If you have applied to become an RSA Opening Minds school and are using Opening Minds within your Key Stage 3 curriculum you might be interested in the RSA Opening Minds Award. This is an Award, developed in collaboration with ASDAN, which is competence based. It is a series of challenges which should enable and encourage your students to demonstrate their development of the Opening Minds competences. The challenges are grouped into the 5 competence domains:  Citizenship, Learning, Information, People and Situations.

 
The challenges are not curriculum specific therefore should be appropriate for any school using Opening Minds e.g. within the Managing Information section students could opt to: use a variety of websites or newspapers to compare different stories on the same topic; select the information you need to write your own article on the topic. Or, from Managing Situations: Choose a natural disaster, research it appropriately and then produce a news bulletin on the causes, effects and long-term consequences of the event.

There is a wide menu of choice within each section and schools can use the Award over a year or could choose to use it at the end of the year for example. It can be completed as homework assignments or done in class. The choice is yours.  If you are an ASDAN centre you will be able to draw down a certificate of completion for each student. The work is internally assessed and last year we organised a review meeting which was attended by all the schools trialling the Award so that we could informally moderate work across all the schools. This is not a requirement but it proved to be a very useful exercise.

The cost of the Award booklet is in line with all ASDAN qualifications, it costs £6 per student. Copies can be ordered direct from the RSA Academy.

If you are interested in finding out more about the Award or would like to order copies, please contact Lesley James at the RSA Academy: james.l@rsaacademy.org

We are delighted that Dr Wendy Piatt, Director General of the Russell Group and Dame Ellen MacArthur, round the world sailor and founder of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation are confirmed as keynote speakers at the RSA Opening Minds second annual conference.

The conference will be chaired by Matthew Taylor, CEO of the RSA.

The conference will be held at the Institute of Education, March 2nd, 2012.

For a full conference brochure please contact rsaopeningminds@rsa.org.uk

Booking will be available through the events page of this website from January 4th.

We are delighted that Lea Manor High School in Luton is the first school to become an accredited RSA Opening Minds school. Their practice of Opening Minds is of the very highest quality in terms of both its development and delivery.

Robert Hill, Chair of Opening Minds will be visiting Lea Manor on June 6th to present a certificate of accreditation.

On May 13-14^th the RSA Opening Minds Training Schools met for a study day.

The event had three main objectives – to:

• Explore and discuss the research related to Opening Minds which schools are currently engaged;
• To consider, discuss and agree a practical action research approach to underpin Opening Minds. The resultant learning community will be used to inform classroom practice.
• Assess different approaches to assessment of the competences, seeing how far there is commonality, whether there should be links to National Curriculum assessments, and whether it is possible to develop approaches that are robust enough to make comparisons across schools.

As a result of the event action research projects will be set-up around development of an Opening Minds framework for primary schools, what excellent Opening Minds practice looks like, and how we can most effectively assess the development of the competences.

As the research progresses updates will be available through the website.

The lively discussions continued over dinner.

Following the successful annual conference in March we have had many requests from schools to find out more about RSA Opening Minds. We will be holding a number of exciting events at Opening Minds Training Schools across the country this term. 

 The aim of the meetings will be for schools to:

• observe RSA Opening Minds in action in the classroom
• discuss experiences and the benefits of developing an Opening Minds curriculum with practitioners
• hear about the new developments in terms of accreditation and the development of Opening Minds qualifications

 We do hope that you’ll be able to join us at one of these exciting events. Venues and dates are below. Each session will list for three hours.  

• Whitley Abbey College, Coventry – 14^th June
•  Kingsbridge Community College, Devon – 15^th June
• RSA Academy, West Midlands – 16^th June – (a morning and an afternoon  session will be available)
• St Johns School, Marlborough – 21^st June
• Cardinal Heenan School, Liverpool – 24^th June
• Capital City Academy, Brent,  London   – June 27^th

 In addition to the events above we will also be holding a national event for head teachers.

• RSA Academy – July 14^th

 This will be held at the RSA Academy in Tipton, in the West Midlands on July 14^tt.

If you would like to attend please email rsaopeningminds@rsa.org.uk with the following information.

- Location and date of event you wish to attend

- Name of attendee(s)

- Name of school

- Contact details- email and phone

Films of the keynote speeches from this years annual conference – competences and the new curriculum: using RSA Opening Minds to develop students with 21^st century skills can now be found on a dedicated page in the events section of the website.

Keynotes included: Sir Ken Robinson, Rod Bristow, President of Pearson UK, David Aaronovitch, writer, broadcaster and journalist and Robert Hill, Chair of RSA Opening Minds.