Partnership Working

Our school is a member of a “School–led Improvement Partnership”. 

This group is known as the Dunmow Excellence in Education Partnership or “DEEP”. It has eight primary schools; Dunmow St Mary’s, Felsted, Great Bardfield, Great Dunmow, Great Easton, Rodings, Stebbing, Thaxted and one secondary school; The Helena Romanes School. The schools have a long history of successful collaboration. The group is  active in providing initial teacher training, training for learning support assistants and joint training and development opportunities for all schools staff. The schools also work closely with Cambridge University in education research projects.

Providing high quality opportunities for children is a priority. Our children often take part in joint activities with other schools in the group such as a careers fair for year 5 children, internet safety talks and joint concerts. Sports fixtures and festivals are organised through the partnership.

Schools in the DEEP partnership share common values and are committed to providing support and challenge to each other to achieve their ambition of all schools improving. All the schools are currently graded “Good” or better by OFSTED; the intention is to keep these gradings and to ensure that the schools work together on the shared aims of collaboration and improvement. 

Working in partnership with Cambridge University, who provide high quality teacher-training courses in both the Primary and Secondary age-range, we offer placements for trainees. Cambridge trainees are always in demand from headteachers and many of our qualified trainees go on to positions of school leadership very quickly. We consistently receive outstanding feedback from our trainees on course evaluations.

Working in partnership with Essex Primary SCITT we offer high quality training placements and experience for graduates wishing to teach in primary schools through its one-year full time School Direct route leading to Qualified Teacher Status.

We work successfully with partnership schools across Essex with the aim to produce confident, highly skilled, enthusiastic and innovative practitioners able to teach across the primary age range to meet the needs of our local context.

As well as being able to facilitate placements for trainee teachers we also host a day where trainee teachers visit and experience a day at Rodings, with a focus on our school curriculum. Mr Crawley also hosts and delivers training for the whole cohort of trainee teachers on PSHE and RSE curriculum. 

We work closely with Prestige Sports to provide a complete PE solution to support school our PPA cover requirements. Prestige also offer a range of after school clubs, across the year.