Children’s Parade
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| Childrens Parade 2016 |
May began with the start of the festival and the arrival
of the annual Children’s Parade. It truly grows from strength to strength every
year. I was so proud of all our schools and wider partners, who participated in
the amazing, creative displays of colour.
I also had the great pleasure of hearing our talented
young musicians from the music & arts service taking part in several
events. Beginning with the Children’s Parade, the Brass Ensemble lead the Parade
with a collection of Ska tunes and shortly after the Brighton & Hove Youth
Concert Band and Big Band took to the Fringe City Stage on New Road. Pitch Perfect also saw music students on
three different ‘pitches’ around the around the Royal Pavilion Estate with
performances of acoustic pop and folk music in the Brighton Dome café-bar and
chamber music in the Brighton Museum and Royal Pavilion music room.
Laura van der Heijden performed with the Brighton Youth
Orchestra at All Saints Church, in an exciting programme that included music by
Gabrieli, Copland and Rutter. In another
‘first’ for this year’s Festival, young flute-players performed their own
Indian-inspired composition as part of the Dr Blighty installation in the Royal
Pavilion Garden.
Huge congratulations to all those who took part in this
years 50th Brighton Festival.
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| Brass Ensemble |
Annual
Report of the Director of Public Health 2015/16 - social media
Tom Scanlon our previous Director of
Public Health, managed to launched the 2015/16 annual report before he left. This edition covers the impact of social media, through YouTube
videos and online content. In recent years, the role of on-line behaviours,
resources and in particular social media in the way we live our lives, has come
increasingly to the fore. In Brighton & Hove this has been
particularly apparent in our public health work with partners in local schools.
To find out more take a look using the hyperlink above.
Ofsted
have been frequent visitors to our city schools this half term. I am delighted
to say we have now received reports for Benfield and Bevendean who had OFSTED last
month and they were judged to be good and the Jeanne Saunders Centre has
maintained its outstanding. Congratulations to all the teams.
This
month there have been inspections at Woodingdean, St Mary Magdalen Catholic
Primary School and Downs View. Adrian has been told that the judgement of
outstanding is not confidential – so congratulations to Downs View. I will feed
back about the other two schools next month when their reports will be
published.
Our
link HMI, Clive Close, came for his termly visit on Monday 9th May. As well
as receiving termly updates on Prevent and school improvement, Clive also spoke
about 50 headteachers about the new(ish) short inspections and how they
work. I have heard from several of you that this was helpful. Many
thanks to PACA for hosting this event.
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| LA SEND Inspection |
Two
weeks of May have been taken up by our LA OfSTED Inspection of SEND. We got the
anticipated call on Monday 16th May and five inspectors arrived on Monday 23rd May, with a couple more to follow later in the week. Regan
and I have been very impressed with how our staff and partnership organisations
have come together to prepare and present collaboratively to the inspectors.
Thanks also to those schools, nurseries and other provisions across the city who
have participated and been visited by the team to provide evidence. We now wait
in anticipation for the outcome.
National Reading
Recovery
I’d like to congratulation
Kathryn Coleman (ECaR Teacher) and all the Woodingdean Primary School staff,
pupils, families and community for winning a National Reading Recovery School
of the Year Award 2016. The theme of Kathryn’s application was: Woodingdean
Primary Builds a Reading Community. Her case study highlighted the
effectiveness of a whole school approach in developing a Reading for Pleasure
community of successful readers. Work with the local Library and community was
a feature of the application. The
Reading Recovery Awards, organised by the International Literacy Centre,
celebrate and honour practitioners who have made outstanding contribution to
children's literacy through Reading Recovery. The award will be
presented on Friday 10th June.
Link to announcement on
Institute of Education UCL site here:
Well done Kathryn, you and the school team have worked
incredibly hard to provide excellent opportunities for the pupils and families
at Woodingdean Primary school.
Equalities
Work and Visit From Stonewall
I was delighted to attend a morning at Varndean with
national charity Stonewall looking at our best and innovative practice. Staff
and pupils from St Luke's Primary, Queens Park Primary, Varndean and Dorothy
Stringer Schools talked about the work they had been doing to value family
diversity, challenge gender stereotypes, prevent and respond to homophobia,
biphobia and transphobia and support lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans young
people. I was impressed to hear about the LGBT student groups and staff allies groups
that are established and forming in our secondary schools. There is a lot of
work to be proud of and more work we need to do to ensure all staff in all our schools
give these positive messages and challenge inappropriate language.
BIG Cookathon
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| Stanford Reception Class enjoying baking |
The
whole of Stanford Infants School took part in this National Event. Children,
families and members of the community competed against budding cooks across the
country in a healthy eating challenge!
Brighton
and Hove School Meals Team and Eden Foodservice fully supported this event by
organising workshops for all the children to take part in. Reception pupils made some amazing bread
rolls for the whole school, Year 1 helped by chopping vegetables for main meal
a mountain of peppers, spring onions, parsley etc cut safely with kitchen
scissors, Year 2 made dessert - fruit kebabs made from Melon, Grapes and
Bananas.
A
big thank you to Jamila and the kitchen team, the school, pupils and parents
that made this such an amazing day. A
total of 230 pupils plus adults enjoyed
eating the lunch they had prepared on the day!
Standard Attainments
Tests (SATS)
During
May, all Primary and Junior Schools across the city successfully administered
the new end of Key Stage 2 SATs. This current Year 6 cohort is the first to
have been tested against the new National Curriculum Programmes of Study.
Despite these new assessment procedures attracting considerable national media
attention and coverage this year, schools were still able to effectively
implement the tests in line with statutory expectations. As part of the Local
Authority’s statutory role, LA officers observed the SATs taking place in a
sample of ten schools and saw good practice in all the schools and all children
doing their very best. Results are planned to be released for schools on Tuesday 5 July.
Secondary Admissions Engagement
Phase
After
7 weeks, 24 public meetings, attended by approximately 820 people, 3 focus
groups with pupils in Years 3 and 4, 1 focus group with pupils in Year 7, 1644
online responses, 731 Years 3 and 4 responses and 122 direct email submissions
the engagement phase of the secondary school admission arrangements work has
been completed. It has been a privilege for Richard Barker and myself to listen
to so many people’s views and suggestions that will help the process going forward.
There
now follows a period of further discussion with the working group to consider the responses received and to
shape the proposal that will be formally consulted upon in the autumn.
Mile Oak School 50th
Birthday
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| Mile Oak Children 1966 |
Mile
Oak Primary celebrated their 50th birthday on Wednesday 25 May and Hilary Ferries our Head of Standards and Achievement attended to
celebrate with them. Pupils, staff and guests took part in the celebrations,
with pupils dressing up in authentic 1960’s clothes and singing songs of the
era. Attendees at the celebrations included Trudy Roberts, the current Deputy Headteacher
at Stanford Juniors who went to Mile Oak Primary School as a pupil but also
started her teaching career there.
During
the afternoon a time capsule which had been buried on the school’s 30th
birthday was unearthed and they read out what Trudy had written when she was an
Newly Qualified Teacher there.
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| Former Pupil and Staff Member |
Update on post 16 Learning and Skills
The council will be hosting a group of students from
Patcham High and Varndean school on Friday 10 June as part of the Be the
Change programme, and students will have the opportunity to quiz Geoff Raw, the
Chief Executive, as well as a tour of the jail cells under Brighton Town Hall!
The
Employer Pledge was generated by the Employer Skills Task Force, a group of
employers committed to creating work opportunities for young people in the
city. There have been over 100 pledges made, and employers are being linked
with schools to arrange workplace visits, enterprise events and talks in
schools. If any school is interested in an activity, do get in touch with
Stephanie Baker who is the post 16 team apprentice and she will help you. Stephanie.Baker@brighton-hove.gov.uk
Work continues in exploring alternative provision in the
city, for those aged 14-16 and those in the post 16 age group. We are working with
a number of providers such as City College, Sussex Cricket Foundation and DV8 who
are currently devising programmes for alternative courses, part time or full
time.
In post 16 independent providers come and go, and an
updated leaflet on Entry and level 1 provision will be ready for GCSE results
day aiming to give a comprehensive picture across the city for those learners
who might need support in considering their options.
St
Bernadette's RC Primary Achieve Silver History Quality Mark
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| St Bernadette's Pupils bringing history to life |
The Quality Mark is an award that
recognises the excellence of history provision in a school. It assesses and
values the history provision of the teacher, their department and the school
and what is being offered to young people. We are incredibly proud of St
Bernadette's achievement of
this award and it’s brilliant to see the pupils taking such an active interest
in History. Well done to all involved!
Governance, Strategy &
Partnership
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Geoff Raw (Chef Executive) and Dennis Muir (Governor at Carlton Hill Primary School) |
It was great to see such a high turn-out from governors
and clerks at our termly GSP meeting at City College this week. 99% of
the city’s schools were represented and we were pleased to have the council’s
Chief Executive Geoff Raw opening the meeting. He presented certificates
to governors who have successfully completed the Development Programme for
Chairs and Aspiring Chairs from the National College for Teaching and
Leadership. The Governor Support team will soon be starting the fifth
cohort of this successful programme and it was really encouraging to hear from
participants how useful the programme had been in developing their leadership
skills.
Participants also received updates from LA colleagues on the Prevent Strategy and Enterprise Governors, before taking part in an extended session about the implications of the recent White Paper ‘Educational Excellence Everywhere’. We looked at the opportunities and challenges that this will bring and explored different partnership models to be considered in order to ensure schools are supported in to the future with a continued focus on high and improving standards. Thank you to everyone who took part and we will be in touch about further engagement activities soon.
Families, Children
and Learning
I am delighted that the first phase of our council
restructure is complete and we are now the Families, Children and Learning
Directorate and our branch name will now be known as Education and Skills in
recognition of its additional and wider areas of focus and responsibility.
I am
also delighted that a number of managers and services have come to join us. A warm welcome to Debbie Corbridge, the Integrated Team
for Families Manager, Chris Parfitt, the Youth Service Manager, Caroline Parker
the Head of Sure Start and their teams.
Also joining the team from Human Resources is Carla
Butler who will be working on the apprenticeship programme with the Post 16
Team.
Goodbye
to Steve Barton who will be retiring from the council after many years of
excellent service across a range of roles. Under his leadership a new Early
Help Hub has been established, we achieved a 100% of ‘troubled families turned
around,’ we managed to make significant changes to our Children’s Centres and
also carried out a full review of our Youth Service. We wish him well into the
future.
School & College Leaders’ Business
Meeting
A heads up that we will be holding an event for
Head Teachers and senior School and College Leaders on Digital Creativity in
the classroom on Friday 24 June. Using digital creativity in the
classroom: Digital creativity is about
using digital tools that challenge, encourage and foster a sense of
enthusiasm for learning.
We have
been invited by the Economic and Social Engagement Team from the University of
Brighton to hold our summer term meeting in their Creativity Centre. We
will be joined by Phil Jones from Wired Sussex about digital creativity and how
Brighton & Hove schools might learn from this for their own practice. This will be followed by several workshops where schools will have the
opportunity to see and try out some of the best practice that is being
developed in our schools. Look out for the invite from Schools Training.
To book onto this event please
contact: schools.training@brighton-hove.gov.uk Tel: 01273 293511 or log in and book
directly on www.beem.org.uk.
Please book on by Monday 11 June to confirm a place.
