Academic aspirations

Students from Islington Arts and Media School get their hands on the FA Cup during one of the learning sessions at Arsenal Football Club

Taking young people forward in London

“We are aiming to improve the academic aspirations and achievements of all pupils in Islington through delivering a range of high quality services to schools, teachers, pupils, govern-ors and the wider school community.”
Eleanor Schooling, director of CEA@Islington

(Article taken from our customer magazine, Momentum)

Helping young people make the most of their oppor-tunities and fulfil their potential. That’s what CEA@Islington, our education partnership with the London Borough of Islington, has been doing for six years in providing services for over 60 schools – winning wide-spread recognition in the process. Now we’re building on the successes to take our partnership into an exciting new phase.

Eleanor Schooling, director of CEA@IslingtonHeading up the 400-strong CEA@Islington team is our director Eleanor Schooling. “We were awarded the contract to run the Borough’s nursery, primary and secondary schools for seven years from April 2000,” explains Eleanor. “We are aim-ing to improve the academic aspirations and achievements of all pupils in Islington through delivering a range of high quality services to schools, teachers, pupils, governors and the wider school community.”

Eleanor is supported by three key assistant directors – Kirit Modi who looks after education strategy and management support, Thanos Morphitis who focuses on children and families and Mark Taylor who is responsible for school improvement and strategic performance.

“The partnership has worked so well,” says Eleanor, “that rather than wait until the contract expired, Islington Council decided to renew it for a further five years from April 2006. Islington is the first local authority in the country to voluntarily renew a contract of this nature.”

Since CEA@Islington took over running Islington’s schools the results for Key Stages 2 and 4 (national tests for 11 and 16 year olds respectively) have improved faster than national improvement levels and there has been substantial improvement in GCSEs (exams taken at the end of compulsory secondary education). “From 2003 to 2004 Islington was the most improved local education authority for GCSE results in England,” says Eleanor. “The past five years have been very challenging, the next five will be equally so.”

Candy Holder, head of special education and client services at CEA@Islington receives the Charter Mark Award with assistant directors Mark Taylor and Dr Kirit ModiWinning the UK’s top customer service award, the Charter Mark  assessed and awarded by the Cabinet Office  is another indication of customer service excellence. Islington is the only education authority in the country to have been awarded a Charter Mark for its entire service and the award was recently renewed for another three years. Candy Holder, who led CEA@Islington’s application, explains. “The Charter Mark inspection took place over three days and the assessor interviewed a large number of staff, inspected buildings and talked to school head teachers and our partners in London Borough of Islington  it was a tough challenge!”

One of the areas that CEA@Islington’s team has been working particularly hard to improve is the extended services to schools and out of school hours learning. Kate Kelly leads the Learning Plus team in building relationships between schools and local providers to set up resources for children.

“Inner London can be a challenging place for a child to live,” explains Kate. “But there are huge possibilities for children with theatres, sports facilities and libraries  it’s a question of making them accessible and affordable for all.”

Kate has worked on setting up a learning programme with Arsenal Football Club. “The children come to the club and work for forty minutes on improving literacy and numeracy skills with the theme being football,” says Kate. “And then they are given forty minutes football coaching  it’s all about making learning fun.”