Child of the North
We are proud to share the Faculty’s involvement to the new Child of the North report which highlights the critical need to embed the arts and creativity in all school curriculums.
Gavin Davenport, Knowledge Exchange Lead for Teacher Education and Professional Learning in our Faculty of Education, contributed his research to the report which aims to reduce the significant North/South divide in outcomes for children and young people.
“This report is a call to arms for everyone concerned with children’s development to work together to provide vital opportunities. It highlights the value of frequent and diverse creative activities for every child, to enable them to flourish individually and contribute socially. These are too often lacking.”
The N8 Research Partnership and Centre for Young Lives are calling for policy change and a cultural shift towards more inclusive education, with creativity as a core component, particularly for those with Special Educational Needs (SEN).
Dr Helen O’Keeffe, Pro-Vice Chancellor and Dean of Education added:
As a Faculty of Education, we welcome and fully endorse the recommendations from the Child of the North Report. We have been educating the teaching and education workforce for almost 140 years and our vision of ‘working creatively with others to enhance life chances’ is at the heart of who we are as a working family. We focus relentlessly on harnessing the power of education to transform lives, every day, in everything we do with our students and partners.
The Faculty is one of the largest Initial Teacher Education providers in the country, and in March 2024, became the first higher education institution in England to be rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted in all three teacher education phases. We are therefore in a privileged position to support and influence the roll out of the recommendations of the report to the next generation of teachers. We are pleased to commit to:
- Reflecting: – on our existing approach to creating a research informed culture of inclusive opportunity through arts and creativity within our Initial Teacher Education curriculum and identifying where this can be enhanced within all age phases and within our research.
- Inspiring: – our future teachers to design a broad holistic curriculum and extracurricular activities which embed creativity at their heart, through regular engagement with our local, regional and national cultural partners
- Connecting: – our substantial network of cultural partners to our large network of schools and other education and community settings. This will facilitate the growth of those collaborative opportunities for the benefit of all pupils and their communities, especially those in some of the most under-served and rural areas in Northern England.
The Faculty and University is committed to leveraging its expertise to support the implementation of the report’s recommendations, particularly to the next generation of teachers.
Read the full report here.
