The team behind the highly successful Reach Academy Feltham and the Reach Children’s Hub are launching a Fellowship for ambitious school leaders who have the skills and desire to transform their local communities and provide cradle to career education.
The Reach Fellowship programme aims to kick-start a new generation of all-through schools, with 10 new schools to be established in the first phase of the programme.
To support the development of these new schools, the School Leader Fellowship will provide full-time one-year placements based in Feltham and designed for inspirational leaders who have the potential to set up and lead a new school. Two placements will be available in the first year, with numbers growing over time. Apply for the Fellowship now.
The placements will offer intensive training on all aspects of running an all-through school, including improving teaching and learning, shadowing experienced school leaders, mentoring and coaching, as well as organising residencies in transformative schools around the UK.
The placement will also include a three-week residency at a high-performing school in the US. Leaders on the Fellowship will focus on building an understanding of how to develop a cradle to career community organisation.
The new all-through schools will be set up through the free school programme, with groups applying to the Department for Education as they invite bids from new groups.
Support provided by Reach Foundation will include residential conferences exploring all aspects of the free school model, support in building a team, on the ground help for community consultation and collaboration and submitting the final application. Leaders of groups approved to open will join the Fellowship.
The team will work alongside the New Schools Network to identify communities with appetite for a new school and to connect with groups interested in exploring an all-through cradle to career model.
The Fellowship will launch in September 2020 and applications are now open.
Ed Vainker, Executive Principal & Director Reach Children's Hub, said:
“The circumstances you are born into are more likely to decide your future in Britain than almost any other country in the world. We know that it is possible to change this with hard work and dedication, but we need more educators out there doing this vital work.
“Some of the most successful new schools in the last decade have been all-through schools. They offer continuity in curriculum, support students through potentially difficult transitions and enable deep and lasting relationships between the school and family. They particularly benefit for the most vulnerable students who can struggle with transitions and where those lasting relationships are so important.
“That’s why we launched the Reach Fellowship, to work with school leaders who have the potential to transform their local communities but just need that extra bit of support at this stage of their career. We are already working with some tremendous leaders who I know will go on to do great things, and I am looking forward to working with many more over the coming years.