WE2 An empowering curriculum

SEND Aspiring Leadership Programme

Following the success of last year’s Aspiring Leadership Programme we are delighted to offer this opportunity again.

The programme includes practical sessions focusing on:

Leadership styles - identifying your skills and attributes and how these can inform interactions with your team
Adapting your leadership style to create personalised approaches
School evaluation and development planning – solutions focused
Effective use of funding including budget management and financial forecasting
Resilience – doing more with less and maintaining positivity
A culture of change improves outcomes for pupils – stop doing the same and expecting different results
Dealing with difficult situations – identifying strategies to enable you to channel emotional responses

Opportunities will be provided to enable colleagues to share good practice and to seek advice and solutions to current challenges. The sessions are very practical and do not require attendees to complete coursework or assignments, although they are encouraged to complete small school-based projects.

Schools are invited to send up to two colleagues but who must be committed to completing the full training programme. Sessions will be held from 1.30pm to 3.30pm at Oak Wood Primary School, Nuneaton.

Positive feedback

Feedback from previous attendees has been very positive and many of these colleagues have successfully sought promotion to senior leadership roles.

“The training provided me with great practical advice to develop my leadership skills and shared innovative ways to motivate and engage staff when leading change. It helped me in preparing for promotion by gaining self-awareness of my leadership characteristics and how to deploy appropriate leadership tools for specific situations.” (Middle leader)

Dates for the programme

18 October 2019

15 November 2019

13 December 2019

17 January 2020

14 February 2020

13 March 2020

24 April 2020

22 May 2020

12 June 2020

10 July 2020

How do I enrol?

Please send your name email address and current role to Jenny Roberts - jroberts@oakwoodschools.co.uk by Friday 11 October at the latest. Jenny is also happy to answer any questions you may have about the programme.

Change to provider of interpretation services

Following the contract commencement from 1 October 2019, Communication Plus will now deliver British Sign Language (BSL) interpretation services on behalf of Warwickshire County Council.

There is no change to this service and customers will still receive the same level of support.

How to book

If you would like to book interpretation services, please call 0121 707 8685 or email: bookings@commplus.org.uk or Office@commplus.org.uk.

For further information please visit https://www.commplus.org.uk/

Please feel free to share this with your contacts as appropriate.

Place-based Joint Strategic Needs Assessments

JSNA logo

The Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) aims to establish a shared, evidence-based consensus on the key local priorities across health and social care.

In 2017 a new approach was agreed by Warwickshire Health and Wellbeing Board, with the focus of the JSNA moving from a theme-based to a place-based approach. This has resulted in the approval of a two-year programme of work to produce needs assessments for 22 new JSNA geographies. This work was split into three waves, with wave one and two complete and wave three due for completion in April 2020. The table below provides more detail about the areas included in each wave.

Wave	Geographies	Status
1	Polesworth,Atherstone & Hartshill Kingsbury, Coleshill & Arley Nuneaton Central Polesworth/Atherstone/Hartshill Kingsbury/Coleshill/Arley Nuneaton Central	Complete - March 2019
2	Bedworth West Bedworth Central & Bulkington Hillmorton Bilton & Town Centre (Rugby) Stratford-upon-Avon Cubbington, Lillington & Warwick District East	Complete - September 2019
3	Nuneaton Common West Weddington, Horeston Grange & Whitestone Rugby Rural North Rugby Rural South Wellesbourne, Kineton & Shipston Southam Warwick & Warwick District West Kenilworth	Due for completion April 2020

The needs assessments include evidence from a number of sources:

published national data e.g population data, census data;
data collected by WCC e.g. education data, social care data;
local data e.g foodbanks, Citizen’s Advice;
feedback from residents and professionals collected through surveys and stakeholder events.

There is a real emphasis on ensuring resident’s views are considered alongside the “hard” data.

The findings of waves one and two are published on the JSNA pages of Warwickshire County Council’s website. You can also access the residents and professionals survey from the JSNA website.

We encourage you to take a look at the completed needs assessments and where relevant use the findings to inform your work.

Alongside the needs assessment, a tool has been developed to provide data on the JSNA geographies and other areas in Warwickshire which can be found at: https://data.warwickshire.gov.uk/

Pupil Premium Information

On 17th July 2019 the DfE released updated guidance on the pupil premium - how much pupil premium funding schools receive, how they should spend it, and how the government holds them to account. The guidance says 'Some of the most effective spending will be on whole school strategies, including improving the quality of teaching, which have the potential to impact positively on all pupils'.

From September 2019 schools are being encouraged to move away from annual reviews and consider a longer-term strategy for pupil premium use. The Teaching Schools Council has produced templates to help schools present their strategy.

The DfE guidance reflects information contained in the recent guidance published by the Education Endowment Foundation on the pupil premium, recommending a tiered approach that balances spend across:

supporting training and continuous development to improve the quality of all teaching
targeting support for disadvantaged pupils through evidence-based interventions
supporting whole-school strategies to improve attendance, behaviour and readiness to learn

Commenting on the pupil premium in this news story, Chief Inspector Amanda Spielman said:

'The Pupil Premium provides welcome additional funding for schools, recognising those with some of the biggest challenges. The EEF's new guidance on how to spend it rightly emphasises recruiting, retaining and developing great teachers. In order to be effective, the Pupil Premium must not become a cause of unnecessary work for teachers.

Ofsted does not require any school-generated data on the Pupil Premium beyond the school's Pupil Premium strategy and does not require schools to track eligible pupils or provide evidence of closing within school attainment gaps.'