Partnership Schools

Woodstock Partnership of Schools

We work together with all of our over 30 Primary schools to ensure that the Year 6 to 7 Transition Programme is really carefully planned. We want all of our Year 6 pupils to feel confident and safe when they transfer to The Marlborough School. We work to ensure that communication with parents and carers is clear and informative, and this allows for good relationships to be built between school and home.

We offer three Transition Days starting in May, before a Steptember start, each day increasing in duration. This allows our Year 6s an opportunity to meet key staff, visit key areas in school and to meet potential new friends. Mrs McCleary, our Transition Lead, visits all of our Year 6s in their Primary school, which gives them an opportunity to discuss any worries or concerns they may have in a comfortable environment. Mrs McCeary also meets with Year 6 teachers/SENCo/Safeguarding Leads to handover any key information needed to support successful Transition. 

We have a designated afternoon for our Year 6s with SEND and their parents and carers. This is an opportunity to gain key information on how we support our pupils with SEND and what provision we might offer. It is also a chance for our Year 6s to meet their peers in a smaller environment.  

We invite all our primary schools to take part in a number of carefully planned Transition activities designed to help support our Year 6s. These transition activities are designed to help to build connections to our school earlier than with the whole cohort. These events are often supported by our Marlborough Sports Leaders and provide a chance for our Year 6s to meet older pupils at our school and foster positive relationships. On arrival in September, our new Year 7s always begin term before the rest of school returns, allowing them plenty of opportunities to get to know their new environment. We also have a comprehensive Induction Programme which includes sessions on our school's vision and values, our behaviour systems, our classroom expectations and explanations of the thinking behind our key approaches to teaching and learning. 

Our work with our Primary schools are very important to us and we believe that our highly intentional approach ensures that all our pupils start Year 7 feeling happy and safe. 

West Oxfordshire Learning Partnership

The West Oxfordshire Learning Partnership (WOLP) comprises the secondary schools in West Oxfordshire, and Abingdon and Witney College. We work collaboratively to share and learn from each other’s practice in relation to teaching and learning and curriculum development, for example, and in some cases share teachers. As a partnership we have developed middle and aspirant senior leadership programmes, including National Professional Qualifications, and run a series of professional development activities that can be accessed by teachers across the partnership. We run some joint professional development days making cost-effective use of training providers, and our collaborative professional development also includes our teaching assistant, technical and administrative teams. WOLP schools offer initial teacher training in conjunction with the Oxfordshire Training Schools Association and the University of Oxford Department of Education.

WOLP worked together to establish a skills centre in an industrial unit in Witney, providing practical training and qualifications in building trades. Small groups of Key Stage 4 pupils from across the Partnership have benefited from this provision, which is administered by Abingdon and Witney College.

The secondary schools in WOLP work together to implement ‘In Year Fair Access’ protocols and oversee the delegation of funding to support vulnerable pupils at risk of exclusion and to support schools receiving excluded pupils

West Oxfordshire Partnership Secondary Schools