This page showcases the Trust's partnerships with professional organisations to enhance educational quality and support.
BWCET is proud to work in partnership with Christine Counsell, Steve Mastin and Haringey Education Partnership in the development of our Trust humanities curriculum in the primary phases. Christine and Steve are internationally recognised as curriculum specialists and in the field of humanities. Our Trust leaders and staff engage regularly with them and benefit from their professional expertise. This work has transformed the humanities education taking place in our primary schools.
Excellent careers education, information advice and guidance are vital to support our young people to take their next step in education, employment and training. To support this work, careers leaders from our Trust secondary schools have worked closely with the Gatsby Foundation, exploring excellent careers practice in schools as part of the foundation’s work to think about the next ten years of good career guidance. This has included visits to schools, talking to our pupils and roundtable discussion about best practice in supporting pupils to benefit from excellent careers information. Our schools are early adopters of the revised Gatsby benchmarks and provide professional support to other schools as they reflect on their careers education, information advice and guidance.
BWCET has formed a dynamic partnership with The Great North Maths Hub and Archimedes Maths Hub to elevate mathematics education across our schools. Central to this collaboration are mastery specialists and professional development leads. This collaboration focuses on several key initiatives. These include sharing best practices, developing innovative teaching strategies, and delivering high-quality professional development for our staff. The partnership aims to improve pupil outcomes by deepening their understanding and love of mathematics, fostering number fluency, and ensuring that students are equipped with the skills and confidence needed for success in more complex mathematics.
Supporting pupils to attend school regularly is a high priority nationally and for the Trust. Despite excellent attendance in most of our schools, we continue to be highly ambitious to improve attendance as we know it is the vital first step to ensure that pupils benefit from our high quality education offer. To help support research into the underlying causes of absenteeism locally, the Trust supports Northumbria University by engaging in their research projects around attendance. This includes individual schools working with the university to explore the underlying reasons for absenteeism, as well as working collaboratively with the university to develop interventions to support poor attenders to be in school more frequently. The Trust also sits on the Northumbria University Attendance Research Advisory Board, developing future research projects to explore this vital national issue.
BWCET is a regional Centre of Expertise for the Bell Foundation to build sustainable provision for learners who use English as an Additional Language (EAL) with the aim of improving their learning outcomes. Centres are accredited and quality assured by The Bell Foundation to run Language for Results training to schools in their regions. We have a team of dedicated EAL trainers who are licensed and trained by The Bell Foundation to run high-quality EAL professional development courses for teachers and other school staff.
BWCET is proud to work closely with Marc Rowland a foremost expert on the effective use of the Pupil Premium and improving outcomes for disadvantaged learners. Marc has worked with the Department for Education (DfE), the Jersey government, numerous local authorities, and over 500 individual schools to support them in developing strategies to improve outcomes for disadvantaged pupils. Marc works with our Trust’s central team and with our school leaders to help explore and address the barriers for some of our most vulnerable pupils. Our entire Trust staff family have benefited from CPD from Marc.
In our secondary schools, we work with ImpactEd Evaluation, undertaking bespoke research with pupils in our schools to understand the drivers of good attendance. This drives specifically targeted interventions with a particular focus on our most vulnerable pupils to help them to attend well and succeed in school.
National Centre for Language Excellence
High quality MFL teaching is a priority for all our schools across the Trust. We are delighted to host the regional MFL hub where we drive, support, and monitor the work of a national collaborative network of MFL teachers and their schools to raise the standards of language teaching through the development of teaching resources, assessments, and professional development. All our professional development is informed by national and international research, particularly in the areas of vocabulary, phonics, grammar, meaningful practice, corrective feedback in interaction, target language use, assessment, and motivation.
Please use the link below to find out more about the Languages Hub.
Preparing our pupils for the world of work and developing their digital skills ensures we are creating citizens of the future. Our BWCET Computing Hub supports primary and secondary schools in Northeast and Cumbria to meet the growing demands of our digital age. Computing Hubs drive and support the aims of the DfE funded National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE) to meet the need for digital skills.
The Computing Hub can provide 1:1 support as well as remote and face to face CPD. We run a wide range of computing courses each term and can offer bespoke support and CPD where necessary. Generous bursaries are provided to enable teachers to access computing training and support. These bursaries will help cover costs of supply or non-contact time.
Please use the links below to find out more about the Computing Hub and get in touch.
In August 2023 we began a collaborative partnership with the NIHR, their first with a multi-academy trust, to explore how academic research may directly impact within education and expand opportunities for cross sector research. This is helping us to develop our high-quality provision for pupils with additional needs.
Newcastle University’s School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences has supported us in the development of the BWCET Speech Language and Communication Needs Strategy. The team has also delivered training as part of a research project to enable teachers to deliver the Building Early Sentence Therapy (BEST) intervention, in early years settings. The purpose of our involvement has been to co-produce and co-design resources to enable educators to develop the tools and training packages that are essential to enable us to meet the communication and language needs of our pupils. Many of our schools have been able to capitalise on the expertise and resources of the specialist professors, doctors and researchers in the team. Newcastle University’s phonological awareness and intervention strategy/packages are in use across BWCET schools.
The Bishop Wilkinson Catholic Education Trust is an exempt charity. It is a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales under company registration number 07890590. The registered office address is Bishop Wilkinson Catholic Education HQ, Barmston Court, Turbine Business Park, Nissan Way, Washington, SR5 3NY.
