General Links

Connexions - Connexions offers a range of guidance and support for 13-19-year-olds, to help make the transition to adult life a smooth one.

DFES - Site contains the latest performance data for schools in the UK, with information on using the tables and archived past statistics.

Duke of Edinburgh Award - The Duke of Edinburgh's Award is a voluntary, non-competitive programme of practical, cultural and adventurous activities, designed to support the personal and social development of young people aged 14-25, regardless of gender, background or ability. It offers an individual challenge and encourages young people to undertake exciting, constructive, challenging and enjoyable activities in their free time.

Education Guardian - EducationGuardian.co.uk is the Guardian newspaper's online news and information service for the world of education.

Independent Education - The Independent newspaper's online news and information service for the world of education.

Key Stage 3 Standards Site - Key Stage 3 aim to make education for 11 to 14-year-olds challenging, demanding, vigorous and inspiring across the whole curriculum

Money Bridge - The objective of Money Bridge is to allow Key Stage 4 students to develop an appreciation and understanding of the basic principles of personal finance whist further developing their experience and use of IT.

National Association for Special Educational Needs - NASEN is the leading organisation in the UK which aims to promote the education, training, advancement and development of all those with special educational needs.

Parliamentary Education Unit - Comprehensive information and online activities for all Key Stages relating to the Westminster Parliament. A video, 'Our Parliament', is also available.

Safer Internet - Safer Internet is an awareness campaign about the possible risks associated to Internet use by children and teenagers. It is promoted under the SafeBorders project, which is partly funded by the European Commission, under the Safer Internet Action Plan. The Safer Internet campaign is working towards creating tools that will offer advice and raise awareness to empower and educate people towards a safer information society.

School Governors Website - The purpose of this site is to provide governors with access to a wide range of useful guidance and information relating to their duties and responsibilities.

Schools Directory - This site contains a database of all 33,000 primary, secondary, middle, independent and special-needs schools across the UK and Northern Ireland. Each listing contains a full school description, number on roll, local education authority, OFSTED report, league tables and contact details.

Schools Net - A detailed guide to every school in the UK for teachers, students and parents. The site also offers hundreds of free-to-access interactive lessons and revision units, plus 12,000 reviews of the best educational websites

Schoolzone - Education resources described by UK teachers and searchable by National Curriculum criteria.

Teach and Learn.net - TeachandLearn.net is the first fully online CPD service for all schools that covers the full range of topics and issues of interest to today's education professionals. Itaims to harness the power of digital communications and investment in technology in schools to deliver the extensive resources and learning expertise of the Open University and BBC Worldwide.

UCAS - Universities & colleges admissions service for the UK. A useful interactive site where you can click on subjects and click on any course you want, for example engineering, plus specify your search. This is a great site for teachers to be aware of if they are approached by pupils about where they can study a particular course.

World Book Day
This is the site for World Book Day in UK and Ireland (6 March in 2003). All schools already receive a pack with resources and display material, but the site is well worth a visit for competitions, activities, recommended reads, details of the £1 books published specially for World Book Day and much more.

Useful Web Links for Parents

About Autism - A website written by parents for parents with autistic children. It includes constructive advice based on experience, and a section on education.

Advisory Centre for Education - News and information specifically for parents, school governors and teachers.

Basic Skills Agency - BSA is the national agency for basic skills in England and Wales. This site aims to ensure that effective opportunities exist to help children, young people and adults strengthen their basic skills.

Book Box - This site from Channel 4 supports literacy and hosts information on favourite writers, poets and illustrators. Visitors can pick up tips from video clips of authors explaining how to write a story.

British Activity Holiday Association

BT Education Programme - Apply for a BT Schools Award for your school or use the online walkthrough tutorials to hone your ICT skills.

Bullying Online - Bullying Online is a UK charity helping parents,children and schools deal with bullying. It contains practical advice, information on school projects and details of many of the bullying policies used in UK schools.

Develop your Child - Develop your child delivers self-esteem and confidence programmes for children between 7 and 14, and offers personal coaching to support both parents and professionals who work with children. A free session workbook and coaching session is available for those wishing to try out the programmes.

Homework Standards Site - This site has been set up to support the development of independent learning skills and attitudes for successful lifelong learning.

Parental Involvement - The Parental Involvement site has been designed to help users get the most from parental involvement and offers some suggestions on effective partnerships with parents.

The Parenthood Education and Support Forum (the national umbrella body for people working with parents) supports teachers and others delivering parenthood education as part of the PSHE curriculum. The site includes news, a list of resources, links and Parenthood Education Guidance for Schools, a document prepared by a working group of experienced professionals, and available to download and print free.

Parent Centre - Information for parents on all aspects of their children's education including the curriculum, administrative and social issues, and school performance data.

Parents for Inclusion
Parents helping parents so their disabled children can learn, make friends and have a voice in ordinary schools and throughout life.

Parents Online - This website supports the Parents Online initiative designed to encourage parents to understand the educational benefits of the Internet. The site is full of age defined interactive educational sites and also includes the latest online safety advice for parents.

Useful Sites to Support Your Studying

Homework Elephant - Internet resources to help complete pupil's homework assignments. Over 5,000 carefully selected resources to assist with homework problems.

Mind Lab - MindLab is an innovative educational programme for children aged 4-14 which uses a wide variety of games to them help discover and develop cognitive, social and emotional concepts and then learn how to apply these new skills within the school environment and to life itself.

Thesaurus.com - A US website with puzzles, language resources and a 'word for the day', as well as language reference products and other services on the Internet. Teachers of English should note that the information pertains to American English, though the site could be useful for helping students explore the different types of English spoken around the world.

Subject Specific

Art

English and Expressive Arts

Music

Geography

PSHE

SEN

Maths

Languages

Sport and Outdoor Education

Teacher Resource Sites

BECTA - Becta is the Government's lead agency for ICT in education. Working to support the development of ICT in education throughout the UK, Becta's unique contribution is to combine knowledge of the needs of education with an understanding of the power of technology.

Behaviour and Attendance - Information about the government's programme of improving pupil behaviour and attendance, along with news and guidance on all related issues.

Business in the Community - A movement of over 700 companies showcasing their positive impact on society. The site's education section has information on a wide range of events, initiatives and collaborations.

Business Link is an organisation of agencies, established by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), to offer access to business support services and link with partner organisations such as local Chambers of Commerce and Learning and Skills Councils.

Funbrain - This American site lets you set up quizzes according to subject and age and emails the results back to you.

Learn Trips - An online directory of over 1,000 of the best venues for school trips across the UK and beyond.

NASUWT - The National Association of School Masters and Union of Women Teachers.

National Curriculum in Action - National Curriculum in Action uses pupils' work and case studies to exemplify the National Curriculum for England. NCaction is a searchable resource for school teachers and management that illustrates how the National Curriculum works in practice.

National Curriculum Site - Providing teachers with useful tools, which aid delivery of the revised National Curriculum for schools in England.

OCR - Information on the range of qualifications provided by the OCR.

Performance Management for Schools - Information for head teachers, teachers, school governors and governor trainers. The site includes the 'Performance Management in Schools' pack that was sent to schools in April 2000, consisting of the Model Performance Management Policy, Guidance Note and Performance Management Framework.

Professional Association of Teachers - An independent trade union and professional association for the teaching profession.

Puzzlemaker - Puzzlemaker is a puzzle-generation tool for teachers, students and parents. Create and print customised word-searches, crosswords and maths puzzles. The site sells priced items, but there are plenty of free online resources to be enjoyed.

Qualifications and Curriculum Authority - QCA's role is to maintain and develop the school curriculum and associated assessments, and to accredit and monitor qualifications in schools, colleges and at work.

Schemes of Work: the Standards Site - Schemes of Work are available on the standards site to enable users to quickly find resources on the internet relevant to specific units.

School Improvement - This site provides guidance and tools for teachers and others working to improve achievements and standards in schools.

Schoolpolicy.co.uk - A website which aims to allow schools and teachers to share good practice and reduce workload by being able to compare various policies in preparation for writing their own. The site has 4,000 members and is free to access, although schools are invited to share their work with the online community wherever possible.

School-resources.co.uk - A schools website for teachers with an interactive ICT section, links to jobs online and other useful educational sites.

Teacher Discounts
This site presents an exclusive discount supplier resource for teaching staff and their families.

Teachers Magazine
Electronic version of the Teachers Magazine.

The Teacher Network
General website for teachers, including news, jobs and resources.

Government Agencies and Local Education Authority

Northamptonshire County Council

Technology College Trust - The Specialist Schools Trust is the lead body for the Government's specialist schools programme. It seeks to give more young people access to a good secondary education.
Our mission is to build a world class network of innovative, high performing secondary schools in partnership with business and the wider community

Artsmark - An Artsmark is awarded to schools who show a commitment to the full range of arts - music, dance, drama and art & design. It is a national award scheme and is managed by Arts Council England

Ofsted (reports)

DfEE (league tables)

Investors in People

Local Sites

Peterborough Diocese Website - The Diocese of Peterborough covers an area of over 1,200 square miles and serves the people of Northamptonshire, a part of Cambridgeshire and Rutland. By following the links on the left of this page I invite you to learn something about the life and work of the thousands of people and over 350 churches that make up our diocese.

Northamptonshire County Council - Northamptonshire County Council is one of 34 county councils in England. A county council is an elected local authority. As well as the county council there are 7 district or borough councils; which are separate to the county council, in Northamptonshire. There are also parish or town councils which are elected too.
There are 73 county councillors each representing different areas of the county. All the county councillors are elected. As well as elections councillors hold meetings in their areas. People of any age can write a letter, send a petition, attend council meetings and ask questions at a council meeting.

Local Education Authority - The learning section of the Northamptonshire County Council website.

Kettering Borough Council - This site exists to assist Kettering Borough Council in providing a service to local residents, and to welcome visitors and new business to our borough.

Charity Websites

These weblinks have a range of information and resources to support children and their families so support the startup of fundraising projects, raise awareness of issues and delivery of the curriulum. Please email any recommended links.

Amnesty International - AI have two main ways of working to achieve human rights for everyone:
Promoting general awareness of human rights; and
Opposing specific abuses of human rights.
Information about how you can help is clear and helpful.

Comic Relief - Red Nose Day this year was on 14 March 2003. As increasing numbers of teachers will testify, Comic Relief is much more than fun and fundraising. It's a vibrant expression of active global citizenship involving the whole school community. This year, teachers have been bringing the excitement into their classrooms and exploring the inclusive values behind the day with Everybody Inc, the Red Nose Day 2003 teaching pack.

Christian Aid - Amongst other resources and information there is an online resources for teachers, offering practical classroom materials and assembly ideas for primary and secondary schools.

Fairtrade - Fairtrade does what it says on the label; it guarantees a better deal to producers in the developing world. This means a stable price which covers their production costs, along with a premium that their organisation will be able to reinvest either in the business or social and environmental schemes among the wider community.

Friends of the Earth - Friends of the Earth inspires solutions to environmental problems which make life better for people.

Greenpeace - Greenpeace exists because this fragile earth deserves a voice. It needs solutions. It needs change. It needs action.

Health Education Trust - (HET) is a UK registered charity, formed to promote the development of health education for young people in the UK. HET is dedicated to initiating and supporting work to encourage the growth of healthy lifestyles, such as HET's School Nutrition Action Groups concept. Information and resources, news, support and further links all related to young people's health issues, principally school food and drink, managing medicines,

Help the Aged - The Help the Aged schools programme has extensive resources, including lesson plans and curriculum grids. Among other things, the material on offer helps children learn the importance of a healthy lifestyle while they are young, if they are to enjoy their old age too.

National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) - With its Kids Zone, the NSPCC gives children the chance to learn how the charity works to protect others their own age. There's the latest on the Full Stop campaign, as well as information on coping with bullying at school. This site links to Citizenship and PSHE, Key Stages 1 to 4.

Oxfam - One of the best known charities, Oxfam has the sole aim of ridding the world of poverty. Its in-depth educational material helps children understand why some countries are poorer than others and provides extensive support for teachers.

Save the Children - Save the Children runs many practical projects helping millions of children around the world in terrible conditions. There are downloadable lesson plans and structured activities for schools in a special education section.

Sport Relief - Inspires the whole of the UK to get active, raise money and do a bit of good during the summer sport season. Their website emphasises not just the links to national curriculum Physical Education and Citizenship, but the involvement of the whole school as well.

Unicef - The UNICEF Education Department has years of experience in helping schools teach about development issues and introducing the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as part of the national curriculum.

Diocesan and Church Links

Peterborough Diocese Website - The Diocese of Peterborough covers an area of over 1,200 square miles and serves the people of Northamptonshire, a part of Cambridgeshire and Rutland. By following the links on the left of this page I invite you to learn something about the life and work of the thousands of people and over 350 churches that make up our diocese.

The Woodard Corporation - Woodard Schools form the largest group of Church of England schools in England and Wales.This unique partnership of schools, independent and state, boarding and day, junior and senior, coeducational and single-sex, is united by a determination to give priority to the Christian focus developed by Nathaniel Woodard in the schools he founded in the nineteenth century which were the first schools of the Corporation.

Such a network of schools aims to prepare children from a wide variety of backgrounds for responsibility, leadership and service in today's world. The diversity of the membership is enhanced by overseas schools, currently from Africa, Australia and North America.