THE AGE OF APOLLO
Mark Robson and David Bates report how Barnard Castle School in the UK has developed a customised App to facilitate student goal-setting.
Old problem, new solution
Like many schools, Barnard Castle School (Barney) in North-East England, prides itself on its character education. The challenge is how to track character development.
Old Barnardians often tell us that only years after leaving did they fully appreciate how their time at Barney shaped them, both in and beyond the classroom. We wanted to help current students recognise, shape and articulate that development as it happens. To achieve this, we set about creating Apollo, a bespoke web application designed to support students in taking ownership of their personal and academic growth throughout their school journey.
Apollo is not just a digital portfolio. It enables an evolving reflection by students during their learning journey, capturing their goals, experiences and achievements. Unlike an airbrushed social media highlights reel, students are also encouraged to reflect on events that did not go as planned, with a view to learning from them. As Lucia, a 6th Form Day Student shares:
“I use it like a diary, I write down lots of things I wouldn’t say amongst a group of peers; it’s more honest.”
We wanted a system that would not only track progress but also encourage students to slow down and think, articulate their aspirations, and understand the values they are developing in real time. With this in mind, a team of teachers and, more importantly, of students, went to work.
Designing and implementing Apollo
We started by mapping out the key touchpoints in a student’s journey, from goal setting and reflection to tutor meetings and achievements. The app was then built by developers to be flexible, with fully customisable templates for goals, reflections, and rubrics. This allowed departments to tailor the experience to their needs. It has taken several iterations to get to a platform we are happy with, but it is important, as with all software, to keep improving and developing: New modules launched recently include a Significant Achievements table that curates a student’s CV by recording significant milestones and achievements.
Using Apollo
From Prep School to Year 13, students now use the app to set goals, document their varied experiences, and reflect on their progress. Students in the senior school typically set two to three main goals per semester, ranging from academic targets to personal development aims. Reflecting on how Apollo has helped her, Elodie, a Year 8 student, says,
“One thing that Apollo has helped me to do is to try harder in sports. I feel like if I set a goal on Apollo, I will try harder to complete to complete it than if the goal was just in my head”.
One of the most impactful features involves the One-to-One Meetings. Tutors, who act as champions and mentors for their tutees, have ring-fenced time built into the school calendar for these meetings.
Apollo enables each session to be documented, creating a record that both student and tutor can revisit. Meetings can also be scheduled with careers advisors, Heads of Department, or scholarship coordinators, ensuring a joined-up approach to pastoral support.
The Experience feature
The Experiences section allows students to upload media and reflect on a wide range of activities. Using this archive interactively, students identify strengths and areas for growth, as they form a record of their time at school. Videos of lunchtime concert performances, photos of RAF flying days, audio recordings following a sporting victory (or loss) or pdf documents of speeches all serve to create a fun and varied portfolio. Their collation then becomes a powerful tool that helps them see beyond the classroom. As Lucia puts it:
“Apollo has been really useful when I’ve made applications, like applying for a prefect role and writing my UCAS personal statement. It helps me provide evidence for what I’ve actually done”.
The Reflections feature is structured around character traits and are often linked to pastoral reporting. For example, students in Years 11 and 13 reflect on their mock exams not only in terms of academic performance, but also with respect to wellbeing, personal resilience and mindset. The Games Department uses Apollo to facilitate leadership reflections for rotational captaincy, while reflections after external speaker lectures, prompt deeper thinking about values and empathy. Josaia, a Year 13 boarder, notes that: “The reflections make me more self-aware of strengths and areas for improvement and overall help me to learn from my past experiences.”
In the past, targets may have been written on a worksheet or diary and quickly forgotten. With Apollo’s integration with Barney’s MIS (ISAMS), however, students now encounter their goals, experiences, and reflections every time they use the app. “Writing reflections in Apollo has made me think differently about my progress because it makes it feel like smaller, more achievable steps before completing the goal as a whole”, says Elodie. Because their merit totals, timetable, and the school calendar are automatically updated from ISAMS, logging in to check day-to-day information also brings their personal development dashboard front and centre.
Character and academic success
Barney believes that Character Education and Academic Success are are closely linked: we have created learning behaviour rubrics that are explicitly linked to twelve Barney character values. The Apollo Self-Assessment module, allows students to think about their academic learning behaviours against these rubrics. These assessments are conducted twice a year and provide valuable insights for both students and teachers. Teachers can view, approve, or comment on self-assessed grades, fostering a dialogue around progress, self-awareness and expectations. Crucially, students are directly involved in conversations about their own learning. Joshua says that: “The goals we set on Apollo help make it easier for our tutors to help, discuss with other teachers, look into what is best for the student, and guide us appropriately.”.
Sharing Apollo
Apollo is now routinely used across both the Prep and Senior School at Barney. Looking to the future, we are exploring ways to enhance functionality and perhaps the most exciting potential development is for international collaboration. As we look to forge partnerships with schools overseas, we anticipate sharing a scalable solution for tracking and supporting students at different schools as they share experiences, reflect on global challenges, and learn from one another, all through the Apollo platform.
And for other schools considering their own digital solutions? This is what we have learned from our journey: start with your values, involve your community, and build something that truly puts students at the heart of their own story.
Mark Robson is Director of Studies at Barnard Castle School
David Bates, is Director of International Education and Enterprise at Barnard Castle School
FEATURE IMAGE: Artist François Verdier – Title Apollo and His Horses by Art Institute of Chicago on UnsplashÂ
Support Images: Our thanks to Mark & David
