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Full Agenda for Autumn Term Headteachers’ Conference – 21 October 2020
We hope you will join us at our Autumn Term Headteachers’ Conference which is taking place virtually on Microsoft Teams on Wednesday 21 October 2020.
UPDATED TIMINGS (10.30AM – 12.00PM)
Please note that the conference will now be starting at 10.30am and will conclude at 12.00pm. An updated Teams calendar invitation will be sent to everyone very shortly to ensure that you are invited to the revised starting time.
The focus of next week’s conference will be SEND & Inclusion and will explain the council’s SEND & Inclusion Change Programme. There will also be senior management updates for schools from Education Services.
We are delighted to announce that our guest speaker for the conference has been confirmed. Dame Christine Lenehan DBE is the Director of the Council for Disabled Children which is part of the National Children’s Bureau.
Please see the updated agenda for full details of the sessions and speakers.
Further information Please email schoolpartnerships@warwickshire.gov.uk with any queries or for further information
Warwickshire Prevent Conference 2020 - 23rd November 2020 (Link updated)
Dear Colleagues,
As you will be aware, we will be hosting the annual Prevent Conference on 23rd November 9.30 - 12.45. This year the conference will be online
The key headlines of the event are:
- The Warwickshire Prevent Conference provides leading expert guidance on key issues currently facing the Prevent agenda
- The date of the event is 23rd November 2020 and this year will be conducted as an online conference. It will start at 9.30 and be a half day event.
The key areas of focus this year will be:
- The impact of radicalisation within families and how to engage and support vulnerable individuals who may be engaging with extremist influences
- Looking at the issues of mental health, well-being and Prevent
- Considering the changing threat and risk from Right Wing Terrorism
- Looking at Contextual Safeguarding as a means of assessing vulnerabilities and potential for grooming and exploitation
We are hugely fortunate to have secured the contribution of fantastic range of speakers to address these issues, and should be a genuinely engaging and informative event which will be delivered online. It will be directly relevant to colleagues from across all of the agencies covered by the Prevent Duty, in particular representatives from Health & Social Care, Local Authority, Policing, Fire, Education as well as those in Voluntary, Faith and Community sectors.
In order to reserve your place, please register
on this link
Please can you also circulate this to other colleagues who you feel would benefit from this event.
If you have any queries, please do contact me to discuss
Regards
Geoff Thomas
Health & Safety Updates for Schools
COVID-19 First Aid Updated guidance – Applicable to all WCC Maintained and Voluntary controlled schools only.
An updated guidance document has been communicated 25/09/20 to all headteachers detailing updates on First Aid provision within schools.
HSE Spot Checks in schools
Like businesses, school duty holders have an important role to play to ensure that the risk of Coronavirus transmission is being adequately controlled in line with government guidance. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) will be carrying out spot-checks in schools for the start of the Autumn term, commencing from September 2020. Spot checks will take the form of an initial phone call to review the measures taken for reopening and to minimise spread of COVID-19. They will collate the information given and where a response raises concerns about a school’s approach, this may include further intervention and potentially a visit to the school. WCC maintained and voluntary controlled schools headteachers have been sent an email containing further guidance and the expectation to notify the WCC Health, Safety and Wellbeing team of contact was distributed to all headteachers 17/09/20.
AfPE Update
The Association for Physical Education is delighted to announce that the new 2020 edition of ‘Safe Practice: in Physical Education, School Sport and Physical Activity’ is now available. This resource is the essential reference and developmental tool that offers up-to-date advice across PESSPA, to help teachers, coaches and school governors protect their students and themselves from potential risks across both the curriculum and extra-curricular activities.
- Fully updated to reflect recent developments in legal practice, national guidance, statute law and case law
- Structured in a straightforward and simple way, making it accessible for the school workforce
- The book contains extensive information about what is considered best practice and can provide the basis for a school’s health and safety policy, including risk assessments
For further information and to order a copy of the updated book, please follow afPE.org.uk
HSE Bulletin
Latest HSE Education Bulletin can be found here HSE Education Bulletin September 2020
FREE Secondary Online Session
Origin Maths Hub are offering a free online session to find out about mathematics resources, guidance and programmes of support available to schools in Solihull, Coventry and Warwickshire. The session is suitable for all secondary mathematics teachers and senior leads.
Please find here more details and how to register your place.
Free DFE Training for All Mental Health Leads
The DfE has released additional funding for local authorities to support children and young peoples' well-being and mental health as they return to full-time education this autumn.
The Wellbeing for Education Return Grant seeks to better equip schools and colleges to promote children and young people’s well-being, resilience, and recovery in response to Covid-19. As well as strengthening and building well-being and resilience, it aims to prevent the onset of mental health problems and ensure those with pre-existing or emerging difficulties access the right support.
There are two elements to the project:
- A new national training package providing guidance and resources for education staff on responding to the impact of Covid-19 on the well-being of their students and pupils.
- Funding to local authorities to help put local experts in place to work with partners to adapt this training, deliver it to nominated staff in education settings, and provide ongoing advice and support until March 2021.
Please note the training that will be available as part of this project is in addition to the training that will eventually be provided for Mental Health Leads in Trailblazer schools and therefore Trailblazer schools should also sign up.
Please nominate your chosen member of staff to attend two free twilight sessions of training. DFE commissioned the training from the Anna Freud Centre, with local adaptations. The training will be delivered by Educational Psychology Service and Compass in partnership. The training comprises two twilight webinars of 90 minutes each. Each consortia/secondary area network has their own set of dates.
For further information or queries please contact margotbrown@warwickshire.gov.uk
Our mailing address is:
lio-admin@warwickshire.gov.uk
Education Support Partnership
Education Support Partnership is a charity providing mental health and wellbeing support services to all staff working in education. They provide a free 24/7 telephone and email counselling service which an employee can refer themselves to. The contact number is 08000 562 561 and website address www.educationsupportpartnership.org.uk for further information.
Catch Up Funding: Practical Ideas
We're grateful to our Primary Consortia Chairs who shared ways in which they are using their Catch - Up Funding. Please continue to share your examples of good practice with us.
- Appointment of an intervention teacher
- Appointment of a pastoral behaviour support role
- Securing extra hours for TAs and midday supervisors to increase the amount of pastoral support available at break/lunch times
- Purchase of resources to support TA groups
- Improving book stocks to support catch up work
- Extra TA hours for baselining and identifying certain year groups
- Extra catch up provision focussing on maths and phonics
- Additional teacher hours for specific intervention with particular groups
- Establishment of a children's Nightingale Hub, prioritising children’s mental health and wellbeing - Read here more.
- A big intervention drive in Y2 to prepare for phonics
- Redeployment and redistribution of staff to create an extra set for English and Maths
- Funding extra teaching hours, 9am – 11am, three days a week to focus on greater depth children who have fallen below
- Dealing with school's own IT issue, including possible use of dongles.
- Supporting families without internet access
- Appointing an extra teacher to make class sizes smaller and create an extra English class
- Appointing a HLTA as mental health lead
Senior Leaders’ Webinar – Pupil Premium
As outlined in Heads Up at the beginning of term, we have partnered with Gateway Alliance to offer you access to a series of educational leadership webinars. These webinars will be running throughout the year and will feature prominent inspirational speakers who will be addressing leadership themes through the current context in which schools are operating.
The next webinar is coming up on Tuesday 3rd November (10:00-11:00am), is entitled “The pupil premium and the COVID-19 pandemic: What attainment gap
should we be trying to close?” and is being led by Professor Becky Allen - Chief Analyst and a co-founder of Teacher Tapp, the largest teacher survey
and professional development tool in the UK and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Oxford.
This is the 3rd in a series of 7 webinars which form part of Gateway Alliance’s Senior Leaders’ Network - CPD Programme. The Local Authority have funded schools’ access to 3 of these 7 webinars. Schools can choose which 3 are most relevant to them and, if schools wish to access more of the sessions, these can be purchased through Gateway Alliance.
HOW TO BOOK
You can book your place at these webinars by visiting the Gateway Alliance website: www.gatewayalliance.co.uk/finder/ just search subject ‘Senior Leaders’. In order to access your 3 FREE sessions you will need to use voucher code: SLweb3! when making your booking. If you already subscribe to Gateway programmes please remember to log-in before booking your places.
To browse Gateway’s full CPD programme for 2020-21 please visit: www.gatewayalliance.co.uk/finder/. If you have any questions or queries please contact Gateway Alliance on 02476 347697 or email: info@gatewayalliance.co.uk
Relationship, Sex and Health Education Training
RSHE: free support for primary and secondary schools.
Please find here the poster for more information and how to register.
October Challenge Board report
Please read below the October Challenge Board report, written by Peter Kent - Lawrence Sheriff School
Our most recent meeting of the Challenge Board had a typically full agenda. In different times we would have spent most of our October meeting reviewing performance data for public examinations and discussing the issues that emerged from the picture across Warwickshire. However, since Covid 19 prevented public examinations from taking place and as a result there will be no national accountability data produced this year, there seemed little point in doing this in 2020. However, this was a positive rather than a negative development, since it gave us more time to discuss a broader range of strategic issues that the Board had looked at or commented on over the past 12 months.
For this reason we were able to spend considerable time discussing future plans for SEND strategy across Warwickshire. Since this issue will form a significant part of this term’s headteacher’s conference I won’t go into any further detail, other than to say that the board welcomed both the breadth and the ambition of the plans that are being developed.
We also received a very reassuring briefing from Acting Regional Director James McNeillie on Ofsted’s programme of visits during the Autumn of 2020. James was at great pains to point out that these were not inspections and that the fundamental purpose was to capture the views and experiences of school leaders. The feedback from James closely aligned with all I have heard from colleagues who have received these visits, one of whom described the experience as ‘cathartic’ (not one of the words I have normally heard linked to Ofsted).
We also explored the very constructive programme of activities taking place to close gaps across the county, including projects focusing upon specific areas of need within Warwickshire.
Inevitably all of our agenda was framed by our day to day experience as school leaders, where the biggest challenge many of us face is continuing to keep our schools open in the face of all that is happening. I recently attended an online conference with Steve Munby, former CEO of the National College for School Leadership. His advice to leaders was to focus upon the challenges presented by the here and now, but to also leave a small amount of dedicated time for the strategic. In this way we can all play a part in creating a ‘better normal’ as we emerge from the impact of the pandemic. That is what the Challenge Board is seeking to do over the coming months- to help with the immediate issues facing schools across Warwickshire whilst also seeking to play our part in creating that ‘better normal’ for the years to come.
Remote Learning Support for Primary Consortia: please sign up
WCC Funded Support for Remote Learning for Primary Schools
Please see
here (a .pptx file will be downloaded automatically) for an explanation of the funded support offer which consists of:
- training available to all schools - sign up for the first session on Tuesday 20th October
'Using Digital Teaching to Improve Learning' - Tuesday 20th October,15.30 to 16.30 - Please click this link to join the session.
IMPORTANT - up to two colleagues can attend from each school but please connect to the meeting on only one device shared between the two users.
- financial contribution from WCC towards providing 18 half day sessions per consortium 'expert user' to support other schools in the consortium for the period from now until the Easter holidays
- training for the identified 'expert users' .
Please note:
- half day cover is funded at £100 per half day
- we will fund release for two expert users from consortia with 14 or more schools. They are as follows: Consortium 1; Consortium 2; Consortium 5; Consortium 7; Consortium 8B; Consortium 9; Consortium 11; Consortium 18
- please use the link embedded in the above explanation of the project to register the names of your chosen subject users.
Thanks to Harvey Woodall for a clear explanation of how blended learning and remote learning work together:
'blended learning is where remote learning is used alongside traditional classroom methods, ideally on a day-to-day basis. The key benefit of this approach is that schools appreciate the learning potential of remote learning systems and don't just regard them as a means to an end in the event of a lockdown. Additionally, where schools start using remote learning now, embedded as part of their daily teaching (in a blended approach), if/when a lockdown occurs, the transition to full remote learning will be much easier as both staff and pupils will be familiar with it. The other really important point is that, given the Government's stance on keeping schools open, a full remote experience is actually far less likely than a mixed scenario of some remote and some classroom, i.e. blended learning'
Coaching Programme for Headteachers
As part of our Mental Health and Wellbeing Support for Headteachers we are encouraging heads to explore the benefits of coaching. Our ‘Listening Ear’ service is proving popular and in order to expand the capacity and sustainability of this approach we are doing 2 things:
- Catherine Nyman is offering a programme of “Peer Coaching” training for headteachers who are interested in becoming a Peer Coach - further details in Heads Up next week
- We have commissioned Gateway Alliance to provide 3 webinars led by expert leadership coaches (see below). These webinars are for Headteachers and are FREE to Warwickshire schools. The webinars will explore different aspects of leadership coaching and will provide excellent CPD for headteachers who are interested in finding out more about this approach, whether they wish to become a peer coach themselves or not.
| Date |
Time |
Speaker
|
Session Title |
|
| 10.11.20 |
10-11am |
Andy Vass |
Coaching Through Conversational Influence |
BOOK NOW |
| 28.01.21 |
10-11am |
Jackie Beere |
State of Mind – Coaching as a Leadership and Communication Style |
BOOK NOW |
| 20.04.21 |
10-11am |
Julie Rees |
Using Perspectives in Coaching to Encourage a Different Mindset |
BOOK NOW |
You can book your place at thesewebinarsthrough the Gateway Alliance website: www.gatewayalliance.co.uk/finder/ just search subject ‘Coaching’.
To browse Gateway’s full CPD programme for 2020-21 please visit: www.gatewayalliance.co.uk/finder/. If you have any questions or queries please contact Gateway Alliance on 02476 347697 or email: info@gatewayalliance.co.uk
Time4Warwickshire
Time4Warwickshire is the new Warwickshire wide timebanking network! 
Timebanking is a way for people to help others in their community and be rewarded for it- in time. For every hour of time you give helping someone, you receive one hour time credit. You can offer or request any task! Imagination is the only limit! All skills are equal so one hour = one hour!
For example – if Joan offers one hour of gardening for David, Joan then uses her hour gained and requests one hour of ironing back from Lakbir. Lakbir then uses his hour and requests help from Chris. Chris then gives an hour of her time to set up online shopping for Lakbir. David helps Chris with learning the guitar and so on!
Your local timebank is run by local people for local people and will also run fun, free activities in the local community
Who can join?
Anyone over the age of 14 who lives in Warwickshire can join. You don't need any special skills - just the time and the willingness to help others and receive help in return! No matter what your age, ability, employment status or mobility- you can get involved in Time4Warwickshire timebankank.
Interested?
We are looking for people to help with, set up and join Time Banks in Warwickshire so, if you want to know more, please get in touch:
- Cheryl Jones - Timebank Coordinator (North): 07443 345610
- Mick Spicer – Timebank Coordinator (South) : 07825 938396
- Facebook: @time4warwickshire
- Email: t4wtimebanks@warwickshire.gov.uk
School Admissions
The Admissions Service is continuing to review the way our processes work for both Warwickshire families and our family of schools. At the end of September new functionality was made available Synergy Web (previously known as SAM) for schools to provide live updates on the number of pupils you have on roll in each year group.
Thank you to all those schools that are using the new function and we ask again for all schools to please check this information currently displayed and keep this information up to date.
We are committed to improving communication around admissions and remind heads there is now a dedicated inbox for any concerns, queries or feedback you may have regarding the Admissions process.
headteacheradmissions@warwickshire.gov.uk