Chronicle January 2021

20 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

Above and Beyond Head of Communications Tracy van der Heiden caught up with Director of Development and Partnerships Rachael Henshilwood to discover what’s on the horizon for her growing team.

You run a team with the wonderful name of Beyond Teddies – what do you and your colleagues do? My colleagues and I in the Beyond Teddies team look after three important areas of school life: community, partnerships and fundraising, and we have a vision – it is to inspire our community to engage on a personal level with St Edward’s, to learn from each other, to encourage new or existing interests, to make new friends and, importantly, to have fun. In turn we strive to encourage everyone to want to support the School in whatever form that might take, perhaps by donating time, expertise or funds. Tell us more about partnerships. Teddies has always had a proactive programme of supporting our local community. My team and I now want to develop this programme further to offer even more meaningful educational and personal development opportunities, both for our pupils and our partners. In a successful partnership programme, all participants should benefit, and this is true of a lot of our work with local primary schools, youth groups and charities. Now we are keen to use impact measurement as a strong basis for expanding our activities.

Why are these partnerships so important to the School? Because education is changing. The partnerships programme, which used to be seen as an add-on to the core business of education, should now be seen as vital preparation for our pupils’ adult lives. Employers are not just looking for people with stellar academic skills, they also want emotional intelligence, cultural understanding and empathy. In our community partnership programme, pupils are learning how to interact and communicate with people from all backgrounds whose life circumstances can be very different from their own. What’s in store for the partnership programme? I’m currently working with Lauren Bray, English Teacher and Partnerships Coordinator to refresh our school charity initiative so that pupils can identify and support specific projects of importance to them and the local community. We are currently working with Asylum Welcome, Endeavour Academy and Oxford Gatehouse on potential projects specifically for this initiative which will involve a Dragon’s Den type of presentation with pupils helping not just by raising funds but also in the delivery of the project, working in partnership

with the chosen charity. If anyone has links to local organisations where there is clear partnership potential and appetite I would be delighted to talk to explore opportunities further. You can read more about some of our recent partnerships on pages 24-27.

‘It used to be believed that if you come out of school with GCSEs and A Levels, go to a Russell Group University and come out with a 2:1, all will be well. But that deal is now breaking down. It is striking how many employers are moving to be qualifications blind. In other words, employers are saying, well, actually, a 2:1 from a Russell Group is no longer a proxy for the sort of people we’re looking for. Employers are looking for people who can problem solve, who’ve got initiative, and who can work in teams – all these qualities also make for a more fulfilling life for the individual irrespective of where they’re employed. We want to be creative, we want to be human, we want to be interacting with people in different ways’. PETER HYMAN, CO-DIRECTOR OF BIG EDUCATION, SPEAKING AT A CHARTERED COLLEGE OF TEACHING EVENT IN NOVEMBER.

The Beyond Teddies team from left to right: Rachael Henshilwood, Director of Partnerships