Applegarth Academy is a part of the Fischer Family Trust Apex Project, a longstanding collaborative and adaptive project to explore how to improve early literacy success in the first years of primary school. On May 7th, 2021, the Ofsted Chief Inspector, Amanda Spielman, visited the school to see the work in action, as follow up to a previous meeting with … Read More
Finding a solution to vision problems in children – exploring school-based screening
There are some rather obvious problems with the current vision screen system: not all pupils are screened, screening varies, and schools are not informed of the result. Often, responsibility falls to parents or teachers to notice eyesight problems, and subsequently for parents to take a child to the opticians. This means that, in England, a very large number of children … Read More
Mike Fischer’s adoption of the Deming-Juran system of management
From the earliest days of Research Machines in the 1970s, Mike always aspired to having a well-thought through, efficient approach to management. His initial plan for the company was to hire someone to run it once it got going. He was conscious that neither he nor his co-founder Mike O’Regan had any experience in running a large business. As this … Read More
The Apex Project – Results so far
Since 2019 the Fischer Family Trust has supported the Apex project – a collaboration between Success for All (SFA), the trust and ten schools on improving literacy in Key Stage 1.So far, we have been piloting two distinct projects. One is to use a cost-effective one-to-four computer aided tutoring method for children in Years One and Two, to see how … Read More
Addressing the Covid education crisis – working with the UK National Tutoring Programme
We are delighted to announce that the collaboration between FFT, Success for All and Operam partners has been awarded a contract to help deliver the National Tutoring Programme for Covid 19 catch up in the current academic year. This means that around 14,000 pupils will hopefully benefit from the innovative, online, blended tutoring programme ‘Tutoring with the Lightning Squad’ that … Read More