Achieving Centre of Excellence Status

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Gain Creators / Outcomes

Schools have embedded financial and enterprise education within their curricular, along with a key vision statement and inclusion within their school improvement plans
Students develop knowledge, skills and behaviours in financial and enterprise topics specific to their needs and abilities
Teachers increase their own knowledge, skills and confidence to deliver effective financial and enterprise education
Schools are able to continue to develop their financial and enterprise provision in line with the feedback from the implemented monitoring and evaluation processes
Schools beyond the Centre of Excellence will benefit as good practice is shared with them

Gains / Needs

Education Institutions need:

to develop the knowledge, skills and confidence of teachers in delivering financial and enterprise education
support in developing a planned and coherent programme of financial and enterprise education which impacts upon the whole school
to be able to better monitor and evaluate the impact of financial and enterprise delivery on students
activities that will expose young people to real-world situations and get them thinking constructively about the future

Target Group

Education Institutions

Primary schools (4-11)
Secondary schools (11-18)
Further education college (16-18)

Implementation Method

The Centre of Excellence programme is open to all schools and colleges within England and Wales, subject to funding. School express an interest in joining the programme through a registration process and are invited to join once funding is secured.

Achieving Centre of Excellence Status

The Centres of Excellence programme recognises and rewards schools who are committing to, developing and continuing excellence in both financial and enterprise education in their own school and beyond.

The programme provides practical, effective and sustainable financial and enterprise education for the schools that participate.

We do this by providing a whole school improvement framework, and supporting the school, through our education consultants, to achieve the key criteria of this framework. This includes ensuring there is senior management commitment; the teaching and learning of financial and enterprise education is planned and embedded within the school curriculum; pupils have the opportunity to provide input into the provision; the school have a rigorous monitoring and evaluation process; and all schools involved commit to sharing the good practice they develop with other schools.

The Centre of Excellence programme is delivered by pfeg (part of Young Enterprise – www.pfeg.org

Activities

Education consultants support each school working towards becoming a Centre of Excellence. This support is tailored to the individual needs of the school and students, but focuses on five key areas:

Leadership and management
Teaching and learning
Pupil involvement and assessment
Staff development
Sharing and sustainability

Resources

Centre of Excellence Champion (teacher within the school to work directly with an education consultant for the duration of the Centre of Excellence journey; including CPD to teachers, collaborating planning and development, and evaluation
Tools and framework developed for schools to build a portfolio of evidence towards achieving Centre of Excellence status
Development of a portfolio of evidence which is submitted to the Quality Assurance team prior to accreditation

Pain Relievers / Solutions

The consultancy supports schools through what can be a challenging process, and helps save precious time for teachers
Teachers gain a multitude of knowledge, skills and confidence in developing and implementing financial and enterprise education
By enabling the students to feed into the planning process this allows them to take ownership of the schools provision
Ensuring teaching and learning is active, age appropriate and relevant to those students within the school creates positive engagement
By embedding financial and enterprise education within the curriculum and taking a whole school approach to learning it means all currents students and forthcoming cohorts will benefit from the provision

Pains / Challenges

Implementing financial and enterprise education is a timely process
Teachers often lack confidence in how to implement financial and enterprise education
Students can lack engagement with financial and enterprise education
One off interventions may only reach a small group of students and not be sustainable within the school

Additional information

The Centre of Excellence programme has been running for three years. We currently have 56 accredited Centre of Excellence schools throughout England and Wales, with a further 32 currently working towards receiving the award in the next year. Across the whole of the programme we have so far supported in excess of 2,200 teachers and 50,000 young people to develop financial and enterprise knowledge and skills.

The Centres of Excellence programme recognises and rewards schools who are committing to, developing and continuing excellence in financial and enterprise education within their own school and beyond. We use our team of education consultants to support the schools involved to develop a whole school embedded approach to financial and enterprise education. This ensures that all schools that receive the accreditation have a truly sustainable approach to delivering and developing these areas for the benefit of their young people.

What does a Centre of Excellence look like?

All Centres of Excellence have the following in common:

Senior leadership commitment – the management of financial and enterprise education is fully supported by the school's senior leadership team;
A champion – a key teacher with day-to-day responsibility for planning and driving quality finance and enterprise education;
A cohesive teaching and learning programme – a well planned and high quality provision of financial and enterprise education, delivered within all key stages;
Effective learning and assessment approaches – trained teachers who can motivate, challenge and assess pupils’ learning;
Pupil involvement – young people inform and drive and the development of their learning;
Community engagement – links to other organisations locally and a willingness to use volunteers to add value;
Dissemination and sustainability – the ability to showcase and disseminate work to inspire other local schools/colleges

More information about the journey a school goes through to become a Centre of Excellence can be found in our ‘Step by Step Guide’.

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