Baroness Floella Benjamin was a tremendous hit with students from four SSLP schools when she visited Dulwich College on Tuesday this week for a live Thinking About. Floella told us about her early childhood in Trinidad and the adjustments she had to make when her family emigrated to the “Motherland”, England. She left us with the message to keep smiling and to be leaders of positive change.

On Wednesday our SSLP Links teachers met online to hear from Justin Dillon, the President of the National Association of Environmental Education (NAEE). He shared with us their Manifesto and other sources of good practice. Our Links also discussed the Student Voice: Sustainability project and ideas for the November Conference.

Later today we are expecting 9 staff members from SSLP schools to gather at City Heights for specific training on how to support students Bring About Change, especially relating to community action projects.

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So You Want To Be… An Engineer
Molly Dalton, a civil engineer with Balfour Beatty, joined us yesterday in two lunchtime sessions describing what it is like to be an engineer. She was hosted by Alex & Esme in session 1, and by Carlotta & Sofia in session 2 – all students at JAGS. Eight schools joined the webinars, bringing over 200 students.
Thinking About… Another Way
Amy Bray took a break from her Marine Biology degree to join us on Tuesday evening to talk about the steps we can all take to reduce our impact on the planet. Alex and Isaac from South Bank University Academy asked questions, having already introduced Meat Free Thursdays at their school.
Oxbridge Support: Teacher Training
Thank you to both Oxford and Cambridge universities for supporting SSLP teachers this week. We are now better able to prepare the expected 100 Oxbridge hopefuls when they apply later this month.

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Welcome to the Southwark Schools’ Learning Partnership 2022/23.
We were delighted to be joined by approximately 100 staff members at Compass School on Wednesday 21st September. Staff had a chance to hear about the opportunities planned for the year ahead and also to network with their peers. Our guest speaker was Pete Milne from Target4Green.
The new series of Thinking About started this Tuesday with Oliver Taylor and The Elmgreen School thinking about how to turn wood into a new valuable material that will ultimately save future deforestation.
Our new Student Voice Council met for the first time on Wednesday this week. Almost 30 students joined the virtual call to plan a Sustainability Conference in November and a mini united nations event at a later date.

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Over 100 students came to Dulwich College this week for the Young Economists’ Conference. Half of them heard from Eric Lonergan on Climate Change and then Aishani Roy on the UK Economy. The others heard from Christian Krekel on Wellbeing and Azeem Azhar on new technology. Each group split into half again for the afternoon workshops based on the morning talks. They worked in small groups to develop a pitch based on the issues discussed. The afternoon finished with a panel discussion and Q&A.

Between 14th September 2021 and 12th July the SSLP has shared seventy eight opportunities for school communities to learn together. This is made up of 54 exclusive partnership activities, 10 private meetings and 14 events where spare capacity was opened up to neighbouring schools. Plus there were more occasions where one-to-one support was offered between schools.

Read the full e-newsletter for some of the highlights from projects that ran across all three terms.

Students from Alleyn’s, Dulwich College and JAGS joined their peers at South Bank University Academy for this student-led meeting about the Climate Crisis. They invited Megan, from Extinction Rebellion Southwark, to speak about the issues at a global, national and local level and then explored possible solutions and changes that they would like to see, particularly in relation to transport.
This precedes our year looking at Sustainability.

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Thinking About
This academic year we have run 17 Thinking About webinars for students in Year 10 and above, starting with Professor Stephen Scott thinking about Adolescent Mental Health and finishing with Dharshini David thinking about The Green Economy. Six hundred and seventy seven viewers, from 23 different schools, watched a webinar and fifty students took the opportunity to co-host – learning valuable interview and presentation skills.
Our four most popular webinars were Bishop Rose Hudson-Wilkin thinking about Identity, Professor Bob Waymouth thinking about Catalysis, Lance Uggla thinking about How to be a Unicorn and Vikram Kumar thinking about High Finance and Mental Health. Many of the webinars from this, and previous series, are available to view on YouTube.

Read the full e-newsletter online