The Stage

Arc theatre company receives nearly £17k to help students achieve top English grades

Published Tuesday 19 January 2010 at 14:15 by Natalie Woolman

Barking and Dagenham theatre company Arc has been awarded £16,725 by London Thames Gateway Development Corporation to pilot a programme aimed at improving GCSE English grades in the borough.

Speak up, which started its pilot last week in Eastbury Comprehensive School, will use drama techniques to try to improve students’ listening and speaking skills and raise their grades from a B to an A or A* in GCSE English.

Chief executive and artistic director Carole Pluckrose said that she has no doubt the course will also raise students’ aspirations, adding that she thinks this kind of programme could be a future avenue for youth theatre groups.

She said: “For me as a theatre director working with actors, it’s kind of a no-brainer that those things can be transferred easily into a different context and focus.”

Pluckrose said the LTGDC had been very receptive when she approached them about funding. She applied to the corporation’s education fund, discovering that part of the regeneration agency’s remit was “looking at the quality of life and the aspirations and experiences of people living in the borough” as well as building projects.

Pluckrose has already secured a financial contribution from LTGDC to help fund the programme across all ten schools in the borough next year, providing the pilot at Eastbury is successful. The schools would also have to make a financial contribution.

Thirty students, with a predicted English grade of B or above, will be divided into two groups to participate in the pilot and receive nine hours of teaching, including a presentation event at the end of the course. The success of the pilot will be evaluated in the summer.