This video was made by our current Year 8 students in both XP East and XP School in Doncaster. Every word was written by the students.

This film is the culmination of a learning expedition looking at migration which had had the guiding question “Why should we care about migration?”

Students learned about the dust bowl and the Great Depression. They read Of Mice and Men as their anchor text, looked at push and pull theories for migration and linked these to real case studies of migration in India.

Throughout the whole expedition students captured footage of all their experiences working alongside the Doncaster charity, Conversation Club in order to create a documentary for our final product. The aim of our documentary was to raise awareness of the realities of migration and to educate our audience in order to prevent the spread of negative stereotypes and ideas.

This documentary film was premiered at CAST Theatre in Doncaster, where it was screened to parents, guests and the migrants who had so kindly shared their personal journey with our students.

Great news!

We received a phone call yesterday from the Regional Schools Commissioner’s office asking us to attend an online interview, the final step in the application process.

We are now finalising the dates, but we are provisionally looking at mid-April for the interview.

We’ll share our thoughts on how it has gone following the interview too, but as a reminder we would not expect to hear about the success or otherwise of our bid until the Summer.

In the current national emergency it still remains to be seen how this would affect our plans in terms of opening in September 2021, but that is still our aim. We are optimists.

Stay safe everyone, and thanks to the DfE too for their work on continuing to process these applications even at such a turbulent time.

The government has just publicised the list of applications for new academies. Including our proposal, there are 87 in total.

This week, the Times Educational Supplement has released an article with our application as the headline for the piece.

We think this is really positive as it links with comments from both the Secretary of State and Unity Howard from the New Schools Network about the need for more innovative new schools and for more new schools in the North.

Updates

Last week we had our mock interview with the New Schools Network, with some really useful and extensive feedback to help us be best prepared for a DfE interview.

Of the 87 applications for new schools, there are three in the North of England area. In our region alongside XP Gateshead, there is an application for a new primary school and a university technical college linked to Carlisle Lake District Airport.

This week we met once again with the Local Authority in Gateshead to move forward with the next stages our consultation. Within the next few weeks we will have more information about where and when these events will be across Gateshead.

These will be an opportunity for members of the community to hear more about our model and proposal, but also importantly they give us a chance to listen to what families from across Gateshead think of our proposal and help us to make sure that we deliver what is best for the whole borough.

We are now awaiting formal notice that we have an interview with the Department for Education. As soon as we get the call we will let you know.

Thanks as always for your support and interest.

#wearecrew

A happy new year and new decade to you all. We hope that you have had a great festive season.

The team at XP Gateshead are incredibly excited that this could be the year when we are approved to bring XP to Gateshead.

Update

Our application was submitted to the Department for Education at the end of last year, but due to government departments closing down over the election period, we expect that this will lead to a delay in us receiving notification if our application has gone forward to the interview stage.

The next big step in our application is next week, when we will have a mock interview with the New Schools Network, the charity which advises on the creation of new academies. We are looking forward to getting further valuable feedback from them on the strength of our application.

Following this we will update you with announcements about further events to share information about the school.

Thanks once again for your support, and spread the word!

Thanks to all of you who have been sharing links on social media and spreading the word.

We are now in a position where we are likely to be at capacity for the room tomorrow (Monday 4th).

If you have indicated that you are coming, we look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

If you have not indicated that you are coming through Facebook, or by filling in our Google Form, then we are very sorry but we will not be able to take any more guests tomorrow.

We intend to arrange further consultation events should our application to open the school proceed to the next stage.

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The XP Gateshead team will host an open evening on Monday 4th November, at 6.30pm in the Hyperion Room at Jury’s Inn, South Shore Road, Gateshead NE8 3AE.

This event will provide prospective parents and other interested members of the community an opportunity to hear about:

• Our proposed School and its innovative and successful model for education.
• Our Team, our Trust and our track record of success.
• Details of when and where we are proposing to open
• Details of our proposed admissions process

There will also be an opportunity to ask questions and to raise concerns or make suggestions.

We are really excited to share our plans with you and hope to see you there.

To help us to determine numbers for the event, it would be really useful if you could fill in this short form to let us know that you are coming to the open evening event:

Directions to the venue can be found here:

For students in XP Secondary Schools their very first day at school involves getting on a bus and going on an Outward Bound expedition with their new crews.

This week is hugely important in establishing our culture and helping students to realise what it means to be crew.

“To start a school is to proclaim what it means to be human”

Tom James – EL Education

XP schools’ provenance is closely linked to the Outward Bound Trust. The very first EL schools in the US were born out of the idea of taking the Outward Bound design principles and reimagining them for the classroom and scholarship.

Year 7 Students from XP School and XP East have gone to the Aberdovey Outward Bound Centre for the last four years.

They go as strangers, they come back as a crew.

#wearecrew

We Are Crew *super-cut* from Relational Schools on Vimeo.

This video highlights the importance of Crew, which underpins our entire curriculum model. Crew is our pastoral structure, where students are known well, and work together on their common mission being university-bound.

There are 12 or 13 students and one adult in each crew. Crew is for 45 minutes every morning.

The role of the crew leader is to support each student academically and personally through their time at XP Gateshead.

#wearecrew