BIRMINGHAMTHEBLUECOATSCHOOL1722

BCS Enrichment Days

To celebrate the Independent Schools Council’s (ISC) annual Partnerships Week in 2023, we take a look at BCS Enrichment Days which are a key part of the outreach work The Blue Coat School undertakes with partner state schools. 

The original Blue Coat School, built on the eastern side of the churchyard surrounding St. Philip’s Cathedral, dated from 1722 and its purpose was to educate children aged nine to fourteen from poor families within the city. 

Whilst the school has evolved since those early days and we are now a fee-paying independent school, we remain committed to educating children from all backgrounds and the BCS Enrichment Days are just one way in which we fulfil this ambition. 

BCS Enrichment Days offer children from state schools the opportunity to visit BCS for the day to have an immersive learning experience in a specific subject or topic, sharing facilities they wouldn’t otherwise have access to.

During an enrichment day, their mission, should they choose to accept it, could be designing a Mars colony that considers both human health and happiness; or it may be learning about the history of space exploration and engineering a lunar lander; pupils have also constructed and tested water-resistant aqueducts from Roman times and proactively tackled issues such as the energy crisis by designing self-powered wind turbines. 

BCS Experience Days forge fruitful partnerships with state schools across Birmingham, targeting those with a high proportion of pupils who are eligible for Pupil Premium funding. Since its launch in 2018, more than 700 children from state schools have attended a BCS Enrichment Day.

 

 

Vision for BCS Experience Days

BCS Experience Days aim to offer exciting and memorable opportunities to children from disadvantaged backgrounds with the view to inspiring new ways of learning, igniting curiosity and driving passion for improving the world we live in.

The impact of the BCS Enrichment Days, evidenced through feedback, which fills us with the most pride, is that from last year’s Enrichment Day participants, 95% said that they would like to pursue further education or further opportunities in the subject that they took part in. 

A teacher from Reaside Academy said:

Every child who attended spoke highly of the experience and were really proud of what they had made. The fact that they had something to keep and mark the experience was really important to them.

Four girls learn how to use a wood saw in Forest School on a BCS Experience Day.
A teacher shows a group of pupils how to use video editing software on Apple iMacs during an enrichment day with a partner school.

Whilst the visiting schools come to BCS to utilise facilities and resources they wouldn’t otherwise have access to, such as science laboratories, Forest School, sports facilities and the ICT Media Suite, and this is of huge benefit to both the children and the teachers who attend, the standout feature of BCS Enrichment Days is that they are tailored to the needs of the school and the children attending. Upon booking, the visiting school will have in-depth meetings with BCS’s teaching staff to ensure that they get the best out of the day.  

These specialists will design a bespoke programme for each school which meets their curriculum aims and fulfil passions the children cannot access within their own setting making an impressionable, positive difference on the children. 

Following a STEM Enrichment day, a teacher from St Bernard’s Catholic Primary School said:

With the use of such amazing science facilities as well as an abundance of high-quality resources to hand, this has had a significant impact with the students gaining skills transferable to the classroom.

Since the enrichment day and through the help of The Blue Coat School, the pupils have been responsible for planning, conducting and evaluating their own investigations successfully which were focused on air resistance.

Transport and Lunch

To ensure that any school and any pupil gets the utmost from their BCS Enrichment Day, BCS provides all of the transport, lunch and teaching staff free of charge. 

Similarly those who attended the Harborne District Cup, a football-based enrichment event which brought together 10 state schools, not only enjoyed playing in a competitive football festival, BCS also provided the pupils and parents spectating with food and drinks throughout the day to provide an enjoyable, carefree day where the benefits of sport on physical and mental development were evident in children who were immersed in developing their football skills, leadership skills and team-building. 

We have designed our BCS Enrichment Days in this way to ensure there are no barriers for participation and enjoyment for any pupil, parent or teacher.