I am absolutely delighted to confirm that following submission of evidence in July to Stonewall’s Children and Young People’s Champion Award, Brighton & Hove City Council has recently won the Gold Award with a score of 126/130.
A range of evidence of work done to prevent homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying and to promote lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans inclusion was required from teams within Families, Children and Learning and from schools for criteria related to training, working groups and strategic leadership.
This is a positive reflection of the hard work of staff in our schools and our partnership working with the ever brilliant Allsorts Youth Project who provide a range of support including training, LGBT Peer educator sessions in school and support for parents and carers of LGBT young people.
I would like to record thanks to Allsorts and also to Sam Beal, our Partnership Adviser: Health & Wellbeing, for her tremendous work with partners city wide which has been reflected in this award.
Huge congratulations on this fantastic achievement to everyone involved.
Anti Bullying Week
Anti Bullying Week took place from 11-15 November with a theme of ‘Change Starts with Us’. This nationwide event is organised by the Anti Bullying Alliance and is intended to raise awareness of the issue of bullying among children, especially in schools. Children of all ages as well as parents and carers are encouraged to get involved in the event and take part in activities that will help to shine a light on the problem of bullying and ways to help resolve the issue. In Brighton & Hove a wide-range of activities took place this year. Thanks to schools for participating in this year’s anti-bullying week, I have enjoyed hearing about activities via Twitter. We have had positive feedback on the resources produced by the Equality and Anti-Bullying Service and further feedback is welcomed – please send to pshe@brighton-hove.gov.uk so that the service can continue to provide high quality resources.
This year Patcham High took a slightly different approach to an anti-bullying week assembly. Patcham High holds an assembly each half term marking a religious festival. This half term, the assembly brought together Anti-Bullying Week (Change Starts With Us) and Guru Nanak's birthday being celebrated on 12 November. The assembly included an extract from the Dalai Lama's book 'A Call for Revolution' to emphasise to our young people that change does start with them. That we, as adults, have faith in them to make the right decisions and do the right thing to move our society away from "hatred, violence, selfishness, greed and fanaticism". The life of Guru Nanak was used as a role model for standing up for equality for all and fighting to remove discrimination from society.
Be the Change
The Brighton Be the Change 2019 launch event took place on Tuesday 19 November in Hove.
Be the Change is aimed at young people from Year 9 (14 years old) who for one reason or another may be disengaged at school or lack confidence in their own abilities but who have real potential once they are involved in inspiring and engaging activities and given positive role models. The programme helps to support these young people on their journey, opening their eyes to the world of work and wealth of the possibilities and career opportunities in their hometown and beyond.
Launching with this powerful day long conference, Be The Change brings together young people with business guides from the local area. Schools participating include BACA, Varndean, Blatchington Mill, Longhill and Cardinal Newman. The event was an interactive and engaging experience which shed light on the importance of individual qualities as well as qualifications and demonstrated to young people that (although not always academic) they are bright and talented and, with support, they can have successful futures.
I look forward to hearing more about this programme over the coming months.
Every Child a Reader
We are very excited about the additional resource in place to expand Every Child a Reader (ECaR) across the authority so that more children in our schools can benefit from this excellent provision.
Primary and Secondary schools have been invited to sign up to train teaching assistants for Better Reading @Primary (BRP), Fischer Family Trust Wave 3 (FFTW3) or Inference Training by Friday 29 November. Bex Shore, our ECaR Teacher Leader and Joyti Azad, LA Strategic Lead, will be meeting with Primary Headteachers at their next briefing to explain these interventions in more detail and share the exciting way forward by bringing ECaR into more of our schools.
Schools that currently have an ECaR teacher have seen the impact on reading throughout their communities:
“There are many reasons why the ability to read is a challenge for some but we know that the Every Child a Reader programme can demystify the process and open up the wonderful world or reading and writing for a child. At Middle Street, Vicky’s role as an ECaR teacher impacts across the whole school as well as opening up the world of literature and enriching the lives of the individual children she has worked with over the years.” Julie Aldous, Headteacher at Middle Street Primary School.
“Rudyard Kipling is exceptionally fortunate to have a full time ECaR teacher, Julia Tooke, who is a highly skilled practitioner and middle leader who drives reading and writing throughout the school. Her knowledge and expertise is shared with a team of TAs who lead interventions to positively support the role of ECaR at Rudyard.” Joanne Smith, Headteacher at Rudyard Kipling Primary School.
We look forward to working together in this area so that we can continue to open up a whole new world for children through the joy of reading.
Family Learning Halloween Event
Family Learning Brighton & Hove held a Halloween event at Hangleton Library on Sunday 27 October to celebrate Family Learning Festival month. Twenty five local families joined us for spooky stories and crafts and picked up packs of English, maths, crafting and scavenger hunt activities to take home for half term. It was lovely to see families enjoying the activities together and a good opportunity to share information about the Family Learning service in Brighton & Hove and to hand out the Campaign for Learning Best Coach guides.
For information about Family Learning Brighton & Hove please contact Kirsty Cregan on 01273 810213.
O360 Young Leaders
Brighton & Hove Music & Arts have been leading Orchestra 360 (o360), an inclusive music group for children and young people with Special Educational Needs/Disabilities and their parents/carers and siblings for 3 years; and the group has become one of our largest and most popular music activities, with over 100 children and young people taking part.
Ahead of o360 sessions running in November and December, working towards a performance on 14 December 2019; a group of 6 o360 members were invited to a Young Leaders training day, to develop their musical and leadership skills. Music leaders who facilitate the group were keen to find new ways to support the young people to make good musical progress, while also designing a training pathway that will open-up new opportunities in music leadership for young people with SEND.
All the young people took part in warm up games, rhythmic and singing activities; discussion and practice of how to lead music activities with young people; a carousel of taster sessions where they each tried 5 different instruments; more intensive individual tuition on a chosen instrument and group music-making activities.
Facilitated by James Redwood, Emma Collins and a team of music leaders from Brighton & Hove Music & Arts, the day was successful in piloting a new approach to supporting aspiring music leaders and further o360 Young Leader training will be offered on a regular basis throughout the coming year, in conjunction with the orchestra’s regular programme of activity.
One parent of a young participant said ‘I just wanted to let you know that my daughter has not stopped talking about how much she enjoyed Saturday. It is often quite hard to get her to talk about what she has been doing but she hasn’t stopped talking about what music she did, how she can help set up and encourage younger children. It really had a big impact on her.’
For more information about o360 please visit the website:
Children in Care and Care Leavers Awards
Every child or young person in care has had different experiences in life. The Children in Care and Care Leavers Awards is an annual celebration recognising the personal achievements of children and young people who are in care or have been in care in Brighton & Hove.
Designed to recognise how award winners have made a difference to their own or someone else’s life, the theme for this year’s event was “Reach for the Stars” to show that there is no limit to how high people can aim or how far their success can soar.
The annual awards took place last week on Friday 22 November, hosted by British Airways i360. I’d like to offer congratulations to all the awards winners and everyone who has worked so hard to make this celebration such an inspiring and successful event.
Brighton & Hove Primary Schools Cross Country
The Brighton & Hove Primary Schools Cross Country event took place on 20 November. 1,197 children, from 43 different primary schools, completed the course safely and with lots of smiles on their faces!
A big thank you to the 48 Sports Leaders from Hove Park, Blatchington Mill and Dorothy Stringer who helped get all of these children around the course safely. Thank you as well to Phoenix Athletics club and their volunteers for helping with the funnel.
The children who finished in the top 5 in the year 5 races and top 10 in the year 6 races will be invited along to the Sussex School Games finals on Thursday 2 April at Waterhall to represent Brighton & Hove.
There are lots of opportunities in the city to get running:
Parkrun
Brighton Marathon and Brighton Half Marathon Youth Races
Brighton Athletics Club
Phoenix Athletics Club
School Attendance
I’m delighted that our attendance campaign “Miss School Miss Out” championed by our Brighton & Hove Education Partnership is starting to have real impact.
Pupil absence in Brighton & Hove has decreased by 0.25% from 5.06% in 2017/18 to 4.81% in 2018/19. This is our lowest average pupil absence in the last 6 years and the second lowest average in the last 13 years. Persistent absence has decreased by 1.13% from 11.77% in 2017/18 to 10.64% in 2018/19. This is our lowest percentage of pupils classed as being persistently absent ever.
Well done to all our schools and the Access to Education Team for their continued focus on this important area of work.
We have now had three inspections at primary schools under the new Inspection Framework, which started in September 2019: St Mary Magdalen Catholic Primary School received a Section 5 inspection and Benfield Primary and Woodingdean Primary School received Section 8 inspections (Woodingdean’s finishes today 29 November).
We are now awaiting the results of these inspections and look forward to reporting these in the next newsletter.
Bright Start Nursery Rated 'Good' by Ofsted
Congratulations to Bright Start nursery in central Brighton which has been rated ‘good’ by Ofsted.
Their inspector described Bright Start, which is run by Brighton & Hove City Council, as a vibrant, busy and stimulating nursery. They said that:
• Children are very happy and safe, and their well-being is given very high priority
• Parents say how staff go above and beyond what they expect and confirmed how happy they are with the care provided
• Behaviour is good and every child's unique qualities are understood and catered for
• Staff work hard to make sure every child achieves well, especially those who need extra help with their learning
• The curriculum offers children a broad range of learning experiences
• Children leave Bright Start confident, sociable and ready for their future learning.
Congratulations to all of the staff at Bright Start and everyone involved in achieving this result.
Welcomes
Welcome also to two new members of the Access to Education Team:- Natasha Young who is an Engagement Officer with a particular emphasis on monitoring Elective Home Education (EHE) and Hannah Campbell who is working on Child Performance/ Chaperone Licences.
Best wishes,
Jo
Keep in touch and follow me on Twitter @JoMLyons
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