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Representatives from the History Department at Greensward Academy have been working with the Princes Teaching Institute for over a year in order to gain support, ideas and assistance in meeting goals. The PTI has offered the History Department the opportunity to liaise and share ideas and resources with other schools, and has provided us with a body through which to monitor, assess and diagnose our own practice.
Through our work with the PTI and the subsequent goal setting process, Greensward Academy
History Department has been able to meet its goals and achieve great progress. One of the goals set was to increase the intake of students at Key Stages Four and Five. This has been tremendously successful, as we have improved our intake from seventy-seven students in 2007 to one hundred and two students in 2009 at GCSE level. We also have eighteen AS level students when compared to the five that we taught in Year Twelve, and the three students in Year Thirteen last year. The Princes Teaching Institute helped us to accomplish these goals by enabling us to 
gain ideas from other colleagues with regards to engaging students, and helped us to set actions which made this accomplishable. The results in terms of KS5 intake have been far beyond our expectations, and I endeavor to take further steps to ensure this increase is sustained. Measures which were discussed at the last PTI session were colleagues sharing experiences which have been proven to sustain interest and passion at exam level. Ideas included inviting in University speakers, holding conferences and having academic book reviews for relevant texts for Year Eleven and Year Twelve; all of which shall be explored in the current academic year.
The Department would attribute many of our successes to our work with the PTI, because a lot 
of the techniques that we deployed in the academic year 2008-09 were ideas which improved lesson content and engaged students to opt for History, as previously mentioned. The quality of teaching and learning and efforts of our teachers also contributed; but was aided by PTI ideas and support. The PTI meeting involved target setting and when we set this target, we discussed it with the PTI and decided to carry out more discussions with students; through which we decided to change the course work to make it more appealing at A level. At KS3, we enthused and engaged our students to opt for the GCSE with more engaging lessons, a fantastic World War One Ypres trenches trip and through the students' involvement in Open Evening. We also decided to offer a Normandy beaches trip for Year Nine and an engaging GCSE and A level trip to Auschwicz and Moscow respectively; all of which were proposals that were discussed during PTI sessions.
Through our work with the PTI, we have seen examples from other schools in terms of lesson content and organisation of the curriculum, which gave us ideas, and in particular the idea of exploiting local records and local History. We have enhanced our Year Eight teaching by using local records and historical sources on the Prittlewell Prince and the coming of the Vikings, and battle of Ashingdon. This fits closely with our new GCSE curriculum, as there is more emphasis on the impact of the fall of Rome on Britain and medical treatment and practice. Links made at PTI sessions have also lead to us arranging to exchange resources with other departments, which is hugely beneficial to both parties, and build greater community links for future sharing and developmental opportunities.
Greensward Academy is a co-educational 11-19 comprehensive academy, which is based in Essex.
