MAGT More Able Gifted Talented

         

The NACE Challenge Award

In July 2006 Cheam High School became the first school in the borough of Sutton to achieve the Challenge Award.
This prestigious award is given by NACE: the National Association for Able Pupils in Education, a leading national education organisation and registered charity established for 22 years. The Association exists to help the daily work of teachers providing for students with high abilities whilst enabling all students to flourish.  We were reaccredited in 2010, and then again in 2015, being one of the first schools in the country to have been accredited for the third time.

Our MAGT provision

What does MAGT mean?

How do we identify MAGT students?

Who is responsible for MAGT at Cheam High School?

Miss Watson and Miss James are the MAGT Coordinators; we also have a MAGT Teaching and Learning Group and an MAGT Student Forum.

The MAGT Teaching and Learning Group comprise staff from different subject areas and is led by the MAGT Coordinators.  The group meet during the Training and Development weeks to discuss Stretch and Challenge at Cheam High School.  This year, we have had a real drive on staff being creative in lessons and in February we ran a Creative Challenge for the teachers. Each teacher received a Valentine's themed object in their pigeon hole and they had to use the object as inspiration for a lesson. We had over 40 entries, and the winner was Mrs Shadbolt in the EAL department, who used champagne bubbles to create a lesson on 'small talk' for the EAL students!

The MAGT Student Forum comprise a male and female students from each year group from Year 12 to Year 8.  This is a chance for the MAGT students to voice their ideas about how we can best support them. Students are very proud to be in the MAGT forum and relish the opportunity to represent their peers.

The members of the 2015-16 MAGT Student Forum are:

Yr 12: Leah and Charlie

Yr 11: Angus and Ellie

Yr 10: Georgina and Charlie

Yr 9: Adam and Carmen

Yr 8: Jonas and Lucy

We asked our MAGT forum members what they wanted to see more of in school and as a result we ran a trip to CERN to see the large Hadron Collider. The latest suggestion by students is a humanities trip to Pompei- watch this space!

Students also commented how pleased they were with the regular, purposeful marking by teachers and felt they were challenged just the 'right amount' in lessons.

What provision and support do we have in place?

At Cheam High School we recognize that our More Able, Gifted and Talented pupils need access to broad, balanced and challenging curriculum opportunities to enable them to reach their true potential. With this in mind, we aim to develop the curriculum for the top 20% of our pupils. We achieve this by offering activities that extend and enrich their learning and promote high attainment and good progress. Where appropriate, pupils will move through their learning at a faster rate than their peers on accelerated courses or by studying at an advanced level, for example Advanced Maths for Year 11 students or the Extended Project Qualification for Sixth Form students.

Here are some examples of other activities we have run specifically targeted for our MAGT students in addition to the challenge activities planned in lessons:

KS3
Y7 More Able Writer's day
Parents invited in for a talk on 'Support your MAGT child' (see presentation here)
Careers talk from a local historian and doctor
Next steps event for Yr 8
MAGT trip to Downe Scout Activity Centre
Summer school for Yr 6 students

KS4
A and A* project
University Outreach: Oxbridge visit
University speakers visiting the school
Evening Lectures
'Women in STEM' event organised by a Year 13 EPQ student
MAGT Student Forum
Trip to CERN
MAGT trip to Downe Scout Activity Centre
TED talk for Y10 MAGT students
Growth Mindset and 'Stress' Workshops for students in Y10-13

 

Websites to support MAGT students and their parents:
The Literacy Trust	http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/Database/able.html
London G&T	http://www.londongt.org/homepage/index.php
NACE	http://www.nace.co.uk/
Young Gifted and Talented	http://ygt.dcsf.gov.uk
World Class Arena	http://www.worldclassarena.org/v5/default.html