Heads Up 26 November 2021

HEADS UP

Hello and welcome to Heads Up.

You will have received a notification yesterday around the activities of an individual going by the name of August Flynn who is posing as an educational psychologist and offering services to schools. Clearly it is our duty to alert schools of any potential safeguarding issues.

The individual concerned may be using the name ‘Milestones’, ‘Milestone Education’ and/or ‘Cornerstones’ to introduce himself whilst he is claiming to be under the employment of these companies.

For clarification, there is a legitimate company by the name of Milestone Education, which is based in Birmingham. The activities of August Flynn should not be conflated with those of Milestone Education of whom August Flynn is not an employee.

We would like to apologise to Milestone Education for any confusion.

Meanwhile, Covid continues to dominate our thinking. In Warwickshire, there have been some high levels of positive cases this week.

First of all, may I pass on thanks to all who dealt with these incidents. They were dealt with efficiently and swiftly and will have done a huge amount to limit transmissions.

There are a couple of things that you can do to continue to fight the spread of Covid in our communities. Ventilation remains key when you have groups indoors so please do get the ventilation assessment as mentioned by Nadia Inglis in Tuesday’s call. Details were in last week’s Heads Up and can be found here

Flu is also starting to circulate with rising numbers in younger people so please push the flu jab to all eligible staff and students and let’s do what we can to stop that spreading.

As we know, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on children and young people's mental health. So I'm pleased to share that the Council has made available a one-off grant of £250,000 to support education settings in Warwickshire to develop mental health initiatives within the curriculum.

The fund is open to applications from maintained nurseries, primary and secondary schools, special schools and colleges in the county to help children and young people build their resilience and improve their overall sense of positive wellbeing. Further information is provided in this article.

Finally, around 20 of you will have attended 'Dealing with Complex Complaints for Headteachers' training session that Governor Services ran this week.

The session provided support and information around considering your role (as a Head) in managing complaints; looking at best practice around complaints policies and procedures and empowering heads to manage complaints whilst looking after themselves.

The course, put on by Sue Casey and Julia Kenny, has met with some excellent feedback so if you might be interested in attending one in future, keep an eye out in next week's Heads Up for further details about the session and future course dates.

That’s it from me. Keep safe and have a good weekend.

Chris Baird