Essential reading
Cold weather warning - help for you if you need to close your school
The latest MetOffice weather reports have reported a chance of impending cold weather so we wish to remind all schools of the county council’s school closure service.
For the next week we will be monitoring the School Closure line out of normal hours. The closure line will be monitored from 6:15 AM until 10.30 PM. If you call the closure line outside of this time your message will be picked up the following morning.
To use the service and register your school closed just make one call to 01926 412611, leave notification of closure, reason why and your DfE number for reference.
The information provided is:
This service is completely free and available to all maintained and academy schools. It not only serves parents and pupils who attend your school, but is also monitored by the radio stations that use the information for their websites and for broadcasting.
To aid you in deciding whether to close your school we have created a portal with handy links and views to give you up to date weather and traffic reports. The portal also includes information about the channels we use to communicate closures to parents and pupils. You can find the portal at www.warwickshire.gov.uk/schoolclosuremonitoring
Launch of the Early Help Single Assessment
Single Assessment, Single Plan is the new approach to be taken across the children’s workforce in Warwickshire.
In April 2016 the Early Help and Safeguarding Teams in Warwickshire County Council merged to create the Children and Families Business Unit.
As part of this merger the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) was reviewed and the decision taken to redesign the assessment so that it had a similar look to the Single Assessment used by the children’s teams. This will allow a more seamless approach by providing only one system of assessment within the business unit and meaning parents, carers and children/young people don’t need to keep repeating their story.
To reflect these changes the CAF has now been replaced with the Early Help Single Assessment which went live on 15 December 2016. Alongside this is a newly formatted Family Support Meeting Record. The rest of the process remains the same.
Warwickshire have also introduced the Pre and Post Early Help assessment action plan. These plans are for agencies to use internally to record the early help support they offer outside what was the CAF arena.
Practitioners can access a new library of documents from the Early Help website, www.warwickshire.gov.uk/earlyhelp. The library includes:
- Early Help Single Assessment Consent Form
- Single Assessment Template
- Early Help Family Support Meeting Record
- Early Help Closure Form
- Pre and Post Early Help Assessment Action Plan
Please ensure your staff familiarise themselves with these documents and replace the CAF documents previously used.
Please note your CAF Officers will now be your Early Help Officers.
The Early Help Officers are running some briefing sessions for staff to help them to understand and implement these changes. The dates for these briefings are:
25th Jan at 15.30pm, Outwoods Primary, North Warwickshire
27th Jan 9.30am and 1.30pm at Kings House, Bedworth
31st Jan and 7th March 3pm at Avon Valley School, Rugby
14th and 28th February 3pm South; venue to be confirmed
Booking is not required. If you have any questions please contact your Early Help Officers or call 01926 414147 for more information.
Statutory spring school census – January 2017
The second statutory school census return of the 2016/17 academic year will take place on Thursday 19 January. Deadline for submission to Warwickshire County Council (WCC) is Friday 20 January.
Data collected via these returns is used by the Department for Education for funding purposes, to inform policy decisions and to underpin RAISEonline and school performance tables.
As in previous years, the spring school census will be used to fund the pupil premium and the early years block of the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG).
It is therefore vitally important that you are satisfied with the accuracy of your school’s return before uploading it to WCC, and that it is returned by the prescribed deadline.
Prior to each census the ICT Development Service uploads census documentation to the Warwickshire Learning Platform (WeLearn365) which can be found at: http://bit.ly/midaspages and on the download site http://wsd.we-learn.com/downloads. These will assist you in preparing and running your census returns.
If you have any technical queries regarding the SIMS system and generating the return please contact the ICT Development Service Desk on 01926 414100.
If you have any other questions about this data collection, please contact Michelle Ali, Business & Commissioning Intelligence, on 01926 742169 or by email at businessintelligence@warwickshire.gov.uk
Thank you for your continued support with these collections.
Business and Commissioning Intelligence (BCI)
Performance, Resources Group
Phishing campaign and ransomware alert
** Please circulate the following alert to staff within your school **
Fraudsters are targeting education establishments claiming to be from the Department for Education requesting the personal email address and/or phone number of the headteacher/financial administrator. The fraudsters are claiming that they need to send guidance forms to the head teacher (these so far have varied from exam guidance to mental health assessments). The person on the phone will claim they need to send these documents directly to the headteacher and not to a generic school inbox, arguing that they contain sensitive information.
The emails will include an attachment - a .zip file (potentially marked as an Excel or Word document). This attachment will contain ransomware, that once downloaded will encrypt files and demand money (up to £8000) to recover the files.
A similar scam attempt has been made recently by fraudsters claiming to be from the Department for Work and Pensions and telecoms providers (in case they need to speak to the headteacher about ‘internet systems’).
The following advice has been issued by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau:
Having up-to-date virus protection is essential; however it will not always prevent you from becoming infected. Please consider the following actions:
- Although the scammers may know personal details about the head teacher and use these to convince you they are a real employee, be mindful of where these have been obtained from; are these details listed on your public facing website?
- Please note that the ‘Department of Education’ is not a real government department (the real name is the ‘Department for Education’).
- Don’t click on links or open any attachments you receive in unsolicited emails or SMS messages. Remember that fraudsters can ‘spoof’ an email address to make it look like one used by someone you trust. If you are unsure, check the email header to identify the true source of communication.
- Always install software updates as soon as they become available. Whether you are updating the operating system or an application, the update will often include fixes for critical security vulnerabilities.
- Create regular backups of your important files to an external hard drive, memory stick or online storage provider. It’s important that the devices you back up to aren’t left connected to your computer as any malware infection could spread to that too.
- Do not pay extortion demands as this only feeds into criminals' hands, and there's no guarantee that access to your files will be restored if you do pay.
- If you think your bank details have been compromised, you should immediately contact your bank.
- If you have been affected by this, or any other scam, report it to Action Fraud by calling 0300 123 2040, or visiting www.actionfraud.police.uk.
Keeping children safe online
Following on from last week’s BBC news article, Warwickshire’s Family Information Service has published some top tips for staying safe online. We would encourage schools to share these with staff, students and families via your newsletter, on your website or in other ways around the school.
Top tips for staying safe online:
- Don’t post any personal information online – like your address, email address or mobile number.
- Think carefully before posting pictures or videos of yourself. Once you’ve put a picture of yourself online most people can see it and may be able to download it, it’s not just your's anymore.
- Keep your privacy settings as high as possible.
- Never give out your passwords.
- Don’t befriend people you don’t know.
- Don’t meet up with people you’ve met online. Speak to your parent or carer about people suggesting you do.
- Remember that not everyone online is who they say they are.
- Think carefully about what you say before you post something online.
- Respect other people’s views, even if you don’t agree with someone else’s views it doesn’t mean you need to be rude.
- If you see something online that makes you feel uncomfortable, unsafe or worried: leave the website, turn off your computer if you want to and tell a trusted adult immediately.
More information can be found at:
Get involved in Safer Internet Day 2017!
Safer Internet Day will be celebrated this year on Tuesday 7 February, in over 100 countries, and aims to promote the safe, responsible and positive use of digital technology for children and young people.
The slogan this year is ‘Be the change: Unite for a better internet’.
Take a look at the saferinternet.org.uk website for ideas on how you can get involved. They have free education packs to download with assembly presentations, lesson plans, posters and activities...and you can join the Thunderclap flashmob to help raise awareness and spread the ‘be safer online’ message.
If you do tweet your activities on the day don’t forget to use the hashtag #SID2017 and @WarksEducation so we can see how you’ve been getting involved!
Reporting prejudice-related incidents in schools
All prejudice-related incidents taking place in schools should be reported to Warwickshire County Council's Equality Team by completing the Prejudice Related Incident Form which can be found on the Intranet. All incidents occurring between pupils should be reported.
How incidents may happen in schools:
Physical assault
Verbal name calling
Jokes
Graffiti
Distributing leaflets
Refusing to learn about other cultures or to work with people from a diverse background
Headteachers and Teachers can:
- Ensure that all staff are clear about their role in tackling prejudice-related discrimination
- Teachers need to engage not only with the person responsible but with witnesses, bystanders, audiences and supporters
- Clarify to all staff and pupils the procedure for reporting and dealing with incidents, in the context of the school’s work to tackle bullying
- Inform parents/carers and governors of the action schools are taking to combat prejudice-related incidents
- Report all prejudice-related incidents as they happen to Warwickshire County Council on the incident forms
- Report all incidents that are reported to you (whether or not proof is established)
The full guidance can be found here: www.warwickshire.gov.uk/equalityanddiversityforschools
For further information, please contact Polly Sharma, Senior Equality and Diversity Advisor by telephone, on 01926 412659.