BRIGSHAW HIGH SCHOOL

I started the day at Brigshaw High School...

It was great to be able to catch up with Cath Lennon, hedteacher at this wonderful school, and talk about the progress the school has made over the last few years. This Summer's GCSE results were their best ever, OFSTED rated the school as good with outstanding features last December and the Brigshaw Partnership Trust was established in April this year as a co-operative trust. Brigshaw also achieved the National Mentoring and Befriending Foundation's 'approved provider standard'.

The thing that attracts me about co-operative trust schools is the values that underpin the approach. Co-operative trusts also combine school partnerships with a membership structure that enables parents, learners, staff and community organisations to be directly involved. The stake-holding model puts the community at the heart of education provision, based on the belief that it is only through the active engagement of communities that the aspirations and expectations of educational achievement can be transformed. The co-operative values are self help, self responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity and are supported by these ethical values; honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others.

Cath had also arranged for me to meet four great young people who had just returned from the Czech Republic where they were on a Comenius funded exchange programme. They were simply wonderful adverts for the school. It's a school I will miss.
Chris