Dear colleagues,

Hello and welcome back to Heads Up.  It feels like such a long time since the last time we did this and yet it was only a few weeks ago. It’s hard to believe so much could have changed in so short a time.

For us in the field of education we have been at the heart of so much of this change and my team has been working through the guidance to make sure that you are kept abreast of the picture as it has moved forwards. It was a strange way of working for us. We were balancing ensuring that you were informed whilst almost hoping that you were not reading emails avidly and were getting some rest and recuperation.

In terms of schools widely reopening after the summer holiday, the biggest issue in recent days has been transport to and from school.  Warwickshire received funding from the government to increase our dedicated school bus service to keep our young people off public transport. Provision has been put in place to meet the national guidance and the funding has been deployed.

We need to see how the picture evolves next week but we may need to adapt as we see how parents are deciding to get their children to school.  It may be that they are choosing to drive their children to school which we would prefer not to happen.

In the social media activity that the county council has been sending out, we have been pushing active travel, walking and cycling, as the best option.  I am a firm believer in the benefits, both mental and physical, of exercise but you’ll know that the benefits are more wide-reaching than that.

We need to do all we can to keep traffic around school settings to a minimum to keep roads safer, improve air quality and allow safer social distancing.  Fewer cars on the roads around our schools allows all of that.

So, please, encourage your children to ask parents if they can safely walk or cycle to school and, if they can push it and promote it within the school. This is a real opportunity to change how our children get to and from school with benefits that will be felt well into the future.

Since we stood Heads Up back up again, we have tried to focus on non-Covid stories to complement the briefings so you will see a fair bit of content that will reflect a more ‘business as usual’ feel. Notably there is the Nuneaton Education Strategy which was one of the major projects that we were about to launch before lockdown.  Seeing that on the agenda once again has been a real sign to me that we are bouncing back. I know officers at the county council are itching to get stuck into some of the projects that they had to postpone.

Anyway, I shall leave it there.  It’s fantastic that our children are coming back into schools but we know that there is a lot to be done in the next months.  Please remember that, as ever, we are here for you.   

Have a great autumn term.

Ian Budd

Assistant Director for Education Services