How to apply for 30 hours childcare and Tax-Free Childcare

The DfE have produced a short guide for parents that sets out the steps to apply for 30 hours childcare and Tax-Free Childcare.

'Outstanding' childminder

Congratulations to Stephanie Checketts, childminder from Warwick who recently received ‘Outstanding’ judgements across all of the 4 inspection areas - leadership and management; quality of teaching, learning and assessment; personal development, behaviour and welfare; and outcomes for children.

Ofsted stated:

• Children form excellent relationships with the childminder and with each other. These strong bonds encourage children to feel safe and secure, which has a positive impact on their ability to learn and develop.
• The childminder's knowledge of children's needs and routines ensures that their care and learning needs are meticulously met.
• The childminder has an excellent knowledge of how children learn and develop. She plans a stimulating environment where children are curious, excited and eager to learn. Observations and assessments of children's individual abilities and learning styles mean that the activities are finely tuned to ensure children make excellent progress.
• The childminder bestows great praise and encouragement on children, recognising their efforts and achievements. She builds their self-esteem and confidence.
• Partnerships with parents are highly effective. Parents compliment the care and learning of their children, sharing their child's learning and emerging interests at home. First-class communication ensures continuity in care and learning between home and the childminder.
• The childminder strives to provide the best possible care for all children. She shares ideas and her excellent practice with others and is highly motivated to enhance her knowledge and skills.
• The childminder actively seeks the views of the parents and children about the service she provides. Parents compliment her on her excellent care.
• Children learn about safety. They follow precise routines when getting in and out of the car to ensure that they remain safe. Children learn to be safe near roads and the animals they may come across when visiting parks and places of interest.

Dawn Jearum – Early Years Practitioner.

Chnge4Life “10MSU” summer campaign

Public Health England (PHE) and Disney UK, with support from Sport England, today launches the national Change4Life 10 Minute Shake Up campaign to help get the nation’s children active.

The campaign, '10MSU' aims to get primary school aged children more active by playing Disney-inspired 10-Minute Shake Up games. The games help children develop and practise the skills they need to build key physical attributes of strength, stamina and agility.

ACTION You can order and download a range of digital and print assets to support your local activities from the Campaign Resource Centre (CRC).  During the summer school term, a take-home Shake Up games pack is being delivered to over 16,500 state funded primary schools across England. A number of free curriculum-linked schools resources are available for teachers to download on the School Zone to help embed active habits in schools.

For further information: partnerships@phe.gov.uk. 

Introducing Think Active; the new name for CSW Sport

On 5 July 2019 at the Coventry, Solihull & Warwickshire Summer School Games county festival, the hosts for the event announced the launch of their new name; ‘Think Active’.

As part of a network of Active Partnerships that was established nearly 20 years ago (then County Sports Partnerships), Think Active will continue to be a significant part of the sport and physical activity landscape within Coventry, Solihull & Warwickshire, flexing to meet demand and advocating for sport & physical activity across multiple sectors. As CSW Sport, the organisation has a long track record of successfully delivering Sport England funded programmes, building strong, local networks and impacting upon groups and individuals to support them to become more active.

Sharon Lea, Chair of Think Active said:

"We know that the most inactive people in Coventry, Solihull & Warwickshire do not have being physically active on their radar and some are a considerable distance from meeting the Chief Medical Officer guidelines. We also know that either actual or perceived, there are several barriers preventing [the most inactive] people from being active."

Our message is to advocate the benefits of sport & physical activity within the systems and networks that we work in so that everyone uses their influence to affect change; to normalise physical activity as part of everyone’s day to day life.

Our name change, to Think Active, supports this work and we believe it better reflects our role and purpose. We will support and help others to think active. We aim to use the brand name in day to day conversations that reflect the what we do.

Think reflects the importance of creating positive perceptions and behaviour in relation to sport & physical activity. For those people who do not have physical activity on their radar, we want to get them to think about it. For those people who are contemplating being active we want to help give them the an encouraging nudge. For those who are active we will support them to realise their potential. It refers to the importance of changing behaviour and positively influencing policy, provision and participation levels.

Active reflects the full range of sport & physical activity from walking, gardening and cycling to work through to traditional sport. We want ‘everyone in Coventry, Solihull & Warwickshire to benefit from and enjoy a healthy and active lifestyle in safe & thriving communities’.

We look forward to continuing to deliver our ‘Inspiring Active Communities’ strategy and, in partnership with the National Lottery, Sport England and local partners, have a positive impact on the individuals and communities across Coventry, Solihull & Warwickshire. We have the challenge to use the power and potential of sport and physical activity to enable future generations to have healthier more prosperous lives.

For more information see www.thinkactive.org or contact Vicky Joel 07885 200523

Counter terrorism training specifically for head teachers

SEND Voice newsletter

The latest edition of the SEND Voice Newsletter is now available to read here.

Receive and read all the latest news and information on SEND in Warwickshire. 

National Professional Qualification for Middle Leadership

Educaterers win Business of the Year!

Congratulations to Educaterers, Warwickshire County Council’s school catering Local Authority Traded Company (LATC), who have brought home the Lead Association for Catering in Education (LACA) ‘Business of the Year’ Award to Warwickshire!

The Business of the Year award recognises catering teams or organisations that have made an outstanding contribution to catering for schools in their local area and who continue to make a real difference to education catering.

The LACA Awards, which reward good management, strong performances and high achievements, were announced at a black tie ceremony at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole on 11^th July, with members of the Educaterers team picking up the award.  

Educaterers was the first local authority service in Warwickshire to be set up to run as an LATC, around 18 months ago, having formerly been Warwickshire County Caterers.

Many of Warwickshire County Caterers existing 700 workforce became Educaterers’ employees and the company has been focused on making sure that staff are given recognition for good work.

Since the change, Educaterers have been winning new contracts, including two from outside the county council’s catchment area in Oxford and Birmingham. It provides some 125,000 school meals a week.

The first 18 months of Educaterers’ operation have also seen three centres of excellence at three individual schools established, a secondary, junior and infant school, to further improve the cookery skills of Educaterers’ staff.

Over 75% of what Educaterers put on school dinner plates is homemade and that requires giving staff a greater set of skills.

The centres of excellence allow Educaterers to train both new and existing employees, as well as test-drive new ideas in service and menu development.

Eleven Educaterers employees from across Warwickshire have just passed the first Culinary Skills course to be run at their new Centre of Excellence at Boughton Leigh Junior School in Rugby (see full story), so congratulations and well done to them.

Leamington LAMP win new Award

Local alternative education provider, Leamington LAMP, has won Educational Supporter of the Year at this year’s Education Awards. As well as the Award itself, LAMP will have the opportunity to work with the category sponsor, the National Energy Hub, on a project that will be screened at next year’s awards ceremony.

Director, Timothy Ellis said ‘LAMP will continue to champion the arts and innovation as it builds its diverse education offer, credit for this award goes to our fabulous, hard-working staff and students.’

For this first time, the event is partnered with the Pearson Teaching Awards, with all category winners automatically entered into the televised ceremony, which will air later this year on BBC 2’s Classroom Heroes.

Accepting the award on LAMP’s behalf, Director Pip Burley said ‘We are hugely proud of our students for continuing to overcome barriers and succeed in a world that can make it hard for neurodiverse people.’
Leamington LAMP is a specialist arts education centre for young people with autism and high anxiety. They run courses in Music, Art, Photography, Theatrical make-up, Maths, English, Japanese and Computer Games Development.

Pictured: National Energy Hub Sponsor with Pip Burley, Leamington LAMP Director

Top marks for school caterers

School catering staff in Warwickshire have been recognised for their top notch cookery skills following the completion of an innovative new training course run by Educaterers.

Our school catering Local Authority Traded Company (LATC) recently launched their Culinary Skills training programme at their new Centre of Excellence at Boughton Leigh Junior School in Rugby.

Eleven new and existing Educaterers employees from across Warwickshire passed the first course to be run at the centre with flying colours and were each presented with a certificate, a ‘Star Baker’ apron and a bottle of Prosecco at their ‘graduation’, which was followed by a celebratory afternoon tea.

They were trained by skilled chef Julie Murray, an Assistant Development Manager at Educaterers.

Food craft modules on the programme included artisan bread baking, food preparation and cooking for a healthy diet, knife skills with fruit and vegetable preparation, creative cakes, cookie dough and traybakes, and perfect pastry.

The training programme has been designed to upskill and refresh employees’ knowledge and to give staff the skills they need to take their new ideas and talents back to their school kitchens and dining rooms.

The training is open to all Educaterers employees, and staff can choose to do anything from just one to all six of the sessions.

Educaterers believes strongly in developing its catering teams’ expertise. As well as offering the Culinary Skills programme, the new Centre of Excellence at Boughton Leigh Junior School has been created to showcase the best of what Educaterers does and to test new ideas in both catering service and menu development.

Educaterers provide over 120,000 school meals every week to over 200 schools across Warwickshire, Birmingham and Oxfordshire. For more information visit www.educaterers.co.uk.

Reflecting on our ethical leadership journey to date

Wisdom

Wisdom is defined as the ability to use your knowledge and experience to make good decisions and judgements. 

It’s been just over a month since WCC launched the Ethical Leadership Commission’s final report Navigating the Moral Maze at the headteachers' briefing in June. We were very fortunate to have Carolyn Roberts join us at this briefing to invite the WCC family of schools on this journey.

There has been a lot of interest and we have started to see how we can use the ethical leadership framework to address leadership dilemmas.

We have had The Coleshill showing how Warwickshire schools are taking the lead on this agenda. We have been in conversations with the DfE on how we might be able to liaise with them, using our coding project in finding solutions on how to deliver the Timpson Review recommendations on the back of our conversations with Nadhim Zahawi.

We are being used as a case study in Professors Harry Daniels from Oxford Universities’ research project on inclusion.

Last week, I was contacted by colleagues in Sandwell Local Authority who was advised to come over to meet with us in Warwickshire.

The news has got out “There is something exciting happening across Warwickshire and its family of schools.”

We wish you all a very restful summer and look forward to your return in September when we continue setting the ethical leadership example.