Kilgarth's Aspire Project

We are Kilgarth School – an award winning school for boys with social, emotional and behavioural needs. Despite there often being additional social, economic and cultural deprivation, our pupils manage to achieve great results in school.We are fortunate to have a Headteacher, Steven Baker who is held in high esteem for his creative leadership style. At the end of 2014, he initiated the Aspire project of which the main aim was to encourage our pupils to aspire towards success in life beyond their everyday experience.Steven Baker, Headteacher Steven decided we should reach out to inspirational role models whose ability to motivate is unique and powerful. His plan was to obtain signed photos and some words of wisdom which we could use to create a book to give to our boys to help them understand that they are not alone and that they too can aspire to achieve great things.Time was set aside at one of our school development days for staff to work in teams and they were given the freedom to compile the lists of names and addresses in various categories so that we could make contact.Flyers were then designed in partnership with an associate, Paul Hooley from eightnine graphics. It was agreed that we would incorporate our recent successes within the wording of the flyer as we have won a string of awards over the past few years including an unprecedented four Pearson Teaching Awards in 2014/15.Pearson Teaching Awards. Pictured from left to Right: Steven Baker, Headteacher and leader of outstanding team 2014, Helen Pullin, teaching assistant of the year 2014, Jane Westalke, outstanding new teacher 2014, Mick Simpson, Science teacher of the year 2015. Following the circulation of our flyers, we have received a great response, including some fantastic words of wisdom from Jane Goodall of the Jane Goodall Institute:“Follow your dreams. And remember, every day you live you make a difference in the world and you have a choice – what sort of difference will you make? Together we can change the world.”Signed photos and words of wisdom are still arriving and we will begin work on publishing our book at the beginning of next year.   We are grateful to all you inspirational people out there who have supported us.