SAPERE

The Shine Trust

SAPERE has been awarded funding by the educational charity the SHINE Trust to run a project in Falconbrook Primary School in Wandsworth working with children from two year groups on improving their reasoning and higher order thinking to inform and enhance their oracy and reading levels.

The pedagogical approach will be philosophical enquiry and we will be able to work together with children and staff collaboratively over the whole of the year with all the project children having at least 30 sessions of P4C with a SAPERE facilitator. Sara Liptai and Alison Hall will be the main project workers and there is a rigorous evaluation planned for the project which will be overseen by members of the Evaluation Policy Unit of University of Brighton. This is a pilot project with disadvantaged children who have a range of particular difficulties including 50% English as a foreign language. If the project can show significant improvement on its evaluation criteria, the SHINE Trust will be interested in funding the replication of the project across a wider population of schools that fit their criteria for disadvantage.

This is a significant achievement for SAPERE and builds on the energy and tenacity of previous bids for funding that have been prepared by Roger, Sara and Alison and we hope that it will be particularly instrumental in securing funding from other charities willing to take the risk and invest in alternative learning environments that foster better thinking for better learning.

Other news from the South includes the Enquiry Time Project initiated by a collaboration between the North Eastern Area Rural Schools network and Alison Hall. This project has been successful in attracting funding from West Sussex LEA via the inclusion department. Sandie Piper the Head at Handcross Primary school and nine of her colleagues have identified children from their networks who have delayed language or social communication problems. These children will meet for 10 half days of philosophical enquiry, language development exercises, and a physical coordination programme to enhance their reasoning and higher order thinking and improve their coordination and use of language. This team comprises Audrey Neate (a language development specialist), Alison Hall (philosophical enquiry), and Sue Perry, an innovative researcher who has developed exercises used for international hockey training into a programme that enhances learning. It is exciting to have the opportunity to work with the children off-timetable for each of the half day sessions with the three distinct but complementary approaches and again to have achieved the recognition that the project is an excellent way of enhancing existing provision. We shall, of course be writing up the project and will report on our progress later in the year.

Filed under: Projects