Royal Wootton Bassett Academy is one of the largest in Wiltshire with over 1,600 girls and boys aged 11- 19. Our large Sixth Form has built up a national reputation for academic success. The Academy has a proud record of academic success but seeks to provide a holistic educational experience that champions community engagement, family learning, the Arts, Sport and in our unique whole school, cross curricular Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Programme (HGP) epitomises the Academy’s ‘Global School in a Local Community’ strapline.

Since 2009 Holocaust and Genocide Education has played a central role within the curriculum and ethos of RWBA. Following the inaugural Year 9 collapsed timetable Holocaust Day, including the opportunity to hear survivor testimony and the student led Awareness and Memorial Evening, the programme has grown into an initiative committed to exposing the evil of prejudice, injustice and hatred in all its forms whilst celebrating civic values from Years 7-13.

We have a longstanding relationship with the Centre for Holocaust Education and several of our teaching staff, including the Lead Practitioner and Headteacher, have participated in the two-day CPD. In light of this partnership and in recognition of our own HGP we were proud to be approached as part of the pilot Beacon Schools Project. The subsequent trip to Washington DC, based at the United States Holocaust Memorial Project has significantly contributed to the way our students learn about the Holocaust and other genocides. More broadly, our engagement with the Centre for Holocaust Education has impacted whole school teaching and learning strategies as we strive to provide an educational experience which produces informed, empathetic, engaged, critical and independent thinkers, responsible and active global citizens.

The Holocaust is taught across Key Stages 3-5 in a whole school, cross curricular, holistic approach. Holocaust Education is delivered through discreet curriculum subjects – History, RE, English, Sociology, Psychology and Foreign Languages and increasingly being referenced and developed in others..

We were among the first schools to pilot and trial the Centre for Holocaust Educations world-leading online Pupil Research. We are looking forward to having this research inform our teaching practice and evolution of our programme. We are keen to pilot and trial other such work in conjunction with the IOE and continue to host their FREE CPD for colleagues in local schools and our now 30+ network schools. We are proud and committed to continue this supportive, research-informed and innovative partnership with the IOE – which continues to help our own work evolve – and share best practice in this sensitive, complex and challenging area of teaching and learning with other colleagues and schools.

RWBA HGP champions the human spirit and all the good that humans can achieve and the opportunity for students to hear survivor testimony direct from visiting speakers has proved inspirational, whilst respectfully recognizing the past and exploring current horrors that mankind is capable of. The HGP allows us the scope and flexibility to incorporate responsible, age appropriate, differentiated, pastorally supported and innovative teaching and learning opportunities – such as, workshops on the genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia and the situation in countries recognised on the Genocide Watch list. Alongside our ongoing partnership with the IOE we continue to enjoy links with the USHMM, Aegis Trust, Most Mira and SURF and a variety of high profile public figures who support us in providing unique learning opportunities which are holistically focused, academically vigorous and authentically interdisciplinary.

Our main foci this year as a Beacon School has been four fold:

1. A commitment to networking, sharing best practice through CPD, both internally and externally, and disseminate resources and pedagogy in journals and at conferences.
2. To provide our students with an outstanding educational experience and authentic encounter with the Holocaust and other subsequent genocides – that informs, engages, empowers and inspires young people.
3. Opportunities to engage in IOE research and to reflect upon its results so as to inform further teaching and learning practice and the future direction of our programme.
4. To organise and host a teachers conference (May 2014) focused upon the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights ‘Empowering young people to change the world’.

We were delighted to announce the Centre’s fifth Quality Mark Beacon School Royal Wootton Bassett Academy. Congratulations to Headteacher George Croxford, the lead teacher, staff and students.

The school, its students, staff, parent and community should be hugely proud of what they have achieved so far. Beacon School status has truly been embraced, valued and a driver for whole school improvement and it is right that they should be recognised for their commitment to Holocaust education with this prestigious award.

Headteacher George Croxford reflected on the report and process:

‘Being a UCL Quality Mark Beacon School brings fabulous formal and external recognition for our school for what I see as one of the most important parts of our whole person education…the students love it and have responded fantastically to it.’

‘…in education it’s all about sharing… to be outward facing and I think it’s your duty as a headteacher to be doing that, so if you have something wonderful like a specialism in Holocaust education then you should absolutely think of becoming a Beacon School. If you later get that Quality Mark status like we do today, then you get fabulous recognition of a superb programme and highly respected organisation, it confirms you have superb teaching and learning going on and you are able to share your wonderful practice and CPD with other schools, which is what I believe education is all about. I am therefore so proud of achieving this status, of the tireless work our Lead Teacher Nicola Wetherall puts in, and the commitment and enthusiasm of our staff and students.’

‘The Beacon School journey has moved teaching and learning forward here, I believe, massively.’

‘The training is absolutely brilliant. It’s about developing an enquiring mind…which I think is massively, massively powerful.’

‘…proof of Beacon School status impact? We have abundant proof. The UCL Quality Mark process has confirmed and externally verified this. We have staff all over our school, in every single department who have all done aspects of UCL training which has moved their practice forward…we have our own SCITT… they have absolutely loved this training because its about dealing with difficult issues, we know what a difference this has made to teaching and learning in our school, and if for no other reason, that is the perfect reason why I would actively encourage Headteacher’s to champion Holocaust education and become a UCL Beacon School.

‘I am so proud to lead this school, and Holocaust Education, its UCL Quality Marked Beacon School status, is a key part of what makes it so special. It is a honour to achieve this recognition and I am grateful to Dr Pearce for such a professional, vigorous, but supportive and developmental review visit. It has reinforced and supported our own judgement whilst posing key questions for consideration to evolve and improve our work.’

The Centre’s Dr Andy Pearce and reviewer said:

‘Royal Wootton Bassett is a Beacon School in all senses of the term. It is a hub of educational excellence, where one finds very high standards of teaching and learning about the Holocaust, and cannot fail but to be inspired by what teachers and students can achieve. Its Holocaust and Genocide Programme is exemplary in its intelligent design, appreciation of multi-disciplinary learning, and symbiosis with CPD; its staff and Senior Leaders are committed pedagogues, passionate about advancing young people’s understanding of this complex and challenging past; and its students are grounded, well-informed young men and women who’s love of learning is infectious.’

Here is a wonderful example of UCL and schools working in long-standing partnership, to the benefit and development of both school and UCL. Royal Wootton Bassett Academy encapsulates ‘the possible’ Beacon School principle and have led the way in innovation and application of the Centre pedagogical principles for the benefit of its learners, teachers and wider community: a compelling example of what is possible with quality provision for and delivery of Holocaust and genocide education programmes.

Read full Quality Mark report here: UCL RWBA QM Report