Operation Spitfire 4 Schools

This article has been published as part of the Rethinking Curriculum project, kindly funded by The Helen Hamlyn Trust.

Charlotte Norcup, Year 6 Teacher, Mill Hill Primary Academy

Overview

Operation Spitfire 4 Schools (OS4S) is a programme designed to enhance and deepen young people’s understanding of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths), to inspire and encourage them to pursue a STEM pathway and to instil in them a deeper sense of civic pride. Using the history of the Spitfire and World War II, students enhance their STEM knowledge through an engaging curriculum with strong links to Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire. The programme is grounded in the principles of inclusionAn approach where a school aims to ensure that all children are educated together, with support for those who require it to access the full curriculum and contribute to and participate in all aspects of school life, curiosity, creativity and relevance, and pupils are inspired to learn more about their local heritage whilst exploring careers in design, engineering and science (Operation Spitfire 4 schools, 2025). 

Context 

Mill Hill Primary Academy is a school in Stoke-on-Trent. Employment in this area dropped from 76.6 per cent in 2022 to 73.8 per cent in 2023 (Stoke-on-Trent City Council, 2024). It is therefore important for children from Stoke-on-Trent to be taught about and inspired by different careers from an early age to encourage them to think about their futures, and the OS4S programme does this via their curriculum, museum visits, projects and school visitors. As a school, our values include ensuring all young people can unlock their potential. We promote this by offering an engaging curriculum, working together, being committed to our local community, ensuring creativity, innovation and imagination, and respect for others (Mill Hill Primary Academy, 2023). We use cross-curricular links to ensure that key knowledge is being recapped and embedded consistently to help children to recall and remember what they’ve learnt.  

Process

We ran the OS4S programme with Year 6 in September 2024, which included 60 pupils. The programme consists of a curriculum and lesson plans to follow, a visit to Stoke-on-Trent’s Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, a cross-curricular project and competition (in which seven pupils took part) and a school visit by an aviation specialist. 

The curriculum includes engaging lessons in history, science and art. There are five lessons to teach which are: Marvellous Mitchell, Hidden History, Morse’s Messages, Wonderful Wings and Clever Camouflage. 

The first lesson (Marvellous Mitchell) introduces the project and covers the life of Reginald Mitchell and why he was a significant figure in the history of Stoke-on-Trent. The children created a timeline of Mitchell’s life and discussed his achievements. They then completed a hot seat activity and finished with a reflection activity in which they discussed whether there were any similarities between Mitchell’s life and their own and whether his story was inspirational to them. We then furthered the children’s learning by asking them to complete their own research on Reginald Mitchell and the children created their own PowerPoints and presented it to their peers. 

The objective of the Hidden History lesson is to understand the role of women and ethnic minorities in the development of the Spitfire. OS4S maintains that ‘if you cannot see it, you cannot be it’; representation in the curriculum matters. The children became historical detectives and learnt about the people who developed, maintained and flew the Spitfire. This lesson was particularly important as it allowed every child to make links to the significant individuals involved. The children also created their own medals to give to the individuals they had researched. 

Morse’s Messages and Wonderful Wings are both science lessons and we used them as an opportunity for both new learning and to recap previous learning. The children learnt about Morse Code and its importance and created electric circuits to transmit their own messages. They also became aeronautical engineers and created their own Spitfires. They adapted the Spitfire’s wings and added weight so all the forces on the plane were balanced. They then worked in pairs and tested the flight of their Spitfires, noting any observations. As a class, we then discussed how the changes they’d made to the Spitfires affected their flight. 

The final lesson (Clever Camouflage) is an art lesson which allows the children to learn the importance of the Spitfire being able to camouflage and to then create their own set of camouflaged wings. This lesson also allowed the children to recap previous learning from our curriculum. During the lesson, the children created their own camouflaged wings and they placed them around the playground. Their peers had to find them and discuss if they would have been an appropriate design to stop the Spitfire from being spotted under enemy fire. 

Slides are provided to be used once all the lessons have been completed, which discuss careers that the children have been learning about throughout the lessons. We used these to get children talking about the different careers they were interested in as well as sharing the jobs different members of their families have. 

The museum visit really ignited the children’s learning. They completed a workshop about the heroes of the Spitfire and were able to fly a Spitfire in a stimulator, which was an incredible opportunity! We took photographs of all the children flying the Spitfire and stuck them onto model Spitfires made by the children, allowing the children to really see themselves as pilots. The museum also has a RW388 Spitfire which the children were fascinated by; seeing a Spitfire up close in real life really enhanced their learning. 

As a school, we had a visit from RAF Sergeant Andy Dodd, Chief Engineer at Cosford. Andy spoke about his upbringing in Stoke-on-Trent and shared how he was inspired by the story of the Spitfire to join the RAF. The children were able to ask questions, and many of them talked about his visit for several weeks. 

We also ran an extra-curricular STEM project with seven pupils, which was a competition against other primary and high schools. This was completed alongside the OS4S curriculum and the children led their own learning. They made their own carousel, which was all fully resourced, and it was a model of the Spitfire flying. The children decorated the carousel with their own interpretation of what they thought Reginald Mitchell means to Stoke-on-Trent. It was an engaging project, which involved some problems the children had to overcome, such as the carousel not moving in the way it should the first time. This helped the children to develop resilience and linked well to our school motto of never giving up. The children attended a presentation evening at the museum and presented what they had learnt throughout the project. They were able to really show off their knowledge and the confidence this gave them was phenomenal and they really did the school proud. Parents also attended the presentation evening, and it was a fantastic way to engage with the families about the children’s learning. 

As well as adaptable lesson plans and all these other resources, teachers are also provided with STEM kits* that ensure they have all the necessary resources to hand. The kits included all of the practical equipment that is needed to complete in each lesson, both for the teacher to deliver the lesson and for the pupils to complete a D&T project.

Impact

Dr Leila Khouja Walker conducted an impact study and key findings were recorded from the data collected from teachers, pupils and parents/carers who took part in the OS4S programme from the City Learning Trust. 

The data represented is from 47 students and collected from both our school and one another school within the City Learning Trust. The data is all published by Walker (2024).

• 83 per cent of the pupils who took the survey reported an increase in interest in science and engineering (project objective: pursue a STEM pathway). 
• 98 per cent of the pupils said the history of the Spitfire is something people of Stoke-on-Trent should be proud of (project objective: instil civic pride). 
• 96 per cent of the pupils rated their experience of Operation Spitfire as four or more stars out of five, indicating it was rated extremely highly (inspire to engage with STEM). 

Parents were also asked to complete a survey and a total of 32 parents responded from the two primary schools. From the responses, 94 per cent of parents and carers reported to have increased pride in the local history and all parents reported benefits to their children completing the project. 

As a teacher of the programme, it was useful to have all the resources and lesson plans available. They were sometimes difficult to follow but this allowed us as a school to adapt them to fit with our curriculum. The feedback from this pilot has been used by the OS4S to refine their curriculum offer.

Conclusion

OS4S has been a fantastic project to enhance and deepen understanding ,and inspire the young children of our school. It has allowed us to not only teach new learning, but to also recap and further enhance previous learning. As a school, we were also able to use some of the programme to pre-teach ready for our topic of World War II. This project really engaged children who may not otherwise have had the opportunities to learn about different careers and to complete STEM projects. 

To learn more about the project, go to: www.operationspitfire4schools.com.

*The STEM Kits include all the equipment that the children needed to complete each lesson. It comes in two parts. The equipment needed to teach the curriculum and the equipment needed to complete the Design and Technology project ‘What did Reginald Mitchell mean to Stoke-On-Trent?’  where the students make a moving model of the Spitfire in flight called the Mitchell Carousel.

References

Mill Hill Primary Academy (2023) Welcome from the principal. Available at: https://clt.millhill.coop/about-us/welcome-from-the-principal/ (accessed 25 April 2025).

Operation Spitfire 4 Schools (2025) Available at: www.operationspitfire4schools.com (accessed 26 April 2025).

Stoke-on-Trent City Council (2024) DPH annual report 2024. Available at: https://www.stoke.gov.uk/download/downloads/id/2582/director_of_public_health_annual_report.pdf (accessed 25 April 2025).

Walker L K (2024) Operation Spitfire Impact Report. Available at https://www.operationspitfire4schools.com/impact-report/ ( accessed 30 April 2025).