Kentmere Academy and Nursery receives Artsmark Gold Award

The Artsmark Award is the only creative quality standard for schools and education settings, accredited by Arts Council England

Kentmere Academy and Nursery has been awarded an Artsmark Gold Award for “overhauling its approach to the arts and education.”

The Artsmark Award is the only creative quality standard for schools and education settings, accredited by Arts Council England. It supports settings to develop and celebrate their commitment to arts and cultural education for all children and young people.

The award is presented at three levels: Silver, Gold and Platinum.

Assessors commented that the school has “factored in new processes and learning tools to help children thrive within arts subjects and also to apply their knowledge in non-arts subjects.”

All staff now have in place processes and frameworks which help situate the arts within the curriculum and provide “clear maps for expected progression in artform skills.”

Children are encouraged to discuss the arts and value their experiences through Kentmere’s '3 stars and a wish' self- and peer- evaluation.

Use of the music resource ‘Sing Up’, free instrumental lessons, regular use sketchbooks and ‘deep dives’ in art have “built a wider range of high-quality arts opportunities which learners have enjoyed engaging with,” assessors said.

Assessors praised links to lesson plan resource Kapow, adding “senior leadership is fully committed to your direction of travel, and you are gradually sharing and winning buy in to this vision across the whole school.”

They also said it was “good that Kentmere is still committed to its original plans for arts ambassadors, mentoring in arts of younger by older pupils, older pupils running clubs, and the introduction of arts awards and all of these will help you to engage the children in planning and delivering authentic arts and cultural experiences and will give them greater ownership of their engagement and personal progression within the arts.”

Assessors recommended the school “capture and document the measurable effects of your revised curriculum design and evidence the impact of your range of offer as it grows again post-pandemic.”

Other suggestions included seeing how the school could “develop further partnerships with a range of arts and cultural organisations and provide evidence of the positive impact this has on outcomes for children and staff” as well as working with creative practitioners and artists.

They concluded: “It is clear that recent years have seen you put in place a structure for curriculum development that will see the arts thrive and contribute even further to the quality of children's learning and their lives at school and we look forward greatly to hearing how you continue to progress.”