The RSA Academy Comino Centre was opened in 2009.

It works towards realising the vision of the Comino Foundation in the school and its local community, operating within the framework of the RSA Academy’s own purposes and the Opening Minds curriculum. The focus of the work undertaken so far has been on developing the personal skills and capabilities of the students and giving them access to opportunities and experiences which they would not otherwise have encountered.

The RSA Academy Comino Centre is unique in that it is based in a school setting but ensures a broader focus through its partnership with the University of Warwick and the wider Comino network. 

lThe Comino Centre plays a key role within the Academy, reaching a large number of the Academy’s students to disseminate the approaches it has developed. The work is varied with a number of current projects, which include:

• tackling social mobility deficits – with the aim of ensuring that all students at the RSA Academy are able to progress and succeed, regardless of their social, racial or economic backgrounds, by raising aspirations, providing skills workshops and consistent, well-informed careers advice;
• developing a student leadership programme to equip students with leadership skills to support students’ current and future success;
• getting students more actively engaged with their own learning experiences and enabling them to have more of a voice within their education, through the implementation of our ‘Lead Learner’ programme;
• setting up international collaborations between our students and students overseas, such as our partnership with the Herberger Academy in Arizona;
• Linking with the Sheffield Comino Centre to trial the use of Verbal Behavioural Analysis within the Academy;
• Enhancing the creativity of the students through links with the Ideas Foundation

The RSA Academy is one of the few schools in the world to be running the International Baccalaureate Career- Related Certificate (IBCC), which is a vocational version of the IB. This offers students a solid vocational qualification which carries the same weight as non-vocational qualifications and equips students with the skills required by employers. The Comino Centre is playing a key role in ensuring that the IBCC is developed effectively, through enhancing the service learning element of the programme, raising the profile of the IBCC with HE institutions and ensuring the quality and experiences of the programme are to a high standard.

The RSA Academy Comino Centre is always open to new ideas and working with new partners, as well as sharing our work with others, for more information please contact Alex Triance – Director, RSA Academy Comino Centre email: triance.a@rsaacademy.org