Much has been made recently of the continuing disparity of school experience that COVID-19 has accentuated, particularly in areas of poverty that exist in the North East. This very much highlights the importance of meaningful educational initiatives that can have impact in raising aspirations and attainment throughout the region.
At the RGS, we are very aware of our high performing academic reputation based on the excellent results that our students achieve. We believe that this reputation brings with it a responsibility to take a leadership role, both through the strength of our bursary programme and, increasingly, through the breadth of our partnership activities with State schools in the region. The RGS has a long history of providing bursary support to deserving individuals who would not otherwise be able to afford the education that we provide. Indeed, it is reported that Admiral Lord Collingwood who had fee assistance to attend RGS in the 1700’s is one such pupil, and he certainly went on to make an indelible impact on the world. Many of our older living alumni benefited from the government funded Direct Grant and then the Assisted Places schemes while, more recently, we have actively raised funds for our Bursary Scheme through the RGS Educational Trust. Currently over eighty pupils at the school benefit from bursary support with the majority being on fully funded places. Our aspiration to increase the number of bursary places available has led us to build our development team to support the fund raising effort. We recognise the transformational impact that bursary support can make, not only to the lives of individual children but also to the social mobility of their families and broader communities. These children also play an important role in establishing the inclusive atmosphere of the RGS and some are amongst our highest performing academics who go on to top universities including Oxford and Cambridge when they leave. The recent admissions process for entry in the coming September has once again seen high demand for bursary places with another cohort of wonderful children competing for the highly coveted places. Every year this serves as an ongoing reminder of the importance of our efforts to grow the bursary provision. While providing very focussed support through bursaries is a core part of the RGS ethos, we are also aware of the potential to inspire a far larger number of individuals through wider engagement in the community. From well before the pandemic, the RGS has supported a range of partnership activities and recently invested in establishing the role of Partnerships Director as a member of our Senior Leadership Team. While we recognise that there is much great teaching going on in maintained sector schools, our strength in STEM subjects has recently led the Reece Foundation to fund an Outreach Maths Teacher and an Outreach Physics Teacher, whose focus will be to provide support to teachers and gifted and talented pupils across the region in a way that is complementary to existing teaching. We anticipate that this will prove a scaleable model for delivering sustainable impact and helping to combat the disparity that I noted at the beginning of this article. I very much look forward to working with businesses and other institutions to roll out this programme across the sciences, across a range of other subjects and also across co-curricular activities such as music and sport. In doing so, not only can we support academic excellence but we can play such a core role in developing children’s life skills of teamwork, leadership and working with others alongside supporting their resilience and promoting their wellbeing.