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On Saturday 7th March 2020, RSA Academies’ Teaching School Alliance (TSA) held a conference for their cohort of newly qualified teachers (NQT) across the RSA Family and partners schools. The RSA Academies’ TSA recruits and trains new entrants to the teaching profession every year. This is the second time the cohort have met for a CPD […]

Over the past six weeks,100 Year 4 pupils have attended a series of social action training workshops to help them become ambassadors for positive change in their communities and schools. The children taking part in the workshops, each of whom were selected for their peer leadership potential, have come together with ten West Midlands schools […]

One term in on the Contemporary Art Space Project We are now nearly at Spring half term and mostly on schedule! Working in partnership with Iniva (the Institute of International Visual Arts) we have all the vital elements now in place, Josie Reichart, director of Ort Gallery in Birmingham appointed as curator, and three artists, […]

This week RSA Academies welcomed ten schools to participate in the second year of our RSA4 project to help Year 4 students take part in meaningful ‘youth social action’. What is RSA4? Youth Social action is practical action taken by young people for the benefit of others or the environment, for example, fundraising for a […]

Hannah Lee, a sixth form student at Arrow Vale RSA Academy in Redditch writes a personal account about her journey to London to participate in the Global Climate Strike march. The weather is unusually pleasant for a late September morning. I recall that I haven’t felt nervous on my routine walk to the bus stop before. […]

On Saturday 9th November, RSA Academies’ Teaching School Alliance (TSA) held a conference for their cohort of newly qualified teachers (NQT) across the RSA Family, providing delegates with an opportunity for career development, reflection and practical resources for the classroom. Sessions were led by Specialist Leaders in Education from across Church Hill Middle School RSA […]

How can you judge the quality of work done for the local community? That’s the question we’ve been trying to answer in our RSA4 project, which runs social action projects for Year 4 pupils. So how are we defining ‘high-quality social action’? Social action is practical action such as campaigning, fundraising and volunteering, all of […]

Last Thursday we completed the final leg of the RSA4 road-trip. Over the past month, we have been visiting all of the schools participating in our primary youth social action programme RSA4 to see how pupils’ projects have progressed. Each of the schools have led their own individual actions from raising money towards a local […]

For the third leg of the RSA4 road-trip, we headed to Abbeywood First School in Redditch to see pupils’ progress on their mindfulness garden. Over the past six months, 10 Year 4 Pupil Leaders and their wider class peers have been participating in the RSA4 youth social action project. Back in March, the Pupil Leaders […]

This blog is also posted on the RSA website. How schools should teach students about Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) content and relationships has been in the news following recent protests. The public attention comes as schools are considering changes they might need to make in response to the Department for Education’s (DfE) new […]

On our second leg of the RSA4 road trip, RSA Academies made a very special visit to Woodrow First School to catch up with Year 4 pupils on their youth social action project. Tackling difficult social issues First, I want to take you back a few weeks ago to a lunch meeting I attended for […]

On a very wet and windy Tuesday, RSA Academies set out on the first visit of the RSA4 road-trip. Over the next month, we’ll be visiting all of the participating schools to see how they are getting on with their primary youth social action projects. It was exactly what we needed to brighten our day. […]

The RSA Academies’ Teaching School Alliance teacher trainees are gearing up towards the end of their training year now and yesterday, as part of their design thinking research module, had the opportunity to practice their presentations on their chosen research topic. In four weeks time they will formally present their methods and findings to a […]

On Friday 29th March, 40 Year 4 Pupil Leaders came together for a special RSA4 social action workshop at the University of Worcester. RSA4 is a new primary social action programme run across four West Midlands schools including Abbeywood First School RSA Academy, Charford First School, Sutton Park Primary RSA Academy, and Woodrow First School. […]

Over the past few weeks 40 Year 4 pupils have come together for a series of RSA4 workshops that have centred on developing character traits and soft skills to deliver positive social change through youth social action. It seems only fitting that in the same timeframe we’ve seen the recent Schools Strike 4 Climate movement […]

In the last few days of Student Volunteering Week 2019 (11 – 17 February), RSA Academies launched the very first RSA4 Pupil Leaders Workshop. With the support of the Pears #iwill Fund, the RSA and RSA Academies are working together for the next two years to launch RSA4 and investigate what high-quality youth social action […]

This week marks Student Volunteering Week (11– 17 February 2019), so what better way to start than reflecting on the RSA8 Student Leadership University Planning day. On Friday 1 February, 50 Year 8 students from across five schools in the RSA Family of Academies, RSA Academy Tipton, Holyhead School, Ipsley CE RSA Academy, Church Hill Middle […]

It is nearing the end of another amazing action-packed #iwill week (a UK-wide celebration of the impact young people are making through youth social action), providing us with a timely opportunity to announce an exciting new programme of work in this area at the RSA. With thanks to the Pears Foundation ‘Pears #iwill Fund’, the […]

It was a great pleasure to have the opportunity to attend the #Iwill campaign’s planning meeting last week to discuss how to encourage more Birmingham based secondary schools to get involved in social action work. I was joined by a group of pupils from the RSA Academy in Tipton who explained how RSA Academies had […]

Last week saw the publication of school performance tables, commonly known as league tables across the country for the first time using Progress 8 and Attainment 8 as measures. No better time then for RSA Academies’ Chief Executive, Alison Critchley to explain to parents across the nation what it means, what the risks of the […]

This blog was written by Sherene Meir and is also posted on the RSA website.  The RSA Academies’ Performing Arts Hub are excited to be working with Beatfreeks on a project engaging students and teachers from the RSA Academies to develop school cultures of music making. Beatfreeks is an award winning social enterprise run by RSA […]

This blog by Sherene Meir is also posted on the RSA website. As part of the RSA Academies’ Performing Arts Hub’s work to connect teachers and the arts and culture community in the West Midlands, we held our first Creative Gathering at mac in Birmingham last week. There were representatives from around 15 different arts […]

“The RSA Pupil Design Awards are centrally about the power of social design, but it is ultimately about helping pupils realise that they have the power look at the world and make things better. What better education to give to a pupil?” – Rethinking the boundaries of design   At the beginning of the school […]

This is a guest blog written by Stephen Steinhaus, Vice Principal, Whitley Academy.   As part of the second annual RSA Academies’ Arts Day in July,Whitley Academy Vice Principal, Stephen Steinhaus and Upton Blues Festival Chairman, Oliver Carpenter, both working musicians in their own right, were asked to co-deliver a keynote “address” on the topic […]

With the start of the new school year, schools across the RSA Family of Academies are recruiting a new cohort of pupils to take part in RSA8, our Year 8 leadership programme. Last year’s programme culminated in a fabulous celebration in July, with the students from each of the Academies (with Year 8 cohorts) coming […]

Two schools in Redditch, Abbeywood First School and Church Hill Middle School, are currently consulting parents, staff and local schools on converting to Academy status as part of the Redditch RSA Trust. The plans, if they go ahead, would see these two schools working even more closely with one another and with Arrow Vale and […]

This year, the RSA decided to take part in the nationwide Takeover Day for the first time, inviting 60 academies students through its doors to ‘take over’ the RSA. The aim of Takeover Day is to give young people the chance to get involved in organisations

RSA8 is a bespoke programme designed for the RSA Family of Academies. The programme includes a series of workshops taking place across the Family, with reciprocal visits for the 10 students from each of the Academies taking part in the programme.  The workshops have been planned in collaboration with RSA Fellows who wish to get involved with […]

Students from Arrow Vale RSA Academy, Whitley Academy and RSA Academy, Tipton had very early starts to get to the RSA in London to take part in the second annual Student Leadership Conference.  Joined by RSA Fellows, Duncan Piper, Marie Nixon, Rick Hall and Asma Shah who told personal stories about leadership, the students led […]