The Marches Academy Trust and Shrewsbury School are set to expand their successful partnership work supporting students following a bid earlier in the 2019/20 academic year for a Department for Education (DFE) grant.
The collaboration between The Marches Academy Trust and Shrewsbury School, now in its third year, helps young people throughout Shropshire supporting higher academic achievements and raising their aspirations for progression opportunities.
Teachers from The Marches Academy Trust have worked with colleagues from Shrewsbury School to develop resources for pastoral care systems, maths, and STEM subjects.
The successful bid for grant funding was a joint submission from The Marches Academy Trust and Shrewsbury School. Despite competing against a high number of applications the collaborative bid has been allocated a maximum grant of £20,000. The awarded funding from DfE also enables the collaborative work with The Marches Academy Trust and Shrewsbury School to be expanded further to develop new links in careers provision for Year 10 students. Shrewsbury School’s careers faculty, Futures, will now work with the Trust and other organisations to support the increase in the range of opportunities for students to engage in.
Leo Winkley, Shrewsbury School Headmaster comments:
‘We are delighted to be able to expand on our work with The Marches Academy Trust to positively impact a larger number of Shropshire students thanks to the grant funding from DfE. Our partnership work with schools in Shropshire, and beyond, has created opportunities to support and inspire hundreds of young people.
‘Collaborative work with other institutions has been a successful activity at Shrewsbury School for decades and its continuation will now help to further improve the collective provision of education for pupils in Shropshire.’
Sarah Finch, CEO of The Marches Academy Trust has commented on the collaborative project regarding the expansion of the Mathematics project and the new careers project: ‘We are pleased to be part of this exciting collaboration and sharing expertise to ensure all students have the opportunity to a first class offering in Maths and the Careers provisions. We are grateful to Shrewsbury School and their team and look forward to working with them on this exciting partnership.’
Notes on the DfE grant funding:
The DfE established partnership fund of £220,000, was launched by Lord Agnew, previously the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the School System, at the 2019 Schools Together conference stating that the allocated grants were to support collaborative work between state schools and independent schools or universities from across the UK.
