July 2015

Jo’s July Blog

Goodbye and Thank You

This is the time of year where we have to say goodbye to some headteachers and this year in particular there are a number that are moving on. We will really miss them all.  I wanted to thank them formally on behalf of everyone in the city council, Children’s Services, for their contribution to the lives of young people and their families in there own schools and those across the city.

Janet Felkin, as well as successfully leading Blatchington Mill School as a creative and inclusive leader, you have been the chair of the Secondary Schools Partnership and built and facilitated links and development across the secondary school community as well as the Hove Partnership. We know you have planned a well-deserved holiday in September but I hope we will see you doing further work across the city in the future.

Janet Felkin at her Tea Party 

Ged Cotton, thank you for your excellent leadership and wealth of experience and knowledge of the early years and KS1 which has led Davigdor Infants to Outstanding. We will miss your witty and challenging contribution to our heads meetings!

Jenny Aldridge who has taken Rudyard Kipling Primary on a positive journey leaving the school in a really strong place. I have been particularly impressed with your commitment to Every Child a Reader and so happy that you were awarded inspirational manager of the year! We wish you all the best as you are able to spend more time with your grandchildren and travel to exotic places.

Aaron Sumner, who has shared the headship with Jenny this year and is leaving the city to take up a headship in London. We have been very lucky to have you, we are sorry to lose your expertise as a strong leader in the city but I do hope you enjoy London life.

Joanne Smith I want to thank you for all the great work you have done at St Martin’s CE Primary, taking the school to good and building a strong committed team with a really positive ethos. I know you will do a fabulous job as the new headteacher of Rudyard Kipling Primary.

Catherine Keith, who has brought a vibrant and rich curriculum that combined excitement and rigour and deep learning based around texts. You have made Peter Gladwin Primary a wonderful place to learn. We are hoping that you will be able to continue support work in the city next term in another capacity.

Janis Taylor from West Hove to Hove Junior, another headteacher whose extremely strong leadership has led the school on a journey of success. Janis you have also led the expansion of Hove Junior, a major project so crucial to the city. I am delighted that you won’t be leaving us altogether and will be doing some city school improvement work.

Wendy King has taken Bevendean Primary on the journey to be judged as good, with a really positive and inclusive ethos. We are sad you are leaving the school, but pleased that you will be staying in the city as head of the Bilingual School. We are all looking forward to continued close work with you and the school as an important member of our city partnership.

A thank you to Kim Bolton your strong leadership as the executive head of the CDP federation, successfully bringing together three special schools and for your massive contribution to the cities SEN strategy. I’m delighted that you will be joining the LA team to do SEN improvement work from September.

Simon Charleton, I’d like to thank you for your leadership and work at Homewood College working with some of the most vulnerable and challenging young people of the city. You have worked effectively building partnerships with a range of agencies to make a real difference for young people and families.

I also want to thank Peter Merchant, interim Principal at PACA, Laura O’Grady, acting head at Bilingual School and Austin Hindman, acting headteacher at Hove Park for their contributions.  You have done a great job keeping the schools moving forward during the interim period.

Thank you also to Adam Sutton who has moved to Moulsecoomb Primary as interim head. A big thank you to Dawn Oliver at Brackenbury Primary for releasing him.

We wish Rose Wisdom from our Local Authority team well as she moves on to pastures new. Rose has been with the council for 14 years, in recent years as Partnership Adviser for School Governance and Leadership. She will be greatly missed by colleagues here and in schools and governing bodies. She has been a huge support to many governing bodies working through challenging times and has led the Governor Support team to be one of the real strengths of the city.

Rose and her tea towel at her leaving party!

I’m delighted to congratulate City Academy Whitehawk and King's Secondary School for the good outcomes of their recent Ofsted inspection. It was a pleasure to read the reports and see how well the schools are doing. Well done to the staff, parents and children and young people.  We are looking forward to working in continued partnership with both Schools in the new academic year.

New Ofsted Framework

From September 2015 there will again be change with a Common Inspection Framework (CIF), which covers all the education services that Ofsted inspects, including maintained schools and academies, early years settings, non-association independent schools, Further Education (FE) and skills providers. This new framework is "designed to bring together” the inspection of different education settings to “provide greater coherence across different providers that cater for similar age ranges”. A separate inspection handbook has been produced for each type of provision covered by the CIF.

Ofsted will make graded judgements in the following areas:

• Overall effectiveness
• Effectiveness of leadership and management
• Quality of teaching, learning and assessment
• Personal development, behaviour and welfare
• Outcomes for children and learners
• The effectiveness of early years and sixth form provision, where applicable

Outstanding schools will continue to be exempt from routine inspection, but Ofsted will retain the power to inspect if performance drops or other concerns are raised. The exemption from routine inspection does not apply to 'outstanding' special schools, PRUs and maintained nursery schools. However, under the new CIF, these settings will have the short inspection if they have been rated 'outstanding' or 'good'.

Good schools will be inspected every three years in a short inspection. This will either confirm the judgement of good or convert to a section 5 inspection if the inspector believes it could be outstanding, or convert to a section 5 inspection if the inspector does not find enough evidence for the judgement of good. School which are judged to require improvement will be linked to and monitored by HMI.

More details can be found here and on the Ofsted website.

Primary Results

Provisional Results for 2015 show that for every age group there has been improvement. This makes a strong trend of improvement over time. We are also finishing the year with 84% of primary schools judged to be good or outstanding, which is an increase from last year. However, there is still work to be done to ensure that every child in our schools is able to achieve well. We are making sure that we are rigorous in our identification and challenging and supporting school leaders.

This year's results show;

• the measure for EYFS has risen year on year.
• 75.2% of Year 1 pupils passed their phonics check. This is a six percentage point increase from last year (when it was 69%).
• Provisional results for subject at level 2+ show slight increases in all areas.
• The 2015 the LA result for Reading, Writing and Maths (RWM) L4+ is 81.6% (82%), Last year’s result was 81%, and last year’s national was 78%.
• RWM at L5+ this year is 25.7% (26%), last year it was 24% and the national figure last year was 24%.

At present, schools are deemed to be below floor standards if fewer than 65% of pupils achieve level 4 in English and maths combined and are below the national median for progression by two levels in English and maths. There are two schools that look likely to be below the floor standard. Schools that have achieved over 90% for RWM are; Patcham Junior, Stanford Juniors, Westdene Primary, Balfour Primary, Hertford Junior, Hove Juniors, St Mary’s Catholic Primary. Cottesmore Catholic Primary, St Bernadette’s Catholic Primary, Peter Gladwin Primary and Aldrington CE Primary. Well done to all.

Apprenticeship Matching Event

Young people meeting providers at the Apprentice Matching Event

A big thank you to all who attended or referred young people to the Apprentice Matching Event. 59 young people attended on 2 July, the majority aged 16-18 who were dressed to impress. Young people have given positive feedback including “…opportunities, and hope”, “an interview with who I wanted” and “lots of help to improve my CV”.

The event was attended by 16 providers and four employers, with a total of 116 vacancies covering a variety of sectors. Providers feedback included “seeing lots of motivated young people”, “very popular event with lots of potential candidates” and “Great meeting young people ‘'face to face’ very enthusiastic”.

Thank you also to the apprentice ambassadors and Emma Jones, Education and Inclusion Administrator, who did an amazing job on the day of routing young people to the right training providers!

We will be having much more discussion with you all in the autumn on how work in partnership to increase numbers on apprenticeships.

Independent Travel

I am really pleased to celebrate the achievements of a significant number of our young people with SEND who have now gained the skills and confidence to be able to travel to and from school more independently. More students are on the journey towards greater independence and good partnership working with parents and high expectations, coupled with a good independent travel programme have been key ingredients to this success. Some of our schools have done particularly well promoting this work and supporting young people; e.g. Cedar Centre and Patcham House. Resources are still available to schools who want support to run an Independent Travel Training Programme for their pupils with SEND, please contact us for advice and support.

“When I first went on the bus it made me feel very happy and grown up. I started to go with two buddies, but now go on my own. I would never go back on taxis. I prefer buses and it makes me feel grown up''. Y10 student in a special school with Autistic Spectrum Conditions (ASC).

Schools participating have also identified a more general increase in confidence and motivation in their pupils who have been part of the programme and this has certainly contributed to the broader discussion about how Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCP's) can encourage more creative use of resources to support access to the curriculum and accelerate learning, rather than develop a learned dependence.

''Not having a TA by your side every day of every week really motivates me to take part more in class and to talk to my peers''. Y10 student with visual impairment.

Our colleges tell us that students who have been taxied to school up to Y11 and who do not have the confidence to travel around the city independently are those who are less likely to successfully sustain their college placement or be able to get appropriate work experience.

We owe it to our young people to prepare them for all aspects of adulthood, so everything schools can do to encourage young people to become more independent is tremendously important.

Sussex School Games Finals - Well done team Brighton and Hove!

Tri golf at the School Games Finals

Thank you to those schools that went to K2 Crawley on the 8 July to participate in the School Games finals. Over 1500 children attended and I hope they all had a good day! It is great that so many schools across Sussex take part and to see Brighton & Hove schools do so well, with the best ever Brighton & Hove team finish in 5^th place! So well done to all of the teams.

Quicksticks hockey at the School Games Finals

Coldean Primary Schools Sports Award Evening

On 15 July the children from Coldean Primary School celebrated their sporting achievements at a special 'Sports Awards Evening' at Brighton University. The children arrived with their families all suited and booted for this special event.

Sprinter Rion Pierre opened the evening with an inspirational talk outlining his interesting journey to becoming a member of Team GB. The children received awards for the variety of sporting events they have represented the school in this year - athletics, swimming, golf, football, netball and tag rugby to name but a few. The awards were presented by Rion, Charlie Harris and Emil Ásmindsson (both under 21 players from Brighton and Hove Albion).

The evening was a true celebration of a school who has embraced the recent drive to improve the participation in sports. The passion of the PE leads to support the youngsters of Coldean was evident.

Stuart McConnachie, Executive Headteacher said "Evenings like this make it all worthwhile! It is wonderful to see the children and their families celebrating the children's achievements. The evening also highlights the outstanding partnership work going on in the school - Brighton University, Brighton and Hove Albion and the Sports Partnership team have all helped Emma Hughes and Andy Wilson (PE leads at Coldean Primary School) make tonight so special. I'm a very proud head teacher. It was particularly great to see the outstanding sportsmanship amongst the youngsters as they cheered on every trophies recipient."

Rion Pierre, Emma Hughes, Charlie Harris and Emil Ásmindsson at the Sports Award Evening

Adoption Support

I chaired another successful steering group this month.  It was an opportunity for us to discuss the children’s services recent Ofsted and the positive reference in the report to our adoption support work. We were also able to review the work we have done over the past year.  I’m delighted we have moved so far forward with our strategy ‘Attachment Aware Brighton’ with a clear training offer in place across the city open to all schools.  Skilling our schools teams up and building capacity will enable schools to adapt the curriculum and there practice to better meet the needs of our adopted children and raise their achievement.  We have now identified attachment champions in schools who will promote the work and ensure best practice is in place.  We have also agreed a new Personal Educational Plan approach we will now roll out across the city so that all adopted children have a clear plan linked to the pupil premium recourses which we believe will make a real difference.  Please take a look at our Adoption Support Passport to find out more.

Moulsecoomb Primary School

Congratulations to Moulsecoomb Primary School for winning gold in the prestigious South and South East in Bloom awards.

In Bloom judge Chris Murphy said “This is a very impressive entry. The children are enthusiastic and knowledgeable. There is very good provision of natural areas in the grounds for both play and the discovery of wildlife and habitats. The use of the school grounds as an outside classroom and learning resource is quite simply outstanding.”

The grounds boast ponds, orchard, world garden, World War 11 garden, a fairytale forest, Iron Age, Mesolithic and Neolithic roundhouses and vegetable gardens. They also have chickens and have planted hundreds of trees, bulbs and wildflowers.

Adam Sutton, headteacher, said “We’re really proud to achieve this prestigious award and to be recognised as providing an excellent outside learning environment for our children. The Gold medal is testament to the hard work of former head Charles Davies and all the staff at Moulsecoomb Primary School.”

Parent governor Warren Carter who also runs Moulsecoomb Forest Garden project said “The transformation of the school grounds over the years has been remarkable and relentless and gives endless opportunities for children to learn outside the classroom. Sitting in the school fields you would never know the school is next to the noisy Lewes Road. I am proud to tell people that my children go to such a fantastic school.”

Keeping in touch

We have heard again from Hugh Baldry (Schools Partnership Adviser), who sent thanks for all the goodwill messages which he says have made a real difference and helped him through the treatment.  He is on the fourth and final cycle of chemotherapy and then has to wait to see what effect it has had on the lymphoma.  Please keep sending Hugh your good wishes.

Happy Holidays

I’d like to wish all our headteachers, college principals, support staff, children and young people a well-deserved summer break.  Thank you for your contribution to the implementation of education, learning and skills this year.

I will be enjoying a couple of weeks in the sun with my family before returning for the A/AS Level and GCSE results.  Look out for my August blog!

Keep in touch and follow me on Twitter @JoMLyons, I'd urge you all to set up accounts for your schools if you don't already have one.

June 2015

Jo’s June Blog - 23 more days to engage in outstanding teaching and learning

June has been a bright, sunny month and it’s been a great opportunity to increase the amount of outdoor learning, as well as preparing for all those sports days coming up. It’s also been a challenging time with SATs and exams for many children and young people, and as always Ofsted continuing to inspect the city’s schools. It is not long to go now for our children and young people, teachers, school and college staff before they start their well-deserved summer break. However, we do still have 23 more days of opportunity to engage in some more outstanding teaching and learning.

School and College Leaders Business Meeting

I was pleased to open the School and College Leaders Business Meeting on Tuesday 9 June and hear from the voices of community members and students about the difference that schools can make to the wellbeing of children and young people. For example Louisha, who is pictured skipping with her friends, explained how her school, St Luke’s Primary, removes barriers so that she can access the same quality of school experience and learning as all other pupils. Louisha along with other people with impairments will feature in a locally developed Disability Equality DVD that will be disseminated in September.

Louisha and friends at St. Luke's Primary

Ryan from Allsorts Youth Project and two students from Blatchington Mill School joined us to talk about what makes a Trans inclusive school and the challenges faced by Trans children and young people and their families. The Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit is available on Pier2Peer. http://www.school-portal.co.uk/GroupDownloadFile.asp?GroupId=1244399&ResourceId=4978569

It was an inspiring and challenging event and the good practice shared by a range of schools and colleges provided practical ways forward for other schools. In the feedback one Headteacher commented:

“A really well planned mixture of practical advice (Ramadan), inspiring young people, the academic - social context.”

Ofsted - Children’s Services

We were pleased to receive our Children’s Services Ofsted inspection report following our four week inspection. The full inspection report is now available to look at on the Ofsted website.

Ofsted found that Children’s Services in Brighton & Hove have made improvements since our last inspection and we have no serious failings that leave children at risk of harm, but we still require improvement to be rated as ‘good’.

Ofsted found;
• The leadership of Children’s Services is good and we have useful performance and quality assurance processes to drive these improvements.
• Our services, advice and support for our looked after children, those being adopted and those leaving our care are good.
• When children are at risk of harm, social workers recognise it and quickly take action to protect them.
• Social workers, police and other professionals in the city work well together to know which young people are at risk of being sexually exploited and ensure they take the right actions to protect them.
• Our social workers know the children they work with well.
• Children who are disabled have social workers who understand their needs and are good at assessing with them what services will best help them and their families.
• Our new Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) is effective.

In a separate review, Ofsted rated the city’s independent Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) arrangements as ‘good’.

The Virtual School

I was particularly pleased to read in our recent Ofsted report so many positives about the work of our Virtual School; with recognition of its ambition for its children and the positive changes it has made recently such as introducing new PEPs and broadening its remit to focus on the needs of adopted children, which although new appear to be having success.

The Ofsted report said;
• The education of children looked after is supported well by a strong Virtual School.
• The Virtual School provides good support and oversight taking individual needs into account.
• Children in care do well at school, have good attendance and do not get excluded very often.
• The Virtual School takes a strong, proactive role and provides good support to all children who have been adopted, as well as those who are subject to a special guardianship order.
• There is effective joint working between schools and social workers

Secondary and Continuing Education Partnership

It was great to join the Secondary and Continuing Education Partnership Meeting this month, where creative and cultural learning and engagement was the focus. Peter Chivers (Head of Music & Arts) and members of the Our Future City team presented on the progress to date on the development of a number of 10 year impact goals. These goals have been developed over the last few months through a process that has involved over 900 colleagues and young people.

We were also pleased to hear a presentation from colleagues at Artswork, the Arts Council England Bridge organisation for the region, alongside a thought provoking item that focused on closing the gap by providing a rich and diverse cultural offer, from board member Richard Bradford (Headteacher at Dorothy Stringer School). This was followed by a challenging debate and sharing of ideas of how we can further develop our offer for children and young people.

For more information please visit the Our Future City website at www.ourfuturecity.org.uk or follow on Twitter @OurFutureCityBH

New Learning and Employment and Skills Partnership

I was very pleased to attend the newly formed Learning, Skills and Employment Partnership on 8 June. Our learning and skills agendas are key to the city’s future and it was good to see the coming together of partners from across these two important areas. The purpose of this group is to raise aspirations and achieve the best possible outcomes for all our future citizens in terms of learning, skills development, business growth and employment opportunities in the city.

Nick Hibberd and Hilary Ferries presenting at the Learning, Skills and Employment Partnership Meeting

We successfully brought together representatives and stakeholders from schools, colleges and key organisations to lead the Learning, Skills, Employment and Business Growth agenda on behalf of Brighton & Hove Connected. Through working together more effectively I am sure we can improve outcomes for young people and I do hope that our representative headteachers will attend and lead with us.

It was our annual LSCB away day this week where I joined colleagues and partners from across the city to review our work over the past year. It was an opportunity to celebrate the good Ofsted judgement the LSCB received and look at the outcomes of this year’s learning reviews and areas we need to improve.

Graham Bartlett, Chair of LSCB 

We spent the afternoon in challenging debate agreeing priorities for the coming year that will form part of our new business plan and ensure we tackle safeguarding issues as a strong city partnership.

Attachment Aware Brighton & Hove

On Tuesday 23 June I attended the Virtual School conference at the AMEX stadium with over 100 staff from schools. The key focus of the day was raising awareness of attachment issues and how it can affect children in care and those adopted. Our excellent key note speaker Louise Bomber (Attachment Support Teacher & Therapist) taught us all some practical techniques that schools can use to best support these children.

The conference also included a session by the Children in Care Council, our Educational Psychology Service and Mark Storey (Headteacher of Virtual School) and Rob Caddick (Key Stage 2 & 3 Advisor) from the Virtual School. It was refreshing to hear from Cottesmore Primary School on the fabulous work they have been doing to meet the needs of our children in care and adopted children. During the conference I was delighted to launch our adoption passport, a useful resource to support parents of adopted children and our school staff and other professionals http://www.fosteringinbrightonandhove.org.uk/content/adoption-support-passport.

Feedback was excellent and there is real enthusiasm that is further growing to support these children and young people in a truly 'Attachment Aware Brighton'.

Child Friendly City

I was very excited to meet with a steering group of colleagues from across Children’s Services to begin to look at the concept of ‘Child Friendly City’ for Brighton & Hove. We looked at the framework of criteria issued by Unicef for defining and developing a Child Friendly City and the work Leeds have done and benefits they have discovered. The framework identifies the steps to build a local system of governance committed to fulfilling children’s rights. The group is bringing together the work that is already being done across the city and identifies any gaps. You will be hearing more as we engage the city in this initiative to make Brighton & Hove an even better place for all our children and young people to grow up.

I am delighted to have received the Ofsted report on Patcham Juniors since my last blog. The school was judged as good. To go to good from a category is very rare so huge congratulations to Ashley and his team. Congratulations also to King's School who had their first inspection and were judged to be good and to Royal Spa who maintained their judgement of outstanding.

This means we end June with no schools in the city judged as inadequate. Ofsted have just published data that shows that of 31 March, 82% of schools nationally were judged to be good or outstanding. Our most recent figure is 84%.

I’m sure you are all aware there are changes to the Ofsted framework in September which has now been published https://www.gov.uk/changes-to-education-inspection-from-september-2015. Please take a look.

All exams and testing have finished now and the results are beginning to come in. I took the secondary forecasts report to my management meeting this month and was pleased to see the positive predictions. I look forward to the real results in August.

School Governance

It has been really good over the year to have met regularly with governors in a range of different contexts. This has given me the opportunity to talk and gain their perspectives on a range of strategic matters regarding schools and leadership, and also provide support and challenge so we can raise standards.

I met with the Secondary Chairs’ of Governors this month, which was a follow up to our positive and focussed meeting in the Autumn Term. We had a wide ranging discussion on school places and budgets and predictions of outcomes. It was good to hear from this group of governors the positive impact that partnership working is having on schools, and how the voice of governors is being strengthened through their representation on various city-wide bodies.

I was sorry to miss this month’s Governance, Strategy and Partnership Meeting; the last one of this academic year. However, I was pleased to hear they found presentations on assessment, children in care and adopted children and British Values helpful and that there was challenging debate. My thanks to Rose Wisdom (Partnership Advisor - School Governance & Leadership) and her team who organise this so well.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our governors from across the city for the time and commitment they have given to our schools this year.

Celebrations

Momentum is an excellent and well regarded mentoring scheme created by the University of Brighton and has been running for over 10 years. Students who may need support, particularly those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, who have a disability or who may be lacking in confidence, are paired with mentors to exchange knowledge with a view to improving their confidence and employability, and to enhance their prospects of career success.

I am delighted to announce Rose Wisdom (Partnership Advisor - School Governance & Leadership) was selected to receive an award from a very impressive cohort of mentors and was praised for her flexibility and selfless attitude.

Rose Wisdom with her mentoring award from Momentum

Congratulations also to Rachel Simmonds (Headteacher, West Blatchington Primary), who has just been awarded Headteacher of the Year and to West Blatchington Primary for securing the prize of School of the Year. This was happy reading in the press and really good to see the excellent leadership and drive for improvement recognised at this school.

Rachel Simmonds with pupils from West Blatchington Primary

The Importance of Apprenticeships

On Thursday 2 July the council is bringing together training providers, employers and information advice and guidance professionals at an apprenticeship matching event. It’s a great opportunity for young people (aged 16 - 24) to meet training providers offering live apprenticeship vacancies in Brighton & Hove.

There will be advisors on hand to meet young people and find out about their current situation and what they are looking for. They will let young people know what kinds of vacancies are available so they can speak to the right training providers and employers. Find out more about our apprenticeship matching events online or contact Shiromi Cabraal on 01273 290735 or email Apprenticeships@brighton-hove.gov.uk.

Best wishes,

Jo

Keep in touch and follow me on Twitter @JoMLyons, I'd urge you all to set up accounts for your schools if you don't already have one.