Trainees at East London Arts and Music (ELAM) receive an Outstanding education according to the school’s first Ofsted Report published today.
East London Arts and Music (ELAM) is an Academy whose primary objective is to provide 16-19 year olds with a world-class education in, and exposure to the business of, both the performance and technical aspects of the music, games design, film and television industries. The course at ELAM has been designed in conjunction with the creative industries. The Ofsted report recognises the unique and excellent benefits that trainees and staff receive from the partnership between ELAM and the professionals in those creative industries.
Charlie Kennard, Principal, said, ‘We are delighted with the Ofsted Inspectors’ recognition of the quality of education we offer our trainees at ELAM. We strongly believe that there is so much creative talent that is unrecognised across the UK. We set ELAM up to give young people a place and a course that would give them the opportunity to pursue careers within theses sectors and this report is an indication that we are on the right track. I strongly believe that this report is a result and reflection of ELAM’s five core values of Drive, Excellence, Innovation, Integrity and Collaboration. We collectively established these values when we started some five years ago and it has been these values which have enabled us to achieve so much in such a short amount of time. Time and time again we have come back to these in the both good and tough times and they have always provided the right solution to allow us to move forward. On behalf of everyone involved in ELAM, I would also like to say a huge thank you to all the incredibly hard working staff who have given so much to help establish ELAM, all the trainees that enabled us to get to this point by choosing to come here when we didn't even exist and to all our Industry Partners for all their unwavering support. A special thanks must go to the team at Universal Music UK who signed up to our vision while ELAM was still just an idea.’
A team of four Ofsted inspectors used a mixture of group and individual interviews, observations of learning sessions as well as assessment and progress reviews to form their judgements. They concluded that the ‘Students thrive in lessons that are challenging, vibrant and exciting while benefiting from access to a unique and extensive range of very high-profile music industry professionals’.
ELAM continues to expand and in September 2017 will launch two new courses, Games Design and Film and Television, which mark the beginning of an exciting new chapter for the school.
The full Ofsted report is available online here.