The Primary Excellence Partnership

What is the Primary Excellence Partnership?

 

The Primary Excellence Partnership is a formal collaboration between Blackhorse Primary School and Emersons Green Primary School.

 

The Partnership is new for the 2022-23 academic year and will see the two schools working together on a number of school improvement projects. The schools will also share an Executive Headteacher, Simon Botten, as well as having their own 'Heads of School', which for Blackhorse Primary is Neil Fry.

 

As two popular and OFSTED-rated 'Good' schools, both with Resource Bases for children with SEND, the two schools enter the partnership as equal partners. 

 

What are we trying to achieve?

Our vision: Building excellence practice together to deliver exceptional outcomes for pupils.

 

Key aims for the Partnership:

 

This year's priorities:

 

This year, the two schools are working on the following improvement areas together:

 

  1. Improving the Curriculum: We will both be introducing a new Computing Scheme of Work, with Maisie Stack (Y3 teacher at Blackhorse) becoming the Computing Leader across both schools. We will also be looking at RE and Art at Blackhorse (with the help of Emersons Green subject leaders), whilst Emersons Green will be looking at History and Geography (with the help of Blackhorse leaders). 
  2. Improving children's ability to remember new knowledge: Both schools will be looking at how we can ensure that children remember the new knowledge which they have been taught, forming joint research teams to look at techniques which can be adopted at both schools.
  3. Developing a Reading Mastery Document: The English Leaders from both schools will be looking at jointly developing a Reading Mastery Document, which explains how we will ensure that every child develops into a master reading during their time at school.
  4. Developing an 'Ethic of Excellence': We will be encouraging excellent outcomes by following some of the ideas from Ron Berger's book 'An Ethic of Excellence', critiquing and refining both children's work and our own teaching to become the best schools that we can be. 

 

In addition to these key priorities, the two schools will be sharing training and resources to ensure that the children at both schools get the best provision possible by pooling our skills and expertise.

 

 

An example of the Ethic of Excellence in Action

Ron Berger from EL Education demonstrates the transformational power of models, critique, and descriptive feedback to improve student work. Here he tells the story of Austin's Butterfly. First-grade students at ANSER Charter School in Boise, ID, helped Austin take a scientific illustration of a butterfly through multiple drafts toward a high-quality final product.