Festival of Friends - Lincolnshire Case Study
Posted in Views by Matt Blyton
The Festival of Friends, funded by the Armed Forces Education Trust, is a tried and tested, year-long school improvement project which has run successfully in the following geographical areas, each time with invaluable University support and with a growing number of schools involved:
- Hampshire - in partnership with the University of Winchester (2017-18)
- North Yorkshire and York – in partnership with Inspiring Choices Uni Connect, based at York St John University (2019-2021)
- Oxfordshire – in partnership with Study Higher Uni Connect, based at Oxford Brookes University (2022-23)
The Uni Connect programme was set up in 2017 and supports the strategic goal that students’ access to higher education is not limited by their background, location or characteristics. Since children of Armed Forces families (‘Service children’) are recognised as an underrepresented group in higher education, some Uni Connect programmes target some of their activities to this group of potentially vulnerable young people.
The Festival of Friends is a collaborative programme for supporting Service children. Its key aims are to develop, and then share, good practice in the educational and pastoral support for this group of children. It also aims to promote Service children’s progression to further and higher education, thereby improving opportunities and ultimately outcomes.
The project provided opportunities for building links between participating schools to support one another, the sharing of good practice and disseminating professional development across staff teams. It was designed to be of particular benefit to schools that have small numbers of Service children on their rolls, as is the situation involving the majority of the 4495 children (at the time of writing) that attract Service Pupil Premium that attend schools across Lincolnshire. A key element of the project was a requirement for participating schools to use the evidence based Thriving Lives Toolkit created by the Service Children’s Progression (SCiP) Alliance to identify an area of provision to strengthen. The project schools then ran resulting small school improvement projects – these are case studied in the accompanying booklet.
The collaborative activity involved in the Festival of Friends promoted the identity of Service children amongst their non-Service peers, raising their profile by celebrating their lived experiences. The project brought together key stakeholders to support Service children’s educational progression and strengthen their integration with their civilian peers, by raising the awareness of their distinctive needs with all.
Click the link below to access the Case Study Booklet.
Festival of Friends - Lincolnshire Booklet Case Study Booklet
