Warwickshire Youth Parliament

Warwickshire Youth Parliament

Run by young people, the UK Youth Parliament provides opportunities for 11-18 year old's to use their voice in a creative way to bring about social change. This year eight young people will be elected as either Members of Youth Parliament (MYP) or Deputy Members of Youth Parliament, to act on behalf of the young people across Warwickshire at a regional and national level. This includes an opportunity to sit and debate with their fellow MYP’s across the country in the House of Commons.

Alongside this group, another 15 young people from Warwickshire (three per district) will be elected to represent young people in their local district or borough as part of VOX – Warwickshire Youth Council.

Both groups of young people will have a one year term of office, meeting on a monthly basis. They will also have the chance to be involved in local forums and a variety of other opportunities, such as interviews, meeting key decision makers across the county, being consulted by a variety of organisations.

Are there are any young people in your school or college who would be a suitable candidate in the forthcoming elections? Anyone aged between 11 and 18 (or up to 25 for young people with disabilities) is eligible for election. Look out for more information and promotional material giving details of how young people and schools can get involved.

Some key dates to keep in mind:

Nominations for both elections closes on 2 December 2016 (28 of November for web applications).
Elections are held for two weeks starting on Monday 23 January until Friday 3 February 2017, with the results being announced on Thursday 9 February 2017 at Shire Hall Warwick.

For more information please contact your local youth worker or Cheryl Jones on cheryljones@warwickshire.gov.uk.

Warwickshire Youth Parliament’s work on mental health

One of this year’s national campaigns focused on mental health, with the aim of changing attitudes to generate and increase equality.  Last year’s campaign particularly focused on raising awareness of mental health illnesses, and how services need to be improved for young people.

Warwickshire Youth Parliament have achieved this in a number of ways:

• Packs produced for schools including leaflets for students & teachers
• Fundraising for Warwickshire based charities such as Safeline

• Local forums around Warwickshire took part in the youth consultations with Young Minds
• CAMHS commissioners met with Nuneaton and Atherstone forums
• The main issues raised by young people were:
  • Services are not well advertised
  • Readily available information is vital to allow people to gain awareness and know who to turn to before a problem requires emergency intervention
  • Waiting lists are too long
  • Lack of helplines and early intervention
  • Transition from child to adult services is difficult

One of the top issues voted in the UK Youth Parliament’s annual ‘Make Your Mark’ ballot last year was mental health, with over 90,349 young people voting for it nationally. The ballot decides what members of the UK Youth Parliament should debate and vote on their campaigns for the following year. This year’s debate will take place on Friday 11 November 2016 within the House of Commons.

For the 2015 National Sitting, the UK Youth Parliament collected information about gaps in mental health care provision across the country.  This resulted in the Youth Select Committee publishing the Young People's Mental Health Report 2015 on Tuesday 17 November 2015.

The Government’s response published in January 2016 highlighted 18 recommendations.

If you would like copies of our newly published leaflets for students or teachers about mental health, please contact cheryljones@warwickshire.gov.uk or please visit our website.

Family Learning in Warwickshire

Adult and Community Learning Service

Family Learning can support your school and families in raising children’s attainment and increase parents’ engagement in the community. Long term benefits include positive effects in behaviour and attitudes to learning across the whole family. All our courses are free.

We are able to offer a range of courses for your school, and will work with you to ensure that they support your policies and targets.  Some courses are intended for adults only, whilst others are for parents and children to work together. Examples of our courses include:

• Helping your child with maths or english
• Family maths or english
• Helping your child with phonics
• Storysacks
• Love food, save money – healthy eating

We also provide workshops to engage families in working together. Workshops cover a wide variety of areas including: sharing stories, literacy, maths, phonics, healthy eating and art activities. We can develop workshops to a chosen theme to support the work of schools.

If you would like further information please contact Jan Lennon: 01926 736390

janlennon@warwickshire.gov.uk

www.warwickshire.gov.uk

www.facebook.com/warksacl

Skills for Employment

A date for your diary

The 2017 conference for secondary headteachers, college principals and business leaders will take place on 13th March 7.30am – 10 am at Chesford Grange Hotel near Kenilworth. The focus of the conference will be on illustrating sustainable best practice and measuring the impact of employability activity. Full details will be provided in the December edition of Heads Up.

Major Grant opportunity

Following the success of last year's grants, a further £250,000 is now available to fund innovative careers and employability activity in high priority sectors or geographic areas in order to address demonstrable skills issues.  While this list is not exhaustive, bids are particularly welcome for the following sectors:

• Business & professional services;
• Care/health;
• Construction;
• Digital/IT;
• Hospitality/tourism.

Bids must be from partnerships comprising at least one education and one business partner.

Please click on the following links for the guidance and bidding form. The deadline for bids is 5pm 16 November 2016.

Governors achieve National Leader of Governance status

Congratulations to three governors from Warwickshire schools who have achieved National Leader of Governance (NLG) status through the National College for Teaching and Leadership. This is an impressive achievement which will support our work to strengthen school governance across the county. 

The governors are:

Sue Casey (Kenilworth School)

Gail Flint (Milby Primary)

Yvonne Salter-Wright (St. Augustine's Catholic Primary)

If you are an experienced chair of governor interested in supporting chairs of governors in other schools, you can apply to be a NLG. This is part of the government's plan to give schools a central role in developing a self-improving and sustainable school-led system.

The current application round is closed however governors can register their interest in becoming an NLG here.

Prejudiced Related Incidents Report

Free trial to schools social network

An exciting new service to link schools across the UK so that the pupils can see how their peers around the UK live day to day.  

Very useful helping the schools to fulfil OFSTED’s requirements for British Values and to implement the Prevent strategy.

The Big Classroom is a social network solely for schools so it is completely safe and secure. Each school has its own account to which it can upload pictures, videos and blogs about the exciting and interesting projects they undertake. Big Classroom will then regularly link them with "friend schools" which have been chosen strategically to be contrasting in terms of culture, faith, ethnicity or location.

At regular intervals classes sit down and look at their breaking news (these are updates from their friend schools) to see what is happening in schools around the UK. The pupils can then discuss what they see and send messages questioning the things that interest them and take part in joint projects together. Over time they'll get to know the other pupils and have a much greater understanding of other cultures and communities.

This is the service in a nutshell, please feel free to google 'The Big Classroom' for more details. 

We have agreed with your local authority to give all the schools a free 2-month trial of our service.

Please contact Cathy on: 01772 286597 for more information or to arrange a presentation at a cluster meeting or similar.