Bryn Elian News

Headteacher Eithne Hughes Wins Prestigious Teaching Award

blogEntryTopperCongratulations to our Headteacher, Mrs. Eithne Hughes OBE on her recent success in the inaugural Professional Teaching Awards Cymru.

Mrs. Hughes won the award for Promoting Collaboration to Improve Learning Opportunities, recognising the work she has led in the school on a number of projects, including ICT, transition, thinking skills and many aspects of pedagogy.

The award was presented by the Cabinet Secretary for Education on Sunday 7th May in a lovely ceremony at Cardiff City Hall.

Mrs Hughes’ work has been wide ranging focusing on making a positive impact on every child’s life chances.
She has supported the ICT department in developing such successful initiatives as ‘Tech dojo’ parental engagement sessions to learn about the value of of programming and gaming.

Under her guidance the school has also been a Lead Practitioner School as part of the Welsh Government’s Lead and Emerging Schools programme and has successfully supported other local primary and secondary schools in their self improvement journey.

At the heart of everything that Mrs Hughes does is her commitment to improving learning opportunities - for teachers, leaders and young people.

The school has a keen focus on looking at the teachers of tomorrow and keenly looks at Initial Teacher Education to shape the future of education. Active education research is of paramount importance to the school and to this effect Mrs Hughes has ensured that there is a research and pedagogy champion at the school and active links to research at both Bangor University and also the CUREE Trust.

The school is delighted with this award which further adds to the excellent ESTYN Inspection report in 2015 where the school’s collaboration with other establishments to bring about continued school improvement was seen as a strength of the school.