Hello and welcome to Heads Up.

As many of you will know, after a second round of recruitment, we have appointed the key Strategic Lead for Education and Early Years post, which Kim Garcia has been doing a fantastic job of covering over the last year. More about Kim in the near future.

I wanted to take this opportunity to virtually introduce you to our new permanent Strategic Lead for Education and Early Years, Matt Biggs, who will be joining Warwickshire on the 4th May 2021.

Matt joins us from Staffordshire County Council.  He is very much looking forward to getting to know you and your schools which will take a little longer than usual in the current context.  But I will take the opportunity to introduce him on one of the Tuesday calls which will be continuing over the summer term.

Matt will be focussed on your priorities, the strategic plan and the collective recovery work as we move towards a post-pandemic world. He has sent through a few words which I thought I would pass on to you all:

"I am delighted to be joining the education team in May at Warwickshire County Council. For the past 13 years I have worked for Staffordshire County Council and have led on several education and early intervention based projects securing good outcomes and key learning.

Much of my work has focussed on developing and strengthening partnerships and identifying new and innovative ways to do things working closely with schools, early years settings and other key stakeholders. I am passionate about education, life-long learning and particularly raising the aspirations of those children and young people that may be disadvantaged or vulnerable.

There will be some big challenges ahead in Warwickshire but also new opportunities and learning from COVID-19, particularly the use of technology, that we can embrace in the months and years ahead I am sure.

I know how hard all of you in the education sector have worked over the last twelve months and the extra mile you have all taken to support children, young people and families. I feel privileged to have the opportunity to come and work with you in May and I look forward to meeting you all."

In other news, it’s been quite a week with so many children returning and yet so few issues.  Most pupils have returned and settled back in quickly and that is down to you and your staff and the excellent relationships you have with parents, carers and of course the children.

The Annual Safeguarding Audit will be sent to you shortly.  We have had superb feedback from pilot schools on the redesigned online audit which has been co-produced with Headteachers ad DSLs. Thank you to them for their time and contribution to ensure the audit is practical and helpful for your review and planning work. We look forward to your responses to the audit which will cover the period April 2020 to March 2021.  This will allow us to pick up on the effects of the pandemic on safeguarding in schools and settings.  In early May, we will be sharing our findings with you in a management document.

Finally, it was great that so many new Headteachers were able to join us for the induction session.  My thanks to all who attended and contributed but especially to Margot Brown, our very talented Lead Commissioner for School Improvement, for the excellent job she did in pulling it all together.

That’s all for now.  Have a good weekend and let’s hope that next week brings more progress towards continuing with the important business of teaching and learning and ensuring the recovery of education provision for all our children and young people.

Best wishes

Ian Budd