5-11 years COVID-19 vaccine

Public Health are requesting that all schools promote the COVID-19 vaccination that is locally available in the community for all children aged between 5-11 years.  The COVID-19 vaccination should reduce the severity of symptoms, protect them against serious illness and passing it onto others.

For most children, this will involve two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, 12 weeks apart. The vaccine reduces children’s risk of catching COVID-19 and passing it on to others. Children can get vaccinated:

• By booking an appointment online at a vaccination centre or pharmacy
• By attending a walk-in centre (no appointment needed)

Second doses are available to book from 24 hours after the child’s first dose – children will be offered appointments in 12 weeks’ time. Further information about the COVID-19 vaccination can be found on the NHS website.

The NHS has also put together a short story aimed at young children going to get their vaccine which can be found on the website https://schools.warwickshire.gov.uk/coronavirus  

Public Health have put together a Covid-19 vaccine template that schools can use for communications with parents/guardians to assist with increasing uptake which can also be found on the website.

Mental Health Awareness week is 9-15 May 2022

Fascinating online courses: Please share with all staff and parents

Discover, learn, understand.

Fascinating online courses for everyone who wants to be an even better mum, dad, grandparent or carer.

Take advantage of this pre-paid, locally funded offer, www.inourplace.co.uk 

Access code: BEAR. Create an account (or sign in), and start learning, GO!

93% of parents who completed the course said  ‘Understanding Your Child’ was helpful.

92% of parents who completed the course said  ‘Understanding Your Child with additional needs’ was helpful.

97% of parents who completed the course would recommend ‘Understanding Your Teenagers Brain’.

·         'I really like these courses. I think all parents could benefit from them.'

·         ‘You don't actually realise what is going on in your child’s brain, this course helped, every parent should do this, i wish i'd done it sooner!’

·         ‘It is great to know that I am not alone as a parent and that what I am experiencing is normal. I can now try to understand why my teenage daughter and son behave how they do and rather than react badly, try to understand and react positively. Thank you!’

·         ‘It's a very good course, I learnt at lot! I liked the, 'science' and reasoning behind [their] behaviour and thinking. I also liked that the course was in modules and I could leave at any point and come back to it when I had more time. Thank you, a grateful parent’

Download here Warwickshire-Understanding your child flyer. 

Guidance on the progress check at age two

Free early education for 2-year-olds with no recourse to public funds (NRPF)

In September 2019, the government extended eligibility for this entitlement to 2-year-old children from 3 groups of families and, in September 2020, extended the entitlement to a fourth group of families who have no recourse to public funds (NRPF).

This consultation seeks views on:

• whether there are other groups of families with NRPF besides those identified in the consultation who should be eligible for the entitlement
• the possible impact of any extension on people who share protected characteristics

Open consultation here. 

Celebrating Stockingford Maintained Nursery School's 80th birthday

Stockingford Maintained Nursery School in Stockingford, Nuneaton is excited to be celebrating their 80^th Birthday this week.

The Nursery School began life as St. Pauls Wartime Nursery in 1942, providing care for mothers who were going to work in the munitions factories. The Wartime Nursery was then designated as a Nursery School and handed over to education in 1949.

Headteacher Sharon Kindred said:

‘The Governors and staff are so proud to be celebrating this milestone of Nursery education and care within our local community. Parents and carers, and even our grandparents often share memories of their time with us when they attended the Nursery School. We are looking forward to providing a service to our community for the next 80 years.’

New SEND school opens in Warwickshire!

Children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities are benefitting from a new, multi-million-pound special school in Ash Green called The Warwickshire Academy.

Virtual School Action Research Opportunity

Improving Outcomes for Children With a Social Worker (CWSW)

Premise

We need to further understand and address the disadvantages that children with a social worker can experience.

This cohort has been identified as a group of children who face significant barriers to education as a result of experiences of adversity and trauma, most commonly abuse and neglect.

These experiences can affect children’s attendance, learning, behaviour and wellbeing and, if children cannot access support, they may struggle to reach their full potential. Even after a child no longer has a social worker, poor educational outcomes can persist.

Background

These children are present in 98% of state schools and face barriers to education due to experiences of adversity and trauma, most commonly as a result of domestic abuse, mental ill-health and substance misuse, with 62% of children needing a social worker having experienced one or more of these. On average, children with a social worker do worse than their peers at every stage of their education. In 2018, 50% of children who had a social worker in the last six years were able to achieve a good level of development in the early years, compared to 72% of children who never had a social worker. Pupils who had a social worker in the year of their GCSEs were around half as likely to achieve a strong pass in English and Maths than their peers, and at the end of Key Stage 4 were around 3 times less likely to go on to study A levels at age 16, and almost 5 times less likely to enter higher education at age 18. After age 18 of those who needed a social worker in the year of their GCSEs, 6% were in higher education compared to 27% of those who did not have a social worker; and by age 21, half had still not achieved Level 2 qualifications (which include GCSEs), compared to 11% of those not in need of a social worker.

Children with a social worker are around 3 times more likely to be persistently absent from school and between 2 to 4 times more likely to be permanently excluded from school than their peers. This group are also over ten times more likely to attend state funded alternative provision settings than all other pupils.

Opportunity

We are looking for individual or groups of schools to create projects that will develop understanding and  / or improve outcomes for CWSW.

The Virtual School will support with funding and all proposals will be considered. Your focus may be on something creative and bespoke to your setting or on evidence-based interventions.

Benefits

• Supporting most vulnerable children
• Developing leadership skills
• Shaping best practice for Warwickshire
• Virtual School funding
• Strengthening partnerships
• Freedom to investigate and explore

Next steps

Contact the Virtual School Headteacher – Deena Moorey for a project discussion:  deenamoorey@warwickshire.gov.uk 

 Further reading / references

What works in education for children who have had social workers. 

Challenging Education

Promoting the education of children with a social worker

Understanding Children in the Social Care System session's feedback

Download here "Understanding Children in the Social Care System session's feedback" document. 

Forthcoming Primary SENCO network meetings

Please find below information about the forthcoming Primary SENCO network meetings. 

This term's network meeting will be offered in both a F2F and a virtual format. 

• June 6th, 2022 

1:30pm-4:00pm

Pound Lane Learning Centre

Leamington Spa, CV32 7RT 

• June 20th, 2022

2:00pm-4:00, via Teams

To book on click here to select the date, if the teams meeting the link will emailed to you nearer the date. 

Connect and Be Heard - additional group

If you want to download the posters please click those. 

Please contact them directly if you would like more information at connect@kids.org.uk

Schools Forum Elections - Deadline for nominations to be submitted is Today 13 May 2022.

The Schools Forum still has several vacancies for representatives, which are comprised of the following:  

• 1 vacancy for maintained special schools 
• 1 vacancy for primary academies  
• 4 vacancies for secondary academies.  
• 1 vacancy for special academies 

School members should be broadly a 50:50 split between Headteachers (or their representatives) and Governors where this is possible.  As a minimum, there must be at least one representative of headteachers and one representative of governors among the schools members.  

The role of The Schools Forum is to act as a consultative body with regard to a range of funding decisions as listed in the Warwickshire Schools Forum Terms of Reference and the Education and Skills Funding Agency publication 'Schools Forum Powers and Responsibilities'.  

This is a great opportunity for you to make a difference in Warwickshire schools.  

If you are elected to Schools Forum you will be required to serve for a period of two years with the first meeting being at 2pm on Thursday 23 June, using Microsoft Teams.   

Meetings are generally held on Thursdays, usually between 2pm and 4pm.  It is likely these meetings will continue to be held virtually for the foreseeable future.  

Future meetings dates  

• 23 June 2022  
• 29 September 2022  
• November 2022 Extraordinary meeting (if required)  
• 12 January 2023  
• 23 March 2023
  

Further information and nomination papers please find below:

• Maintained HT self- nomination form
• Academy HT self-nomination form
• Warwickshire Schools Forum Membership 2022-24 Intro for Headteachers
• 2021_Schools_forums_powers_and_responsibilities
• Schools Forum Terms of Reference
• Warwickshire Schools Forum Membership 2022-24 Intro for Governors
• Academy Governor self-nomination form
• Maintained Governor self-nomination form

Deadline for nominations to be submitted is Friday 13 May 2022.  

For any queries, please email schoolfunding@warwickshire.gov.uk  

Working together to improve attendance

Guidance to help schools, academy trusts, governing bodies, and local authorities maintain high levels of school attendance including roles and responsibilities 

On 6th May 2022, the DfE published new guidance on school attendance along with a summary table of responsibilities.  The Secretary of State has committed to this guidance becoming statutory when parliamentary time allows (this will be no sooner than September 2023).   

The guidance places expectations on:   

• All school and academy trust staff, headteachers, governors, academy trustees, and alternative provision providers   

• Local authority attendance staff, early help lead practitioners, social workers, and virtual school heads   
• Statutory safeguarding (including police and integrated care boards) and other local partners  

The guidance is intended to: 

• help schools, trusts, governing bodies and local authorities maintain high levels of school attendance 
• summarise the roles and responsibilities of parents, schools, trusts, governing bodies and local authorities 
• summarise the support that should be provided to families, including for pupils who are persistently or severely absent or at risk of becoming so 
• provide details of attendance legal interventions available to schools and local authorities where support does not work, is not engaged with or is not appropriate 
• provide details of what schools are required to record in the attendance and admission registers 

There will be significant change to the way attendance is addressed nationally and we are at an early stage of planning a new attendance model.  We plan to provide regular updates as developments progress.  We will be publishing dates on new attendance network meetings soon to support with your developments.  

The summary table is a good starting point to look at the changes to roles and responsibilities and can be found: 

Summary table of responsibilities for school attendance (publishing.service.gov.uk) 

Full information can be found here.  

North Warwickshire Primary Science Curriculum Development Programme

The attached Primary Science Curriculum CPD, from the Science learning Partnership Curriculum Hub, is offered to all Primary Schools in North Warwickshire and Nuneaton & Bedworth (Coventry too).

Schools can access £150 of Teacher Release Payments too, and Park Lane Primary in Nuneaton have kindly offered to host this training for ease of access for local schools. 

Agenda for Summer Term Headteachers' Conference

Date: Wednesday 25th May 2022 (9.00am/9.30am – 3.00pm)

Venue: Best Western Plus Windmill Village Hotel, Golf Club & Spa, Birmingham Road, Allesley, Coventry, CV5 9AL

Keynote Speaker: Sir Tim Brighouse

Please see the below agenda for this term’s conference. Please note that the conference is face-to-face and will NOT be held on Microsoft Teams.

Support for Pupil Premium pupils to sit the 11+ test

One of Warwickshire County Council's overall priorities is to support our most vulnerable and disadvantaged children. A main area of focus within education is working to reduce the attainment gap between advantaged and disadvantaged pupils, an area led by the Closing the Gap Board. As a county we are high achieving but Warwickshire’s disadvantaged pupils do not do well compared to disadvantaged pupils nationally.

We would like to remind primary schools of the additional support that is available for Pupil Premium pupils sitting the 11+ test and encourage you to share this information with your Year 5 pupils, parents and carers. The 11+ application deadline for 2023 school entry is 30th June 2022.

Grammar schools in Warwickshire give an increased priority to pupils eligible for the Pupil Premium, with many reducing the Automatic Qualifying Score (AQS). Despite this, numbers of pupil premium pupils in our grammar schools remains low and we would like to encourage more eligible pupils to register for the 11+ test.

Warwickshire ​grammar schools have worked collectively to provide an offer of support to all Free School Meal (FSM) eligible pupils who are registering to sit the 11+ test. Eligible pupils who apply will receive a joint letter from the grammar schools inviting them to access 10 hours of online familiarisation (FROG) resources.

Any primary heads who would like more information can contact the headteacher at King Edward VI School, who is coordinating the support,

Bennet Carr - head@kes.net.

Many of the grammar schools also provide additional support for disadvantaged pupils with the cost of uniforms, trips, 4G access, WiFi and laptop/devices. Please refer directly to their websites for more information and FAQs.

Additional familiarisation materials are also available directly from the schools’ websites and from  https://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/grammar-schools-11-test, where you can also obtain full details on how to register for the test.

The deadline for all pupils to register to sit the 11+ test is Thursday 30 June 2022.

Invitation to a Harmful Practice virtual tabletop exercise (Safeguard Leads - Harmful Practices event)

It is believed that across the country there are currently 60,000 women and girls at risk of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and recent research has suggested that, during the restrictions caused by the pandemic, that figure may have increased. Reports of FGM in Warwickshire are very rare, therefore not all of our teams are comfortable dealing with this highly complex area of safeguarding and investigation. Learning from recent high-profile cases, including the first successful prosecution for FGM in London in 2019, has shown that there are likely to be significant gaps in the professional response. Through the work of the Warwickshire Harmful Practices Group and the Warwickshire VAWG Board, we are keen to identify locally where these gaps may be and develop an action plan to ensure that when we do receive a report, we collectively provide the best possible response.

We would therefore like to invite education professionals to participate in a virtual tabletop exercise looking at the multi-agency response to FGM in Warwickshire. The event will work through a given scenario (involving a call for support around a child) and run through the partnership response from start to finish.

The objectives of the event are to test our multi-agency response to FGM, gain a better understanding of each other's roles and responsibilities, identify any gaps in current provision and look at ways to address these. 

This event is taking place over Teams from 11am-2pm on Thursday 19^th May.

Please complete this brief survey to register your interest in attending the event.

We would particularly like to encourage attendance from all frontline professionals. Please forward this invitation onto all relevant colleagues in your service.

If your role doesn’t fall into this category but you would still like to attend, please do express an interest as we are keen to involve as many partners as possible.

We may not be able to allocate a place to everyone who expresses an interest as there will be a need to ensure a balance of agency representation in the discussions.

We will, however, plan to make a recording of the event available afterwards for anyone who is unable to attend.

We will circulate a calendar invitation to the event during the w/c 9^th May.

School exclusions

In the Consortia Chairs meeting Heads requested where all the relevant exclusions guidance can be found. The weblink below has all the relevant information.

https://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/exclusions

DSL Network meetings starting next week

Just a reminder that the summer term DSL meetings are approaching.  Lots and lots of updates on a variety of safeguarding matters.

Please note new session specifically for secondary and FE.

EAL Quality Mark – Gold Award re-accredited to Sydenham Primary School

Sydenham Primary School has done it again!  It has been reaccredited with the prestigious London based EAL Academy’s Gold Standard EAL Quality Mark.  The inspector, Graham Smith, was so impressed with the school’s EAL practice, that he has written the following piece in his Blog:

“The best place to start explaining what is so special about Sydenham is the front door. Walk through it and behind the desk is a UK born Panjabi speaker who welcomes everyone and talks in Panjabi to the 25% of parents whose home language it is. You walk out of the front office into the hall. Immediately on your left is writing by pupils in Panjabi and Hungarian. The tone is set. This is a multilingual school that is very proud of its diversity. The celebration of what its pupils can do is ubiquitous.

Sydenham is a school designed to promote empathy and to place talk at the heart of learning.

A parent told me that she was “amazed by the kindness and thoughtfulness of the children.” A Russian boy is looking after a Ukrainian new arrival because that is the Sydenham culture. The picture below is a of a book made by two very grateful Polish parents and shown to me by a long serving governor who emphasised the school’s capacity to thrive in a context of constant demographic change.

In every classroom I saw pupils having purposeful conversations in small groups or pairs, both as a key part of the learning process and in preparation for writing. They have been taught to use talk effectively for learning. Vocabulary development is explicit in displays and teaching. It is implicit in structured classroom talk activities and the always considerate social interactions you see around the school.

Do visit this school, if you can. The supportive local Warwickshire Ethnic Minority & Traveller Achievement Service rightly recommends it as an example of outstanding practice. Sydenham is the second school to seek Gold EAL Quality Mark reaccreditation successfully and one of the happiest schools I have ever seen.

The last words need to go to parents and pupils: the Turkish parents who are delighted that their young daughter can now correct their English (which was pretty good in the first place) and the pupils who told me that their school is a place where “you always find friends” and “teachers want to hear your opinion.”

Tudor Grange Teaching School Hub ECT Briefings

As we have begun the final term of this academic year, we are starting to host a series of online briefings for any schools that are employing an ECT (either in their first or second year) in September 2022.

We would strongly encourage heads or responsible colleagues within schools to attend a briefing to become familiar with the Early Career Framework reforms and the associated responsibilities of employing an ECT (registering with an Appropriate Body, statutory entitlements of an ECT, etc.), as well as the offer Tudor Grange TSH is providing to the WM4 (West Midlands 4) region.

Please click the link below to book onto a briefing and receive the meeting invitation link – we have separated these regionally however if an out of region date/time suits your schedule better please do book onto it.

 For more information please contact Hannah Lester : HLester@solihull.tgacademy.org.uk 

John Taylor Teaching School Hub ECT Briefings

To find out more about John Taylor Teaching School Hub’s fully funded Early Career Framework offer from the Education Development Trust, Headteachers, school leaders and Induction Tutors can sign up to one of our Webinars here.

• Wednesday 18^th May 15:30-16:15
• Wednesday 25^th May 08:00-08:45
• Thursday 9^th June 09:30-10:15
• Wednesday 15^th June 16:00-16:45

Early Career Framework information webinars for Warwickshire schools

From Sept 2021, all Early Career Teachers (ECTs) are entitled to a funded two year induction programme -please see this gov.uk page for more
information.

In preparation for the next academic year Teaching School Hub are hosting an ECF information webinar for schools to share information about the ECF programme run by Coventry and Central Warwickshire Teaching School Hub, in conjunction with UCL.

You can find more information about the programme here.

There is a choice of two sessions for schools who are currently have an ECT with Teaching School Hub , and a choice of two for schools who aren't yet working with Teaching School Hub for ECF. 

Download the ECF year 1 flyer here. 

Download the ECF year 2 flyer here.