One of the activities of APEX is to develop and offer a programme of learning opportunities for children and young people on Saturdays and during the first week of the Summer holiday.
APEX has run Saturday workshops since 1998 and a summer holiday programme since 2000 to provide opportunities for children and young people to 'boldly go' beyond the familiar cognitively, socially, physically, emotionally and personally.
This is one aspect of APEX work contributing to Bath and North East Somerset developing inclusive gifted and talented educational practice and provision. The local authority values and seeks to enhance the unique contribution that we can each make as a member of a humane and sustainable world, to our own and other peoples learning and lives. We recognise that children and young people are developing and enhancing their particular constellation of abilities as talents to create and offer knowledge as a gift in one or more areas of valued endeavour, such as: - Academic and intellectual
- Expressive and performing arts
- Social, leadership and organisation
- Visual, spatial and mechanical
- Design and technology
- Sport and physical
APEX Saturday Workshops are run to give pupils, from Bath and North East Somerset maintained schools, developing and enhancing diverse talents an opportunity to:
- meet and work with others from beyond their local school community with similar interests and abilities;
- extend their skills and understandings;
- find out about learning beyond schoolwork;
- meet enthusiastic, experienced adults who have a range of skills and expertise;
- venture somewhere new cognitively, physically, personaly, socially and emotionally.
APEX contributes to the schools’ and the authority’s efforts to develop a culture where learning and extending abilities in and beyond school is seen as ‘cool’. So no matter which workshop you take part in we think it is important that everyone who attends should go away feeling they have taken part in a stimulating, exciting and enjoyable experience and have ideas to follow up afterwards
More schools than ever before are using the APEX Saturday and Summer Programme as an integral part of the implementation of their inclusion, personalisation of learning and extended schools agendas.
We are very keen children and young people who are at risk of marginalisation participate in the programme so they are allocated a priority place. They may need particular attention from influential adults such as teachers to help them recognise, value and develop their aptitudes and talents.
Any child or young person from Y1 to Y11 in a Bath and North East Somerset maintained school can take part without cost.
(Occasionally there are spaces on sessions for KS3 and KS4 and applications will be considered from young people who are not in one of our maintained schools but there will be a cost.)
Each workshop has its own criteria as to age, level of skills, talents or abilities needed for participants to enjoy the session. So you need to check the details of the particular workshop to see if you would enjoy taking part. One workshop might be particularly good for you but another might be completely inappropriate so it is important to talk to the able coordinator/lead teacher for gifts and talents.
Further details can be found by going to the learning opportunities section of the new Widening Learning Web
The school able coordinator/lead teacher is sent a term's programme a couple of weeks before the end of the previous term. Each school has developed their own procedures for getting the information to staff, children and young people and parents and applying for places.
The applications are sent to the authority and 7 - 10 days before the workshops places are allocated and the school is informed who has places. They then have their own procedures for ensuring pupils and parents know the place has been allocated to them, what the workshop is and where it is being held. If a place can not be taken by the person to whom it is allocated the school reallocates the place and only advises us in the event of a vacancy they cant fill.
(If you are in Key Stage 3 or 4 but not in a Bath and North East Somerset School and would like to know more contact us apex@bathnes.gov.uk and if we can help we will)
Many workshops, particularly at Key Stage 1 and 2, are very oversubscribed so unfortunately not everyone who applies for a place gets one.
A priority place is allocated to those who apply if school tells us they need one. For instance some children and young people have less opportunity than others to get involved in out of hours learning activities with a particular focus on extending their developing talents, they may not see themselves as capable of developing talents or creating gifts of value, they may have a significant difficulty, they may feel disaffected with school...
Other places are then allocated to to give a balance of genders and a diversity of schools. If we can we also take into account where we are told the pupil has previously been unsuccessful in applying for a place .
On occasions there can be over 80 applications for 16 places. Some people can then be disappointed a number of times but hopefully everyone who wants to join in will get a chance eventually.
The workshop have a variety of themes reflecting the diversity of skills, talents and areas of interest and are run by adults with the particular expertise relevant to that workshop. For instance workshops have been run by authors, poets, mathematicians, artists, engineers, historians, web designers. Many workshop leaders are also teachers who have other skills and talents such as philosophical enquiry, Chinese Brush Work, jewellery design. All workshop leaders are police checked and have experience working with children and young people.
There is usually at least one other adult working with the group. Often an educator with a particular interest in the subject.
There is also a person responsible for Quality Assurance Monitoring who registers participants and has responsibility for health and safety.
The workshops run on most Saturdays during term time.
They can be in a school, museum, university, library... a whole variety of venues around Bath and North East Somerset.
They last between 2 and 6 hours and usually provide for groups about 16. Usually there is just one year group but sometimes there can be children from a number of year groups working together.