the many benefits has meant the most to
me?
Collaboration
not
competition
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Before and after
For those of us who have been in education for
some time it seems only recently that there was a
culture between schools of mistrust, secrecy and
competition.
It stemmed from the belief that education was a
commodity to be marketed and sold. Education was
in the market place and parental choice meant
schools were vying against each other.
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This culture resulted in schools turning in on
themselves. Good practice was kept close to the
chest, not shared.
Unfair raw scores were used by schools to suggest
they were successful schools. This data, used in
such a way, isolated schools that were working in
challenging circumstances. This culture did
nothing to address what really matters quality
learning experiences for all pupils.
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And now?
In the short time that this authority has been
developing its Network Learning Community there
has been a remarkable change in this culture, due
I think, entirely to the communication between
schools facilitated by the NLC.

• Staff have collaborated, communicated and
  conversed in ways that have lead to the rapid
  development of
• mutual respect amongst teachers across all the
  phases.
• the sharing of good practice in an open,
  unselfish way.
• the realisation that the real beneficiaries are
  the pupils themselves the ones that really
  matter in all this.