Welcome

Welcome to Heads Up this week.

Hello all.

This is quite a short introduction but I am going to take the opportunity to share some good news. Last week’s Heads Up featured the story about music hubs and the ground-breaking project at Nicholas Chamberlaine School.  This has already seen a remarkably positive response from parents.

This good news can now be shared across the county with further good news for music hubs, with the announcement of an additional £79 million of funding to extend music education hubs for another year.

This secures the many subsidised activities and groups run by Warwickshire Music across the county for 2020/21. The ground-breaking project is run in partnership with Warwickshire Music Hub, The Griffin Trust and the Music in Secondary Schools Trust (MiSST) and is a wonderful way of increasing pupil engagement as well as being something that the children can share with their families at home, increasing family involvement with their child’s education and school life.  That can only be a very positive thing.  As this project gets rolled out, it would be wonderful if you could share any wonderful stories with us via the Heads Up inbox.

Congratulations to Alveston Primary whose KS2 SATs results placed the school in the top 3% of primary schools across the UK.  And last weekend the school received another boost when, along with Southam Primary it was featured in The Sunday Times (17.11.19) in its 'parent power primary' four page pull-out.  This article listed the top 250 state primary schools in England, based on 2018 results.  Coming at 50th and 52nd, respectively, Southam and Alveston have both made tremendous achievements.

I shall leave you on that happy note.  As you can imagine, we have had quite a busy time recently and it is refreshing to be able to focus on the positive outputs which make up the vast majority of our work together.

With best wishes

Ian Budd

Assistant Director for Education Services