As you will know from the letters sent home in the first week of term we are in the process of consulting over Trust Status for The Warriner School.  There is an evening meeting today and a daytime meeting on Wednesday 10th to which all stakeholders are invited.  If you are unable to attend any of these the questionnaire that prompts your response can be found on the website under "Recent Letters Home".  (There is a glitch with the link at the moment but this will be fixed tomorrow.)

Trust Status is an initiative launched a few years ago by the Department for Children Schools and Families and is aimed at developing partnership working across the public and private sectors and between different sectors in the economy.  All this effort is planned to make a difference to young peoples' educational experience and improve their life chances.  Working with partners schools are able to develop their curriculum, staff training, access to inductry, etc.  The Trust ensures, also, that there is a long term relationship between a school and a number of other partners.  It is a relationship between two, or more, organisations; not a relationship between two individuals.  However, there is a need for personal relationships to be developed for trust among the Trust partners to develop and for the joint working to lead to deep and meaningful collaboration.

It is very clearly not an attempt for schools to boost their funding through sponsorship. I have always made it very claer to our partners that we are not coming along with a begging bowl, we are looking to work in areas that bring mutual benefit.

We are proud and excited to have secured the agreement from our four partner organisations.  In the letter I say a little about these partners but I would add that their websites say more about their work and areas of expertise and these would be a good source of information for those of you who would like to know more.

The contribution from each can be significant.  The link with Franklin Cover, who are publishers and trainers, will have acrued tangible benefits over the next 15 months as we roll out the "7Habits of Highly Effective Teenagers" programme across the school.  You will hear more about this as the year progresses and implementation looms.  All I will say here is that I firmly believe this will bring about clear changes to the way in which students manage themselves and make a major contribution to the ethos of The Warriner School.

Last week I met with the Local Authority about our 6th Form plans and left feeling that there is a genuine will from the County for this to happen.  the economic climate and the "Building Schools for the Future" programme complicate any clear timeline.  However, there next step is to come back to me with a time frame in which we can then start to add detailed planning.  This is relevant to Trust Status in that one of our key partners in support of this bid, OCVC, will be able to assist us with staff training, curriculum planning and, through facility sharing, enhancing the experiences of many young adults in the North of the County.

Kraft have already assisted with one Enterprise Day and are already involved in the planning for another in the summer.  In addition to this they have a significant contribution to make to our Design Technology curriculum and will be able to feed into the planning for a new Design Technology building which looks likely to start some time in 2011-12.

Finally RM Education, a major player in the educational hardware and software market offer huge synergies with our ICT department and also with advice and guidance about our ICT infrastructure and future investments.  thei understanding fromt he cutting edge of educational technology could prove to be invaluable.

There is a good deal of background information about Trust Status on the SSAT (Specialist Schools and Academies) website.

All in all an exciting time and a significant investment into the futures of those young people at this school.

Nick Hindmarsh

Many thanks to all of you who have supported us in raising money for the victims of the recent earthquake in Haiti.  Following the non-uniform day last week we expect to have rasied in excess of £2000, a tremendous effort by all involved.

For those of you who have read th elletr sent home last week you will know that we are passing this money onto the charity Habitat ofr Humanity, who have their UK base in Banbury.  (See below for more details.)

While it was amusing to see a male "Little Bo Peep" and a cow walking around the playground, closely followed by "The Village People" and Superman I am gald I didn't have to teach them during the afternoon. 

1. The Organisation was founded in 1976 with the sole aim of tackling poverty housing.
2. They believe everyone has the right live in a safe and decent home.
3. 30 years later it is working in over 90 countries world wide.
4. Every 10 minutes a family is helped with housing needs and in 2007 49,000 families benefited from a Habitat project.
5. Habitat work in tandem with homepartners, volunteers and supporters.
6. Homepartner families are local people who will own their own home and pay for it through a low cost, non profit mortgage that will see the money recycled back into the local community and so stimulate the building of further homes in that community.
7. A Habitat for Humanity home is a hand up, not a hand out.
8. Habitat for Humanity has been working in Haiti for 30 years and has now helped over 600 families to move into safe homes.
9. On January 12^th 2010 not one Habitat built home was destroyed in the Earthquake.
10. In Haiti costs £1350 to build a home designed for the conditions found in Haiti, this includes all materials and labour costs