“It is better to begin the journey, make some mistakes and correct your course, than to wait until everything is perfect and never even start.”
― James Norbury, The Cat Who Taught Zen
BCE Signpost #1
1st June 2024 - Three minute read
For those of us in the world of unregistered Alternative Provision, waiting has been and continues to be a thing. We wait for decisions and directions with no clear timescale, and it takes a pretty robust balancing act to remain in a place where intentions and purpose hold fast. With Impatience, my middle name, I stay grounded by looking at the little yet significant milestones and celebrating them at every opportunity.
In our work with EBSNA (Emotionally Based School Non-Attendance) learners, we call it the Ladder of Courage – Taking one curious step towards one clear goal at a time, and celebrating that milestone. Approaching things this way really helps a person of any age or stage to stay on, or be confident to correct their course as they go. James Norbury’s The Cat Who Taught Zen is a super versatile resource for teaching and learning about managing personal goals through reading, especially learning to find balance, set pace and get perspective. Feel free to get in touch for suggestions as to how it can be threaded through your curriculum.
I hope that those of us working so hard now, in readiness to meet new AP standards when they finally roll out of lengthy DfE (Department for Education) consultations, will be able to get started with new ways of working together soon. Every recent news or opinion article on upcoming changes refers to some kind of limbo for education and SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities), so keeping balance and holding fast to values is what we’re all leaning on here. There have been many new findings emerging from the DfE, which are being added to everyone’s responsibilities for providing education for learners with SEND and health issues. BCE endeavours to be the provider that remains not only in line with these ever evolving expectations, but to be the service that leads the way with them:
Now we add to our Waiting-To-Do List the ripples that will come from July 4th and how they’ll either slow us down or speed things up. That’s not just the grown-ups, trying to find ways to make the best education pathway available to young people with SEND and health issues. That’s also the children and young people who really want to learn and belong somewhere but haven’t yet arrived. In the meantime, BCE’s half termly read will signpost findings and thoughts relevant to SEND children and families as well as their educators, with the aim being to highlight opportunities and maximise the chances for our children.
Creative Focus: The Power of Music to Change Lives
‘The Expressive Arts can be a powerful way to address the social and emotional health of students’
So this theme of waiting can signpost some promising news on the creative and expressive arts in education. Those of us who started our arts teaching careers in the noughties will remember the wave of change that hit our subjects and knocked us all sideways, in the form of the Ebacc in 2010. We rocked up, freshly qualified in drama, music, art, dance, ready to tell our leaders what we’d learnt about how vital our subjects are to learner development and inclusion, beyond the academics. Then got a hard smack in the face with carousel timetables or even worse, relegation to the extra-curricular, cross-curricular, work related or SMSC (Spiritual, Moral, Social & Cultural) offer in our schools.
However you feel about the English Baccalaureate, the Cultural Learning Alliance Report Card 2024 has found that Ebacc narrowed options (not merely academic) for many learners, and now everyone’s talking about the negative impact (not merely academic) that had on student outcomes (not merely academic), especially for our disadvantaged children. In Schools Week a cry for the creative subjects which have been squeezed out of schools was made in response. This came the week after the DfE published its national plan for music education: The Power of Music to Change Lives. Promising high quality music education for all is brightening news for our young people.
Making the places children want to be and know that they belong
We launched our website this half term and have been grateful to receive advice, support and encouragement – thank you.
When you’ve a moment to take a look please do, then get in touch if you have something we might be able to help with, or even if you just have an idea about how we could work together which you can’t yet see summarised on the site – We’re an inclusion service after all and so want to move and shape our efforts to match what your children need right now and make it happen.
The offer is varied, just like the individuals we aim to help get to a place where they know they belong and want to learn. We understand and respect that everyone has their own start point so every new project will be unique. Beyond Creative Education Limited specialises in making a love of learning accessible to children and young people with SEND and health issues such as EBSNA and anxiety. We offer coaching and workshops to families; support, development and training to schools; and small group or individual learning packages in wellbeing and the creative arts - all to enhance the local offer for SEND children with health issues who want to be included.
There is a lot we can do to make the places children want to be and know that they belong. Get in touch.
