Welcome back!
We hope all our families and colleagues across the Trust have had a restful summer. It has been a busy time for Shireland Collegiate Academy Trust, with exciting projects underway to their completion.
After a long period of planning and hard work, First Steps Nursery’s new build is finally coming to fruition and is currently in the final stages of development!
Since first opening its doors in March 2004, First Steps Nursery has been serving its local community and beyond by helping to fill the demand for quality childcare provision in the local area.
With a highly qualified staff team, First Steps ensures that every child has access to a setting that will help them to become independent learners and take part in a variety of opportunities, with the aim to offer the local community a nursery they can trust and depend on.
We look forward to welcoming new and existing families to experience the nursery and its up-to-date facilities, including a wrap-around care room that will be used as a multipurpose room for arts/crafts and sensory area for children.
The nursery boasts spacious, open plan rooms with modern internal and external designs, which makes the most of the natural surroundings to support children’s learning and development. From natural lighting and high ceilings to the use of neutral colours for a calm, relaxed learning environment.
First Steps Nursery offers both term-time and full-time spaces for children, with funding available for 15- and 30-hour places.
First Steps will also be working in close collaboration with Shireland Technology Primary, offering a smooth transition from early years to primary school as well as the sharing of state-of-the-art resources and teaching facilities.
The curriculum follows the E3L – Excite, Explore, Excel – framework, which incorporates play-based learning and children’s interests with teaching to offer unique experiences. Encouraging children’s skills, confidence, and love of lifelong learning.
Our new nursery and its facilities also offers more prospective collaboration opportunities with outside agencies and training providers, including Speech and Language graduates, to support and ensure the adequate provision of professional training for future services. While also supporting professional training for staff, ensuring that children who attend First Steps Nursery receive the highest quality care and education possible.
Building developments are currently underway to transform the former BT building in Providence Place, West Bromwich, into our brand new Shireland CBSO Academy, which will be opening its doors September 2023.
Shireland CBSO Academy is a collaboration between Shireland Collegiate Academy Trust and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and is the first school in Britain to be established in a unique partnership with an orchestra. It will develop and educate our future musicians while innovatively addressing the much-publicised decline in the position of the creative arts in schools.
Students attending the Academy will receive a broad education covering the full national curriculum with an expectation that they will strive for academic and musical excellence.
While being immersed in music at the Academy, students will build their understanding of the key transferable skills and qualities that music helps to develop, such as sympathy, self-discipline and collaboration.
All students will be able to learn a musical instrument or have vocal lessons, with opportunities to take part in choirs and orchestral ensembles.
Shireland CBSO Academy provides students and the wider community an amazing and unique opportunity to pursue their musical talents and interests, offering a pathway for a specialist musical education and career.
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