School partnership: Exeter & East Devon

During our partnership, we have held an annual Love Physics competition, where students capture images that demonstrate interesting physics in everyday life. The competition captures the imagination of the students and inspires them about the physics that is all around them.

This annual competition, which attracted around 30 entries in 2018, is part of an active partnership programme with inter-school trips, visits, competitions and physics challenges. Our Key Stage 4 physics challenge event is growing each year and extends beyond our partnership; in 2018, 60 students from 15 schools took part and we now have a Key Stage 5 challenge event too. Our partnership Year 7 space day gives around 150 pupils the opportunity to think about physics problems and find out more about our understanding of the universe, including a planetarium show.

We encourage collaborative teacher CPD between our partnership schools and we try to utilise local physics lectures and events. It has been great to see the enthusiasm from partnership schools for increasing the physics-related opportunities in the region and hopefully it will lead to some lasting benefits for pupils and teachers in the coming years.

Dominic Tuohey,
Exeter & East Devon Partnership, 2014–2019
Head of Physics, Exeter School
(May 2019)

Back to case studies