WE3 Family of schools

The Education Challenge Board

The Education Challenge Board is completing its first round of meetings for the new academic year. As discussed in earlier articles, our focus is very much upon overall strategy and trying to bring all parts of the education landscape together in order to develop agreed strategies to help pupils in Warwickshire schools.

Amongst early topics under discussion have been some of the key performance indicators for Warwickshire schools. I would emphasise that we do not discuss individual schools, focusing instead upon broad trends and the way in which we can address the objectives identified in Warwickshire’s education strategy, particularly those in the WE3 section of the document. All of us agreed that there was much to celebrate in the performance indicators for all key stages and Warwickshire could be very encouraged by the way its performance compared with similar authorities elsewhere.

We spent some time discussing the important links between education achievement and pastoral provision, before also considering the important role that Special Educational Needs funding played in school improvement.

A particular theme of our discussion was the important role that funding played in school improvement and the need to allocate resources in a fair and equitable manner. Whilst some of these decisions relate to national policy, we will still try to offer constructive advice on local decisions about the allocation of funds to Warwickshire Schools.

The Education Challenge Board continues to be a great example of how school leaders across the county can work together to make sure our pupils get the best possible deal.