What it means to have Humanities specialist status...
Raine’s Foundation School is a Humanities specialist school. Our specialist subjects are English, Religious Studies and Citizenship. We foster an understanding of human values and attitudes, past and present and how society is organised, develops and changes. We use our specialist status to raise the standards of achievement and quality of teaching and learning in the Humanities for all our students.
Our Specialist subjects contribute to whole school improvement by developing innovative approaches to teaching and learning and sharing good practice across the curriculum, particularly between the specialist subjects. We aim to raise the post-16 participation rate in our specialist subject areas, and provide young people with the skills needed to progress into employment, further training and higher education according to their individual abilities, aptitudes and ambitions.
Raine’s is in partnership with local primary schools and their communities, sharing resources and developing and sharing good practice. Our students have opportunities to develop their active contribution to wider society through our links with St Margaret’s House and will work in partnership with the wider community.
At Raines we:
- Develop innovative strategies for teaching and learning in humanities-based subjects and spread good practice using modern and traditional technologies and experiences beyond the classroom that ensure young people are skilled in the techniques and concepts germane to the specialist subjects and can apply them to other contexts.
- Give priority to the development of pupils’ literacy, closely adapted to meet their diagnosed individual needs and make dynamic links between English and other curriculum subjects to reinforce pupils’ knowledge, skills and understanding.
- Encourage students to participate actively in society and celebrate cultural diversity from across the world, especially the cultures of pupils and the local community.
- Forge partnerships with the humanities-based industries to deepen pupils’ understanding of human society culture and ethics.
- Link with international schools as we explore what it means to be global citizens
Our visit to Palestine
On February the 2nd Ms Dodd, Mr Clubb and Father Brian went to visit 2 schools in the Holy Land as part of our development as a Humanities Specialist School.
Our specialist subjects include Citizenship and Religious Studies and therefore we wish to explore global citizenship and expose our pupils to what life is like for those in a very different part of the world.
Hope Flowers School is a multi faith school which delivers their curriculum through teaching about human rights, peace and democracy and has many pupils with learning difficulties as a result of trauma from the recent troubles.
The Greek Orthodox School has a more traditional curriculum but the Head Teacher is also the Deputy Mayor of Bethlehem who himself lost a daughter in the conflict but now travels the country to promote peace and reconciliation.
We will be working through webcams and emails over the coming months to plan how the schools can support each others curriculum and give pupils in both countries opportunities to widen their knowledge of life in another country.
We met some inspirational people on our visit and look forward to planning our project work with the schools and possible pupil exchanges in the future.
