Artsmark

Artsmark Self Assessment Framework Sep 2021

Statement Of Commitment

We are delighted to announce that The Long Eaton School is a gold Artsmark school. We are incredibly proud that we are the only secondary school in the local area that is an Artsmark school.

Artsmark is the only creative quality standard for school and education settings, accredited by Arts Council England. Artsmark provides a framework that is designed to help embed the arts, culture and creativity across the curriculum, celebrating our commitment to cultural education. To date, Artsmark has reached over 1.9 million children and young people across more than 4000 registered settings. Through engaging with Artsmark, the school aims to:

• Support the health and wellbeing of students with arts, culture and creativity
• Ensure every young person can be creative and access a diverse, high-quality cultural education
• Build young people’s confidence, character and resilience through creativity
• Strengthen student voice, develop young peoples’ skills and support personal progression
• Engage, motivate and upskill teaching staff using Artsmark’s CPD and whole school collaboration
• Access professional support, advice and resources to strengthen arts provision
• Bring exciting opportunities to young people through new partnerships with inspirational cultural organisations and creative practitioners
• Embed creativity across the whole curriculum and address school improvement priorities using Artsmark’s flexible framework
• Celebrate our commitment to arts and cultural education with our students, parents and local community
• Maintain a broad and ambitious curriculum and equip young people with the cultural capital they need to succeed in life

All of these aims are in line with the school values of respect, ambition, academic excellence, and community.

The Artsmark framework is broken down into different award criteria, and schools are awarded silver, gold or platinum status. As part of our application process, we completed a statement of commitment which identified areas that were a development focus over 2 years. This included:

• Improve attitudes towards the arts, raising their profile within the staff, student and wider school community
• Improve careers education and work experience in the arts, promoting careers in this area as valid life choices
• Develop partnerships with arts organisations and industry professionals in order to deliver projects and improve the authenticity of student experiences
• Deliver Arts Award (external qualification) at KS3 as part of enrichment and also in the curriculum
• Involve students more in the planning and delivery of our provision, providing a range of leadership opportunities
• Forge stronger links with local primary schools, helping them to develop and deliver their arts provision
• Explore and review the opportunities we offer students in terms of trips, showcases and extra-curricular opportunities

We then submitted a statement of impact to reflect on our development and our 2 year journey. All of our documentation was assessed by Arts Council England, resulting in recognition as a gold standard Artsmark school.

Feedback from Arts Council England was as follows.

“The Long Eaton School has used this Artsmark journey to embed the Artsmark framework in your school improvement plan. You have developed your well sequenced and progressive arts curriculums as part of your Trust’s curriculum convergence activity and supported other schools in your Trust and local primary schools with developing their arts curriculums. You offer a range of arts qualifications and uptake is increasing. You actively promote the creative and cultural industries as career choices through your careers guidance and assemblies. You track who is involved in arts activities to ensure access is equitable and staff have looked at your curriculum to ensure arts and cultural provision is representative of the diversity of the school as well as wider society. Senior leaders drive and develop arts and cultural teaching and learning. You meet bi-weekly with SLT to track the strategic development of arts and culture in your school. A whole school pledge that includes arts and cultural activities has been introduced. Pupils’ voice has impact and influence within the school where they have been involved in the development of the curriculum. They have helped feeder primary staff develop quality provision and delivered drama and art workshops supporting year 2 pupils. You offer Arts Award and students have achieved Arts Award Silver. Through creative use of the arts young people explore and give voice to issues that are important to themselves, for example work on plastic waste or combating loneliness among older people. Children and young people enjoy a broad arts and cultural offer through timetabled teaching and other opportunities. This includes a project with Youth Music, Derby Theatre and Bolton University, arts extra-curricular clubs and instrumental lessons. You have delivered whole school creativity CPD in house and arts staff have accessed external arts CPD. You mentor your two ECTs and provide support for your Trust’s SCITT trainees. You have plans in place to create a dedicated arts governor role, to increase your collaborations with local artists and arts organisations and develop your careers provision. You have plans to develop your digital arts offer and it will be good to hear how this gives your pupils opportunities to devise and deliver performances and showcase their talents across all of the art forms, including dance. As part of this work could you forge links with creative practitioners and the cultural community that reflect the diversity of society? Could these partnerships also help drive the development of CPD and a school wide understanding of what quality in arts and culture means for your school? Could leaders share evidence of good practice across a wider range of settings and advocate for the positive impact of arts and culture on all children and young people?”

We will be continuing to drive our arts provision over the coming years, responding to the feedback above as well as continuing to work towards whole school priorities.