WE1 Early Years

Following the recent recruitment campaign, and selection process, we are pleased to announce that Amanda King, Executive Headteacher of Bedworth Heath and Atherstone Nursery schools, has been offered and has accepted a secondment to the role of Strategic Lead for Early Years across Warwickshire and Coventry. We are grateful to the governing body for agreeing to release Amanda to cover this new and important role. The arrangement is for two years (with an option to extend to three) and is a joint appointment across Warwickshire County Council (WCC) and Coventry City Council (CCC). Amanda will be spending approximately half of her time in each local authority. 

We have modelled this Early Years role on two other existing roles; firstly Heather Blevins' highly successful joint role as head of the adult education service / adult and community learning (Coventry and Warwickshire), and secondly Marie Rooney's new and innovative fixed term Strategic Lead for alternative provision role in WCC, leading on WE2a in Warwickshire's new education strategy.

The Early Years role will lead on WE1 in Warwickshire, and will line manage a suite of Early Years teams in Coventry. In keeping with the government's strategy to embed 'system leadership' in education, it is appropriate to be using a secondment of an Executive Headteacher and national leader of education, from two highly successful nursery schools judged as outstanding by Ofsted, and from the Warwickshire teaching school alliance. Amanda will take up the secondment from January 7 2019.

WE2 An empowering curriculum

Warwickshire Music

Warwickshire music is a great supporter of our CLA. (Children Looked After) The service offers the following to our children and young people:

•  50% remission on out of school instrument tuition - they are all entitled to free instrumental tuition during school time if schools are making this available to other pupils
•  Free instrument loan
•  Free access to all Warwickshire Music activities e.g. choirs, bands, workshops

Warwickshire music have also made a commitment to work in partnership with the virtual school on commissioned work such as the SoundTech project for disengaged boys at KS3.

WE2 (c) Children who are looked after

WE2 (d) Learners with SEND

New EHC (Education Health and Care) annual review paperwork

New guidance and templates for EHC plans are being shared at this term's SENCO network. Please see www.warwickshire.gov.uk/sendocs for the new templates. The new guidance and forms are designed to help a more person-centred approach and were piloted in schools last year. The old paperwork will continue to be accepted in the short term, but please use the new templates going forward, returning all review paperwork by email to sendannualreviews@warwickshire.gov.uk. 

Schools subscribing to EPS (Education Psychology Service) and STS (Student Travel Schools) can negotiate for a member of the team to model how to facilitate an EHC plan annual review as part of their purchased subscription time. For non-subscribing schools, this can be bought as a one-off service.

WE3 Family of schools

Statutory school census - 2018/19 academic year

The statutory school census dates of the 2018/19 academic year are as follows:

The data collected via these returns are used by the DfE for funding purposes, to inform policy decisions, underpins the analyse school performance website and school performance tables.

It is therefore vitally important that you are satisfied with the accuracy of your schools’ return before uploading it to the LA, and that it is returned by the prescribed deadline.

Prior to each census the ICT development service will up-load census documentation to the Warwickshire learning platform (WeLearn365) which can be found here and on the download site. These will assist you in preparing and running your census returns.

If you have any technical queries regarding the SIMS system and generating the return please contact the ICT development service desk on (01926) 414100.

If you have any other questions about this data collection, please contact Michelle Ali, Insight Service on 01926 742169 or by e-mail insight@warwickshire.gov.uk

Thank you for your continued support with these collections.

Insight Service
Performance, Resources Directorate

Schools forum members document

Contact list

These contact details are for the use of schools forum members only. These details should not be shared without the consent of the individual concerned.

WE4 Employability

Check future additions for updates in this area. 

Supporting schools develop smoke - free school gates

HEADTEACHERS AND GOVERNORS

Public Health Warwickshire is seeking to work with Warwickshire primary schools to extend no smoking policies to cover the area around school gates. Children exposed to smoke are more likely to start smoking themselves, with around 200 000 children under 15 taking up smoking each year.

Why have smoke-free school gates?

• Create an environment where children see ‘no smoking’ as the norm
• Support ‘no smoking’ messages pupils are taught in lessons to create a more pleasant smoke free environment
• Reduce smoking related litter

We will support interested primary schools by:

• Encouraging pupil participation by coordinating a poster competition
• Assisting schools in developing information for parents / guardians
• Help launch the event

If you want your school to join this campaign – or want more information – please contact Paul Coleman at paulcoleman@warwickshire.gov.uk.

News from school health service

Term is now well under way and we would like to thank all primary schools for their support in promoting and assisting us in getting the school entry health needs questionnaire completed with parents/carers.  This is the fourth year we have undertaken the school entry questionnaire and the uptake has been better than ever with over 51% completing the questionnaire. This has given us a much greater understanding of the support required by reception aged children and their families.

As many of you will know, year 6 and 9 health needs assessments are now well under way.  Many thanks to all of the schools who have been providing us with the use of their computer suites in order to enable the online questionnaire to be completed.  

In due course we will be analysing the data from the health needs assessments and we will be arranging a meeting with the head teacher/PSHE lead/year head.  In collaboration with schools we will then jointly develop a plan for how we can work together to address the identified health needs.

Upcoming events:

• NCMP programme will be booked with all primary schools and will be running from December – March
• Anti-bullying month is in November, if you would like any support with this campaign then please phone us to discuss how we can assist
• Medical awareness training is taking place in localities

Contact details:

• We have one central phone number – 03300245204, please select option 1,2 or 3 depending on where your school is located
• Our referral form has been emailed to all schools across Warwickshire but it can also be accessed on the Compass website you will find it towards the bottom of the page.