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Involved |
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Any
Livery company, school or educational organisation is welcome to
join us . Our aim is to bring Livery companies and schools together
to help prepare young people for the world of work.
You may be a Livery company that
is interested in joining us, or already a member and looking to
offer specific support. Or you may be a
school or educational organisation based in London that would
welcome support from Livery companies. Please read the sections
below to find out more about how you can get involved.
For all general enquiries, please email info@liveryschoolslink.co.uk
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| FINANCIAL
LITERACY PROGRAMME IN BOW -VOLUNTEERS NEEDED FOR 15 JANUARY 2013 |
David Steward, LSL Committee member is an enthusiast for this programme.
"I believe this is a hugely valuable form of outreach. In addition
to the transfer of knowledge, there is a great benefit to the
children in meeting professionals and business people from the City.
It builds bridges and enables them to see us as people they can relate
to.
It has the potential also to help them grow their aspirations.";
The Financial Literacy programme is run by Tower Hamlets Education
and Business Partnership (EBP) and is for Year 5 pupils (9+ years
old). It is known as the BEE Programme and details are at http://thebp.org/pfl.htm
It's not a huge time commitment: volunteers spend about two hours
on each of six or seven days over a period of a year in a primary
school helping to deliver a series of workshops, and the sessions
are fronted by a teacher from the EBP, so there's no significant
preparation required between sessions.
The sessions aim to teach pupils about the principles of finance,
banking and enterprise. The volunteers work with a small group of
pupils to help them complete the tasks set, and accompany them on
a visit to the Bank of England.
The sessions cover, for example:
Making decisions and choices, such as balancing necessities
and luxuries, budgeting, and the differences between debit and credit
cards.
The world of work, including the concept of earning, how
standards of living vary, day-to-day tasks, what a legal contract
is, wages, tax and national insurance contributions.
Banking: savings, interest, how money is regulated, etc.
Retail: the services that shops and Post Offices provide,
the real cost of goods, household expenses.
The pupils also take part in a project to design and market greetings
cards, and then make team presentations to report on their decision-making
and results. In this context, they learn about the sort of roles
that people have in businesses, overheads and profit, and USPs.
If you would like to volunteer or have any queries about this scheme,
please contact Alice.Waddington
@thebp.co.uk
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| 13th
Annual Livery Companies Ray Jeffs Cup Charity Golf Competition &
Gliding Programme |
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The Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators (GAPAN) make an important
contribution to education and are stalwart members of Livery Schools
Link. John Mason recently sent an open letter to all Clerks appealing
for support for both the Golf and the Gliding Programmes. If anyone
is interested in following up what John says in his
letter, please contact Alison Truphet on alisontruphetlsl@gmail.com
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| Get
involved as a Livery Company |
Livery Schools Link naturally wishes to avoid re-inventing wheels.
As part of that wish, it provides a forum for the exchange of ideas
and best practices in Livery support for schools. As all City Livery
Companies are aware, we have developed, for Livery use, a comprehensive
Database of that support, material from which is informing this website.
Whether your Company is currently a member of the group or not, you
could help your fellow Livery Companies by reading this site and identifying
the points of common consent and where you may differ, for example
on the relative merits and potential scope for support arrangements.
Find out more by reading our examples
of partnerships and projects beween our current Livery members and
schools.
Should you currently be a non-member Company and wish, in some way,
to engage more closely in the Livery Schools Link endeavour, please
get in touch. The Administrator would be delighted to hear from
you.
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| Get
involved as an individual volunteer |
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You can read more about our current and upcoming volunteer opportunities
in our Volunteering
Leaflet and in our Bulletin.
You can also read some
examples of what other volunteers have done in the past and
find out more about the
Lord Mayor's Volunteering Initiative. If you wish to volunteer
as an individual, please contact
Alison Truphet, our Volunteer Coordinator. You can also volunteer
with Envision.
School Governance - Adding Value to Children’s Chances
The Context
- In a challenging employment market children need all the help
they can get to equip them for life after school.
- There is overwhelming evidence that effective school governance
has a positive impact on childrenÂ’s education.
- The need for governor volunteers with transferable skills has
never been greater.
- There are 33,000 vacant governor places in schools in England.
A possible solution
School Governors’ One-Stop Shop (SGOSS) is one free service that
is NOT too good to be true! With the remit to recruit volunteers
with transferable skills to be governors in schools in England,
SGOSS has secured places for over 13,000 governor volunteers. The
aim is to work in partnership with local authorities and schools,
and the added value is the capacity to source skills that governing
bodies may lack, or have difficulty finding. There is no charge
for any of the SGOSS services. Liverymen and associates of the Livery
movement would appear natural candidates to become school governors,
and many have already volunteered. Or perhaps there are friends,
colleagues, or family members who might be interested?
One of the challenges SGOSS faces, however, is that many schools
and their governors are unaware of SGOSS; another is that potential
volunteers do not know how to progress their interest; and a third
is the perception that London and the Home Counties are probably
well served. In any of these scenarios, SGOSS is here to help and
advise. SGOSS holds up-to-date vacancy details and once an application
is received works with the volunteer to make a mutually beneficial
match. Applications can be made electronically at
www.sgoss.org.
If you are a governor already, do you have vacancies on your governing
body, or the need for a particular skill? If so, SGOSS has launched
a new web-based tool to help schools find a school governor with
the right skills and talents. The Online Governor Recruitment Service
allows schools to register their vacancies, and also provides access
to resources for parent governor recruitment. The service is free
and can be accessed at www.sgoss.org.uk/schools.
UPDATE - August 2012
Please see below a message to all those involved in Livery Schools
Link either directly or indirectly about a recent Governor Impact
Survey from SGOSS on the causal link between the effectiveness of
governing bodies and pupil performance. It is a salutary reminder
that good governors make a difference to young people. If anyone
is inspired to think about becoming a school governor, please contact
SGOSS direct on www.sgoss.org.uk
but I would be delighted to know those of you who are or who are
thinking of becoming a school governor.
This SGOSS survey report looked for answers to the perennial question
- isthere a demonstrable causal link between the actions of/effectiveness
of the governing body and pupil performance? It has been a very
tortuous process to get to here, but I am very pleased with the
final product. I am now looking for support in highlighting its
findings as widely as possible. It is available via this
link.
This survey among serving governors recruited by SGOSS sought to
collate and evaluate examples of where the governors perceived a
causal link between the actions of/effectiveness of their governing
body and pupil performance. Providing quantitative verification
of such impact is obviously always going to be highly problematic,
as even where a governor-sanctioned investment in a particular subject
area has been accompanied by a measurable increase in pupil achievement
in that same subject, many other factors could have intervened.
Nevertheless the SGOSS survey generated a large number of replies,
and this data aligns to and supports other earlier studies by way
of confirmation that a causal link between the actions of/effectiveness
of the governing body and pupil performance can be reasonably inferred.
SGOSS is clear that this report is a collation of a limited number
of opinions, and lacks the rigour of comparative research. It is
also conscious of a potential respondent bias, leading to exclusively
positive responses. Nevertheless, the request for specific instances
of impact has resulted in a bank of examples where the respondent
believes there is clear link between the actions of the governing
body, the quality of education provided by the school, and the performance
of the children in the school. On this basis it provides a valuable
insight into a key area where publicly available information is
currently limited.
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| Get
involved as a school |
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Schools wishing to enquire after possible support through Livery
Schools Link should first consider the help that those from the
public or private sector business, academic, administrative or civil
society communities might provide to enhance your students' educational
experience and employability. You may wish then to:
- Identify a Livery Company that may be responsive to your particular
need and make contact with them directly through our members
list .
- Contact us via post or email about your school and/or its pupils/students
and invite the help of Livery Schools Link in brokering new links
or new kinds of links for you.
Conversely, we would welcome your email or letter offering examples
of successful school links with the world of employment, crafts,
trades and professions (to enable Livery Schools Link to help others
with examples of successful practice, which they may care to emulate).
A list of partner organisations that may be of interest to schools
can be viewed by clicking here.
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