Art Outreach

One of our highly experienced art teachers is providing 4 schools with in-service training and art lessons (at 3 of the schools).

Aims

·         The partnership aims to share specialist teaching of Art throughout the Primary years with maintained schools.  One of the participating schools, for reasons of their school size, preferred the idea of an INSET session for the staff rather than a classroom-based project.  It may be that each of the other participating schools will also be offered an INSET.

·         Many schools do not have teachers who have specialist Art training.  For many general classroom teachers Art is not within their sphere of comfort, and they may not feel confident about teaching the subject area.  They want Art to broaden, support and complement the rest of the curriculum but can feel unsure how best to do this.  For several years St Margaret’s has had two specialist Art teachers teaching from years 3 -11.  One of them will be going out into maintained schools for half a day a week over six weeks leading an Art project with one primary year group.

·         That the class is engaged in the project and activities, and that I share ideas and methods with the class teachers.  Then this knowledge and experience continues to influence how the teachers teach Art and improve their confidence in doing so.

·         The immediate beneficiaries are the year group and their class teachers that this project involves.  Those teachers can then cascade what they have experienced, seen and talked about with the rest of the staff.

Background

·         The partnership came about from conversations between St Margaret’s staff and staff of other North London schools.

·         Two members of St Margaret’s SLT (Sam Beschizza the Bursar and Matt Brown IT Director) were the ones who identified the opportunity, through talking with Heads and teachers in other schools,  and followed this up with maintained school contacts they had. 

·         Following extensive email contact and visits with the participating schools, the initiative started in September 2019.

Resources

·         The main resource that is critical to the success of the partnership is the St Margaret’s Art Teacher who goes into the maintained schools. 

·         It uses the facilities of the schools we are going into, with some extra materials and equipment brought from St Margaret’s as necessary for specific tasks.

·         It makes use of teaching staff, a teacher from St Margaret’s, (and also the teachers and teaching assistants of the year group within each school that is taking part in the project).

·         One member of staff for 6 half days, spread over three half terms of a school year. 

·         There is no financial contribution on either side.

Impact

·         Any assessment is qualitative.  If the quality of the art-work produced has shown an increase; if the skill levels and artistic confidence of the pupils have shown a measurable increase;  if the teacher’s self-confidence in planning and executing Art lessons, and enables them to widen their range of skills and knowledge - those are the measures of success.  This can be measured by questioning the pupils and teachers after the project has ended, (probably via a questionnaire) and maybe a year after the end to see if there has been any lasting results.

·         Assessment would be carried out after each 6-week project and then a year after that, for each school participating.

·         The anticipated outcomes are that primary teachers in the participating schools become more aware of how to plan and carry out successful and enriching Art lessons within their schools.

Pupil Involvement

·         Pupils from one year group from each of the participating maintained schools and their teachers and teaching assistants will participate.  

·         The pupils may vary from Year 3 to Year 6, with most being from Year 5 or 6.

·         Girls and boys will be involved, as the schools that are going to participate during this year are at co-educational schools.

Frequency

·         This is an ongoing event.

·         It will happen one half day a week over a six week period (one half term) for each of the schools involved.