Happy Christmas

Wishing you a Happy Christmas 

and good wishes for the New Year

from

Jo Lyons

and the

Education & Skills team

Schools Christmas Concert

A highlight of my week was attending this year’s Schools Christmas Concert. A spectacular performance by over 1,500 children and young people from 44 schools across the city. This event is a great example of our Brighton & Hove Education Partnership working together to show its very best practice. Congratulations to all the young singers and musicians, the Music and Arts service and the schools for their hard work and creative performances. As well as the amazing choir, we heard the Brighton & Hove Big Band, Brighton Youth Orchestra, and Orchestra 360. My favourite of the night was ‘No Room at the Inn’ by J Redwood with Cedar Centre and Downs View School. Also so good to see everyone using Makaton, even the audience!

Christmas Concert School Choirs

Merry Christmas, Everyone! https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/940342242337804293

Longhill High School - Be the Change Programme

Graham Moore and students from Longhill High School

Volunteers from Brighton’s business community were touched by the honest and emotional stories from 13 and 14 year olds from Longhill High School who stood up and talked about their life experiences and day to day challenges at the one off Be the Change event at the school which was organised and managed by LoveLocalJobs.com.

Student from Longhill High School presenting to the room

Almost 100 students and 25 business volunteers from organisations such as Southern Water, American Express and Focus Group took part in activities that focussed on happiness, confidence, hope, relationships and employability and many of them bravely spoke about the very personal issues which they feel are holding them back. The central aim of Be the Change is to encourage young people to aspire to a brighter future and discuss the issues they need to overcome in order to achieve that goal, with the support of business professionals from the local business community.

Group work with business guides and students from Longhill High School

Jo Ellis, Head of Year 9 from Longhill High School said: ‘Brilliant Day! To see students feeling safe and secure, being honest and open with their peers about their own insecurities was amazing. I have never seen so many of these students engaged and listening so intently all day. I have been inspired as a teacher by the skill demonstrated by the Be the Change team – they really did have a huge impact on every young person in the room. I would definitely recommend Be the Change for all year 9 students.’

Teaching Schools

The two teaching schools in the city, Pavilion and Downs Teaching School Alliance and the Sussex Coast Teaching School Alliance are both developing their offers to schools locally and beyond. Both teaching school alliances in partnership with the Local Authority have put in bids for the DfE’s Strategic School Improvement Fund for maths at KS2 and behaviour and attendance at KS4. We will know whether these have been successful in early January.

Pavilion and Downs are now offering a range of courses and opportunities using expert teachers from across the five member schools. These include coaching for staff and 'leading for Characterful Schools'.
Sussex Coast are taking part in the EEF project; 'School Partnership Programme', which enables colleagues to be fully trained in supporting and challenging other schools. They are also delivering a suite of leadership programmes in partnership with the Institute of Education.
Find out more about the opportunities they offer on their websites; http://www.pavilionanddowns.co.uk/ and https://sussexcoasttsa.co.uk/brighton-hove/primary/sctsa

Congratulations to Carden Nursery and Primary School

Carden has become one of the first schools in England to win a new national award for making a commitment to develop its students to be the best they can be in competitive school sport.

School Games Mark platinum winners, Carden Primary School

They are one of only 104 schools in the country to receive the special School Games Platinum Award. They have been rewarded for their commitment to the development of sport across schools and into the community. They have shown consistently high-levels of enthusiasm and commitment to school sport.

Helen Longton-Howorth, Head Teacher said: ‘I am so pleased and proud that our fantastic PE team and children who have worked tirelessly to achieve this award have been successful. It is testament to our hugely successful sports and PE programme which is so beneficial to all our students.’

Well done, Carden. We are very proud of your success.

Youth Cross Party Working Group

The first meeting on the Youth Cross Party Group took place on 13 December. The aim of the group is to explore long-term arrangements for youth provision in the city and a governance model that includes the voice of young people. Nine young people attended from a range of youth organisations including Brighton Youth Centre, the Hangleton and Knoll Project, the Children in Care Council, the Youth Council and AudioActive. The meeting was chaired by Councillor Dan Chapman and also attended by Councillors Vanessa Brown and Alex Phillips, and our Executive Director of Families, Children and Learning Pinaki Ghoshal. The group discussed how it will work in the future including how to feed in views from more young people across the city. The group also discussed the proposals for a Youth Portal to bring together information on activities for young people. The next meeting will be held in January and look at existing youth services in more detail and priorities for future work.

My visit to Patcham High

The Bridge Centre at Patcham High

Thank you to John McKee at Patcham High for welcoming me to the school this month. During my visit it was positive to see how the school is developing new provision and intervention at their Bridge Centre to support the social and emotional needs of young people and continuing the development of the school’s inclusive practice. Patcham are working closely with Albion in the Community to support the development of the Bridge. It was good to meet Laura Sourbutts who is the Senior Learning Mentor at the Bridge and hear how passionate she is about the work and meeting the needs of the young people. 

Patcham books

The Skills & Employment Team

The Skills & Employment Team co-ordinated a Rapid Response Employment Event with the DWP (Department of Work & Pensions) for staff made redundant from Palmer & Harvey at Jubilee Library on 11 December 2017. Palmer & Harvey, one of the UK’s largest private companies, went into administration with 2,500 immediate job losses a fortnight ago. Locally this has affected 160 people who live in BN postcodes. Barclays, Ocado, Legal & General & Parker Building Supplies were among the employers who attended, plus LoveLocalJobs and a range of recruitment agencies. Expert help was also at hand with face-to-face interviews and help with C.V. writing. The DWP & Citizens Advice Bureau were there to offer advice on the benefits system, and the changes with the rollout of Universal Credit in Brighton & Hove. Independent and college training providers also attended to let people know about course and re-training opportunities.

Rapid Response Employment Event at Jubilee Library

The Skills & Employment Team, led by Rachel Carter, works to support and sustain adult skills in the city and to achieve the objectives of the City Employment & Skills Plan. Many thanks to all the council staff who rallied round to make this event happen in a week and the library service who gave us free use of conference facilities. We could not have run this event without the team of apprentices Ella, Mairna & Harriet who were so helpful and flexible.

Lots of our schools have been inspected in the last month, and we’ve had the results back for a number of them.

I’m delighted to announce that Westdene Primary, Cottesmore St Marys, Coldean Primary School, Patcham High and The BPRU were all graded as Good once again in their last Ofsted inspections. Congratulations to headteachers, school staff, children and governors.

All reports are available on the Ofsted website: https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/

Balfour Primary also had an inspection this half term and although the overall judgement was Requires Improvement, we are pleased that the inspectors reported: 'Balfour Primary School is a place where pupils can be themselves and are respected as individuals’ ‘the quality of teaching is now good and improving’.

The Ofsted Annual report is also out, read it here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/ofsted-annual-report-201617

Research and Evidence Based Practice

I am looking forward to welcoming Kevan Collins, Chief Executive of the Education Endowment Fund to our school and college leaders meeting on January 19th, which has the theme of research and evidence based practice.

Kevan will be talking about the importance of evidence and research in education, using some of the EEF projects as examples. Jonathan Cooper will be talking about St Luke's approach to research based Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and colleagues will be sharing some of the research they have done.

All school and college leaders and interested senior leaders are very welcome to attend. Please register on BEEM and, if you would like to share anything from your school or college, please contact Hilary Ferries (hilary.ferries@brighton-hove.gov.uk).

Welcome, Goodbye and Thankyou

After 30 years’ service, Wendy Ellis-Martin, Transport Team Leader, is taking early retirement and will be leaving her role in January. We wish her all the very best in her future endeavours.

Iain Parks, Deputy Headteacher from St Andrew’s and St Martin’s will be leaving the authority to take up a headship role in Liverpool which starts in January. As well as his Deputy Head duties Iain has also contributed to Brighton & Hove SACRE for the last two years. We all wish him the very best luck in his new role.

Congratulations to Roger Snell, Traded Services Manager, who has been successfully recruited to a 12 month secondment as Orbis Schools Lead starting in February 2018. The role is to lead the development and delivery of the traded service strategy for schools and academies within the Orbis Partnership and will involve working closely with service leads to understand and develop existing approaches and identifying new opportunities within the market to help strengthen the Orbis offer. Orbis is a local authority shared services partnership between Surrey, East Sussex and Brighton Councils. Roger will use the extensive knowledge built up working here and previously in East Sussex in his new role and we are pleased he will still be in regular contact. Arrangements for how his role will be covered during the 12 months will follow.

Best wishes,

Jo

Keep in touch and follow me on Twitter @JoMLyons
Find details here Twitter accounts across all council services.