Welcome

Welcome back to you all after the Christmas break. I hope that this message finds you all in the best of good health and spirits and that you were all able to enjoy a well earned rest and have some special time with friends and family over the festive season. Furthermore I hope that the start to the new term has been a positive one for you, your staff, children and young people. Time away from our everyday tasks can be remarkably restorative, so I hope you've all had the chance to recharge for the start of the new year.

As you will know, we are expecting to see some changes to the Ofsted Inspection Framework in 2019, following the 12 week consultation on the proposals. We are encouraging you to respond to the consultation when it launches on 16th January, and will include a link here in next week's bulletin. In this issue we've included some really useful links to the slides from the recent Ofsted Curriculum Workshops and some short videos that outline the key concepts from their curriculum research.

On the subject of Ofsted, we are fortunate to have confirmed Amanda Spielman to speak to local headteachers and education system leaders at the termly conference on 21st March, so please look out for details of this event in Heads Up and let us know if you will be able to attend - it promises to be an excellent opportunity for colleagues to prepare for the new framework and ask any burning questions.

The year of 2018 secured a number of high profile "reasons to be cheerful" for the collegiate work of the Warwickshire Education System. Some of these developments have received national recognition such as the impressive journey of improvement for a number of our schools and our above national performance results at various key stages and phases, in addition to the work of the evolving Education Strategy, to mention a few.

I look forward to working with you during this year as we collectively work together to improve outcomes for Warwickshire's children and young people.