Education Visits Advice Service update

Since 1st September 2017, Warwickshire County Council (WCC) and Warwickshire Education Services (WES) no longer offer support in terms of an Educational Visits Advice Service to:

• Foundation schools,
• Voluntary Aided schools,
• Foundation Trust schools,
• Academies,
• Free schools,
• Independent schools and
• Voluntary youth organisations.

These are schools where WCC is no longer the employer. The employers of these schools (academy trusts, archdiocese, board of governors etc) have full responsibility, under Health & Safety Legislation, for the safety and welfare of their employees and pupils which includes when they are engaged in outdoor visits, adventure activities, school trips etc. Therefore they should ensure that they have a robust system in place to ensure such activities are compliant with best practice guidance, legislation etc. 

Where WCC is still the employer (in LA maintained schools) WCC has chosen to use the services of 'EES For Schools' to provide this service. Therefore if your school is still 'WCC maintained' (other than VA maintained) the education visits advice service is still provided to you at no cost and you will have received some communications from 'EES for Schools' outlining their service to you.

Whilst WCC is not able to recommend providers, clearly we believe that 'EES For Schools' provides a service that meets our needs, however there are numerous other providers able to deliver this service to schools such as 'Plumsun' and 'nwilevol.co.uk'. 

If you wish to speak to a representative from 'EES For Schools' then please contact norberto.fusi@eesforschools.org directly.

Update on Early Years services

The Early Years offer in Warwickshire is open to all early years’ providers in Warwickshire who are responsible for learning, development and care of children from birth to five years. This includes maintained schools, non-maintained schools, all providers on the Early Years Register, and all providers registered with an early years childminder agency.

The Local Authority works directly with schools and early years providers to improve the quality of practice and outcomes for children. The Local Authority provides statutory one to one support for all providers who have early years Ofsted judgements that are not yet ‘Good’. This support is offered through two Local Authority Advisers who can also provide telephone and email advice and guidance for any early years queries (sarahaigh@warwickshire.gov.uk).

The Local Authority also has the duty to provide statutory Safeguarding functions and services to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. This includes cascading information from the Government and Warwickshire Safeguarding Children Board; attending Position of Trust meetings; and monitoring and reviewing safeguarding practices across Warwickshire early years providers.

The Local Authority has a statutory duty to secure sufficient early education and childcare places. This means we need to secure places for babies and young children whose parents are working, as well as funded early education places for 2, 3 and 4 year olds, and out of school and holiday care for school age children. The Early Years Sufficiency and Business Support Team oversee this duty, and offer advice and support to schools as well as private early years settings.

Settings are funded to provide early education places for 3 and 4 year olds as long as they achieve an Ofsted grading of at least ‘Requires Improvement’. Funding for 2 year olds is only available to settings with a grade of at least ‘Good’. The local authority has an established process for removing funding from settings who fall below this standard.

Recently designated as a Teaching School, the Warwickshire Consortium Teaching School Alliance is one of just 34 Teaching School Alliances nationally that are led by Nursery Schools, having demonstrated the capacity to offer expertise, knowledge and training of the highest quality.

The alliance is led by Bedworth Heath Nursery School and Kenilworth Nursery School, and provides 15 Initial Teacher Training places through an early years PGCE with Warwick University. Their long term plans are to develop a portfolio of accredited  training recognising the early years sector’s needs for training development from level 2 to Post Graduate level. It will build capacity within a joint Local Authority and Teaching School approach to system led quality improvement through the provision of training and support to ensure adequate expertise is sited in both our Schools and PVI sector settings and across the early years workforce.

The alliance also provides traded training and development in early years for Schools and settings through their website (www.warwickshireearlyyears.co.uk). This offers professional development opportunities for settings and schools to meet statutory EYFS requirements, develop a strong and enhanced learning culture, identify system leaders and support their training and designation from a cohort of teachers and early leaders across the county.

Analyse School Performance

By now most of us will have realised that RAISEonline is no longer functioning. For a variety of reasons DFE decided that it was time to move to a new data system- Analyse School Performance. Amongst the many reasons that they gave for discontinuing Raise was their view that most schools now have their own data analysis systems and so only need a more basic set of information. Not all colleagues agree with this, but the decision has been taken anyway.

The first challenge that presents itself is getting into ASP. If you are having problems I suggest following the guide that the DFE have put out through YouTube.

Once in, you will notice that the focus is upon progress data for both primary and secondary schools. For all phases it is important to remember that headline scores are basically placed in three groups- above average, average and below average. It is well worth looking at your confidence interval, since this will determine which group you fall into. It is also possible to see how your scores compare with county and national averages

It is possible to drill down into the data and to see the breakdown for groups and then for individual students. I find scatterplots particularly useful, since they show the distribution of scores across a particular group of students. In my experience they provide a quick and clear way to summarise outcomes and to see the impact of ‘outliers’ (pupils whose score is particularly lower or higher than the rest of the group).

ASP is best explored having looked at the changing approach to data set out in the Ofsted September 2017 Inspection update. Much of what is said will be welcome to schools (for example, emphasising that data needs to be meaningful and that very small groups should not be looked at in isolation). It is also important to emphasise that inspectors are particularly interested in current standards as well as historic data.

Within ASP you can find your Inspection Data Summary Report, the replacement for the Inspection Dashboard. The report will be updated as the year goes along, but I suspect that over time this may become the true replacement for RAISE since it is designed to be downloaded and has the background contextual information that we have all become used to in RAISEonline.

Peter Kent,

Headteacher, Lawrence Sheriff School

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Volunteers required: Independent Review Panel members to hear School Exclusion Reviews

Independent Review Panels consider a parent’s request for a review of the decision of a Governing Body to permanently exclude a pupil from school.

We are currently recruiting volunteers to sit on Independent Review Panels.

The review panel is generally made up of 3 members who must fall into one of three categories – lay member, school governor or Headteacher.

All panel members receive training from Legal Services on the exclusions process and the role of the review panel. There would be an expectation that you would travel to another area of the County to that in which you work to avoid any allegation of bias. You will be entitled to travel expenses for the travel you undertake in connection with a review or training.  You may also be approached to sit on “out of county” reviews.

The work of a panel member is an important role that is not overly time consuming. I do realise that as Headteachers you already have many duties and engagements that you must fulfil. However, if you are interested in sitting as a Panel member or have any queries on this issue, I would be grateful if you could contact me in accordance with the details given below and I will be more than happy to discuss the matter further with you. It is hoped that the training will take place early in 2018.

If you know any recently retired Headteachers who might be interested in this role please pass on this information and my contact details.

Tania Martin, School Appeals Officer

Resources Group, Legal Services, Shire Hall, Warwick CV34 4RL

Tel: 01926 736381, Email: schoolappeals@warwickshire.gov.uk 

Education and Learning e-Comms survey for schools

Thanks to all those who have responded to our e-Comms survey so far, which remains open until the end of this term:

This is your opportunity to give us feedback on the way the Education and Learning team, and the County Council more widely, communicates with schools.

'Heads Up' has been in circulation for just over a year now and has seen a significant rise in the number of subscribers during this period.  The online newsletter is now used as one of the main communication channels with schools and includes regular contributions from a wide range of County Council services, as well as from our partners including Public Health and Warwickshire Police.  One of the key aims of 'Heads Up' is to provide a more regular method for sharing information with schools as well as attempting to reduce the number of separate communications and publications.

Our @wcc_schools Twitter account is another channel of communication that we have tried to build on during the past year as we know so many of our schools and settings, students and parents are also busy tweeting!

We are always looking for ways that we can improve our communications with you, and would greatly value your feedback to help us do this.  We would therefore be grateful if you would take the time to complete a brief survey which should take no more than 5-10 minutes.

The survey is available at the link below until Friday 22 December 2017:

Education and Learning e-Communications Survey

Latest National Updates

Ofsted News

Response to consultation on short inspections published

Last week Ofsted published its response to its consultation on changes to short inspections. Changes come into effect from January 2018 and relate to short inspections of good maintained schools and academies, and outstanding and good maintained nurseries, special schools and pupil referral units.

Ofsted report on reception curriculum

On 30 November, Ofsted published the research report 'Reception curriculum in good and outstanding primary schools: bold beginnings'

This report looks at the Reception curriculum in successful schools and how well it prepares 4 and 5 year olds for the rest of their education and beyond.

You can read the report here.

DfE News

Green paper: 'Transforming children and young people's mental health provision'