St Giles Spencer awarded Centre of Excellence Status & Artsmark Gold Award
St Giles Spencer Academy, located in Chaddesden, have achieved Centre of Excellence status under the Balanced System® Scheme for Schools for the second time, following a visit earlier this month.
The Balanced System® is designed to help improve outcomes for children and young people across the range of speech, language and communication needs, by providing schools with the tools, mentor support and peer support to ensure they are effectively using resources to meet the needs of pupils.
Using these tools, the school must implement a development programme and evidence how they have utilised the framework. Following a review from a Speech and Language Assessor, the school is then measured on 5 key strands: supporting parents, young people and families, enhancing and adapting the environment, developing the workforce, identifying need, and providing appropriate intervention.
St Giles Spencer are currently one of only ten schools in the UK who have been granted the status under the Balanced System® scheme.
Speaking on the award, Kim Smith, Principal at St Giles Spencer Academy said “Communication is one of our key drivers and all staff go above and beyond to provide a Total Communication environment that supports each individual to have a 'voice'. The Balanced System® framework has been fundamental in evidencing the work that we do with children and their families, and it is lovely that this has been recognised through receiving the Centre of Excellence status.”
The school have also recently been awarded the Artsmark Gold Award, an award which recognises schools’ commitment to creativity. The award is accredited by Arts Council England and is the only award for arts and culture provision in England.
It is awarded following a rigorous assessment process in which schools must demonstrate the impact Artsmark has had, how it has allowed the school’s arts and cultural provision to progress and the objectives and goals they have achieved through following the framework.
Assessors celebrated St Giles for their ‘high quality teaching and learning…infused with an appreciation of how the arts feed into the curriculum, rather than being treated as separate and distinct from it.’
The school were also praised for ‘constantly exploring pathways to broaden pupil's engagement with wider social opportunities’.
Principal Kim Smith said "Our school motto is, 'Inspire and achieve through creativity!' and it is fantastic that this continues to be recognised within our curriculum as a real strength.”
Congratulations to all at St Giles!