Ryde High School Language College
Number of pupils on roll: 1,118
Age Range: 13 -19
Status: Mixed Comprehensive
Location: Rural
Free school meals entitlement: 15%

What this case study is about

Carnival in the community was, and still is, a vehicle to raise standards of achievement, both in the school and in the community and raise aspirations and inculcate a spirit of learning for learning's sake.

Following a large number of years of extremely successful summer schools, a few years ago carnival was integrated into that scheme and the first mas camp took place, bringing in the community. Mas camp consisted of dedicated and focussed workshops to develop all aspects of carnival which everyone rotates around to contribute to the overall development.

Linking with Ryde Development Trust and an external world class company 'Kinetika', specialist artists and expressive arts consultants passed on their skills through active learning workshops at mas camp and in the curriculum. The ethos of the workshops was to upskill staff, students and members of the community to gain the skills needed to create top class independent carnival productions.

This case study is an example of how initial work with partnerships has benefited the school population, local community and the whole island. It clearly demonstrates how a combination of partnerships, local and international, can impact above and beyond the compulsory curriculum.  ur status as a language college has enabled us to use our funded partnerships to support our 'Street Carnival and Regional Festival' project, SCARF.

Description of the Centre:

Ryde High School Language College is a 13 – 19 mixed comprehensive situated in a Victorian seaside town on the north east coast of the Isle of Wight, with close links to Portsmouth via a Catamaran and Hovercraft service. There are 1118 students on roll. The school is at the centre of the Ryde Federation of middle and primary schools and has based on its site a Family Support Team, Behaviour Support Team, Family Learning Officer and a Children's Society Team all of whom serve the needs of all the schools.

We have a state of the art International Centre, Learning Resources Centre, Science Blocks, Business Studies Vocational Suite and Sports Hall. Further developments will see Performing Arts, which will serve the local community, and the Island. As well as a hugely successful work experience programme, there is now a well established International work programme.  Situated on the site also is a Surestart programme, called Suresteps, located in what was a caretakers bungalow, aimed at getting young mothers back into education.

The school's exam results have been improving year on year, for the past few years, in no small part due to the extensive study support programme. Between 2001 and 2003, students achieving 5* A-C have gone from 43%, to 48% to 51% and it is anticipated that they will rise in 2004.

Socio Economic Circumstances

The school's catchment area is rural and some 33% of the students are 'bussed in' from outlying villages. The Ryde area has a total population of 20% ages 0 – 15 and 10% ages 16 – 25. The very high proportion of old people living in the area also impacts upon the opportunities for young people.  The Ryde area contains pockets of extreme deprivation with three of the area's electoral wards defined by the DETR index as being amongst the 10% most deprived in England.  25% of school children in the area are in receipt of school meals and 16% of students are on the Special Needs Register. The number of children with English as an Additional language is negligible.

Study Support Programme

Study Support is embedded in all aspects of the school's life. It sits at the heart of the School Development Plan and is part of all subject/curriculum development plans and is heavily supported by the SMT. The person responsible for study support is a member of the SMT. A Study Support Co-ordinator leads the programme.

Our Breakfast Club is the only one on the Island amongst the High Schools. It has won the Education Extra Award that has enabled us to secure further funding. Lunchtime activities are focused around Sport because of the short lunch period. The main thrust of study support occurs after school, some Study Saturdays and holiday revision packages.  Activities take place across the whole school site and across the whole age range and include a range of enabling enriching and extending activities.

Large-scale study support includes 'Global Rock' (now in its seventh year), annual drama productions and summer camp/mas camps. Students can also access study support facilities through our close partnership links with the local youth club and the Barry Lawrence Centre (a community flat in the heart of a deprived ward.

All members of staff have contributed towards the programme. Students act as mentors/tutors in events such as Global Rock, drama productions etc. but carnival work has now created a large body of students with the skills to manage and teach successful carnival workshops.

Background to Carnival

Carnival on the isle of Wight is really important to its identity. Celebrations for Queen Victoria’s reign are recorded in island history where a pageant was organised with large puppets and costumes. Furthermore, Ryde has the oldest town carnival in Britain and most major towns hold summer carnivals. Consequently carnival has become a major attraction for tourists and is helping enormously with the regeneration of Ryde as a town.

Students at Ryde High School became heavily involved in the carnival experience during our Summer School in 2001.  Working alongside the International Carnival Company 'Kinetika', ideas were taken from Trinidad, which helped to rejuvenate traditional style carnivals held on the Isle of Wight. Students armed with new skills and experience established the first carnival club. Open to all students, the out of school hour's activity began to create large-scale processional artwork for specific festivals and parades. Following success at the Newport (capital of the isle of Wight) Christmas Carnival using willow and tissue paper lanterns, we began preparations for the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations. After researching countries of the Commonwealth we set about making twelve fifteen-foot processional puppets, which would dance down the main street of Ryde on the festival day. Design details were taken from places such as India and Africa. Working in partnership with RAW Samba (Ryde Artworks), the twelve 'Global people' formed the major part of the Jubilee celebrations in Ryde. After our appearance in Ryde we were invited to the Paulsgrove Carnival in Portsmouth and visited many island schools to provide multi-cultural workshops for fellow student. With further inspiration from Kinetika we had the opportunity to participate in the Mayor's Thames festival and the Canterbury Carnival.

In 2002, Carnival came into the curriculum and we delivered the 'MACROMONDO' week for the whole school. This involved all students working with an international carnival theme based on the elements. The Mahogany International Carnival Company came and worked with us showing us more techniques of construction. A one hundred strong carnival band was created with four sections and processional puppets. The carnival was also choreographed. Winning first prise at the Regatta Parade and Sandown carnival established us as a force to be reckoned with.

In 2003 we worked with a carnival company 'Renegades' from Luton, working with a traditional island story for uour inspiration.  Costumes and dancing took us to a new level. The aim was to integrate the project into the mainstream school based KS3 curriculum during expressive arts lessons and the after school carnival club lessons. Other schools in the Ryde area also participated in the parade working with a similar theme and gaining assistance and advice from our staff and students. Again a carnival band was created, but this time we were able to link with our Comenius project called SCARF, bringing in staff and students from our partner countries Romania and Italy. Inspiration was also drawn from research visits to Salvador in Brazil, Constanta in Romania and the world renowned Viareggio Carnival in Italy.  The carnival club produced four Gods/Goddesses to represent each of the four elements.  These large articulated puppets led each of the four sections – 'Pachamama' for Earth, 'Olokun' for Water, 'Iris' for Air and 'Agni' for Fire. The school won best in parade for its costumes and choreography and took the sections to further town carnivals on the island and to the final carnival in Ryde at the end of the summer season.

This year's theme is 'Strangers in a Strange Land' based on the idea of the movement of people all over the world and it is anticipated that it will be equally spectacular. It tells the tale of the 175 million people in the world who live outside their country of birth in today's multicultural societies. 

In addition over the last few years Carnival Club has been involved in annual lantern parades in the town that has brought out all the schools in Ryde, all their families and thousands of spectators. The Lanterns congregated at the bottom of the main road on the sea front and joined with the local Churches in songs of praise. It is estimated that more than 60,000 spectators watched the Ryde carnivals and parades.

Ethos of Carnival

The 'hook' of carnival cannot be underestimated. From previous surveys of Ryde, the Learning Town, carried out by Ryde Development Trust, there was a major obstacle to learning from Ryde residents. The schools' and town's links with carnival groups from the mainland such as 'Renegades' from Luton started the move towards upskilling the population. 

It is not the case that students and community members are locked in a room and told to create. It is the case that his year, as with previous years, there are wider opportunities, such as spending a week in Paris, visiting the space centre at Genk in Belgium and visiting Moscow and touring the kremlin. Comenius colleagues from Italy and Romania will once again join Ryde to share preparation, and participation in the parade. Carnival is about the whole process of learning skills, planning, making and celebrating and experiencing new ideas, working as teams and unleashing a massive amount of creativity.

All of this has stemmed from the early days of summer schools, which created the ethos of 'learning for fun'. A relaxed approach to uniform, rules and regulations, staff names and timings of the day, allowed students to enjoy the experience.  Monitoring of and evaluation of this process spilled into the study support programme and was shared on training sessions with all tutors. Seamlessly, this has created new approaches to teaching and learning styles across the whole staff.  The senior management team supported this with whole school development time focused on teaching and learning techniques such as 'Accelerated Learning' and 'Brain Gym'.

Impact of Carnival

There has been a positive impact on Ryde of the £6 million Single Regeneration Budget funding and matching finance. A report from the employment promotion organisation, the Isle of Wight Economic Partnership, said the boost to the town's economy had reduced the number of vacant shops from 16% to just 2%. The economic impact of the 2003 carnival showed that £750,000 came into the Ryde economy as a result of the parades and the events around the carnival. In three years, more than 5,000 island people have been directly involved in the delivery of festival and carnival events and it is estimated that in 3 years more than 250,000 people have experienced the carnival and the new Arts Festival.  The programme, which has regenerated the town carnival and is reputed to be the oldest in the country, aims to create jobs and bring big improvements to the town.

What about the students? The biggest impact has been the raising of self-esteem and achieving personal goals. For example, the students who came to summer schools can now independently run their own workshops and pass on their skills to other students and members of the community. They have been rewarded with 'Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Award for Young People', and trips to Italy and Romania to work with carnival workshops and local schools.

Students and staff are shoulder to shoulder on parade days and in workshops. Age old boundaries of 'them and us' are being steadily eroded in a positive fashion leading to increased achievement, attitude and attendance.

Future Developments

Study Support is clearly making a difference but we now need to look more closely at how we measure the impact on attitudes, attainment and attendance. Does attending carnival club lead to improved achievement in terms of increased achievement in coursework/homework.

We need to look at ways of getting subject areas to measure the impact their activities are having. Indeed, consideration should be given to finding our ways of further strengthening the link between achievement in study support and the taught curriculum.

Finally we need to play to our strengths as a Centre of Excellence, offer training to staff from other Island schools for them to move forward on the Study Support Agenda.

For more information on this case study contact:

Ryde High School Language College
Pell Lane
Ryde
Isle of Wight, PO 33 3LN
Tel: 01983 567331
www.rydehigh.iow.sch.uk

Quality in Study Support
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Southborough
Tunbridge Wells
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