Merry Christmas from Education and Skills

As we approach the end of term, I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for the work you do across Brighton and Hove to make a positive difference to the children and communities in your care every day.  I look forward to continuing to work with you in partnership in the new year and I hope you find time to relax and recuperate over the festive period. 

One Voice Festival of Singing

It has been wonderful to hear more about the One Voice Festival of Singing which has been taking part across Brighton & Hove this month involving some of our schools from across the city. Organised by Create Music, the music hub for Brighton & Hove and East Sussex, the event featured over 1000 children performing alongside young musicians from Create Music, including Brighton & Hove Youth Percussion Ensemble, Brighton & Hove Youth Wind Orchestra and Lewes Youth Concert Band and has been a lovely celebration to start the festive period. Well done to everyone who took part in this fantastic performance.

Secondary Schools for a Sustainable Future Summit

On Friday 8 December, while world leaders were meeting at COP28, around 60 students from six Brighton & Hove schools hosted the first Secondary Schools for a Sustainable Future Summit. The event was attended by school staff, governors and council officers and aimed to prioritise climate action in secondary schools across the city.  The schools involved were Blatchington Mill, Cardinal Newman, Dorothy Stringer, Hove Park, Portslade Aldridge Community Academy and Varndean.  

Students presented their own stories explaining why addressing the climate crisis and protecting the environment was important to them and shared research they had conducted on different sustainability themes. They then agreed on a single theme of Consumption and Waste which they will progress as a city-wide campaign. Student Climate Leaders will now research and campaign around Consumption & Waste in schools, before coming together again at a Student Assembly in March to share commitments from schools, the council and local experts.  Headteachers and senior representatives also made joint pledges to make schools more sustainable by the end of the 2025 academic year. These included stopping the use of single use plastic, reducing carbon emissions from the use of energy by 20%, giving over 10% more of school land to biodiversity and establishing a dynamic group of 70-100 student climate ambassadors in each of their schools.

Active Sussex Awards 2023

                                                       Emma Greenhough

Congratulations to Emma Greenhough, Brighton & Hove School Games Organiser & Active for Life Manager at Brighton & Hove City Council, who won the Outstanding Contribution to Sport & Physical Activity at the Active Sussex Awards 2023 earlier this month. 

Emma has worked in Brighton & Hove for over 15 years, for the School Sport Partnership and as Schools Games Organiser since inception, activating schools and passionately addressing inequalities.  An amazing 184,175 children and young people have participated in School Games since 2012 and in 2022/23, 47 primary/junior schools entered 1 or more School Games events and 10 secondaries entered 3 or more events with 37 schools achieving School Games Mark. Well done to Emma on this fantastic and well deserved achievement.

Goodbyes

Hildi Mitchell

We say goodbye this month to Hildi Mitchell, Headteacher of Downs Infant School.  We would like to thank Hildi for her incredible contribution to the city within her own very successful and popular school and also as an NAHT representative which has meant she has stepped forward to support all headteachers in the city and in her role as governor at St Peter’s Primary School too. Hildi will be very missed by colleagues across the city and we wish her all the best for the future.

Paul Barber

Paul Barber is also leaving his role as Headteacher of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Primary at the end of this term. Having joined at a difficult time during Covid, he has lead the school from strength to strength and we would like to wish him the best of luck in his next Headship role.

Best wishes,

Jo

Keep in touch and follow me on Twitter @JoMLyons

Find details here Twitter accounts across all council services.

Annual Children in Care Awards Ceremony

 

On Friday 17 November, the annual Children in Care Awards Ceremony took place at the Amex Stadium.  This year the event was hosted by two care leavers who did an amazing job!  There were four categories of awards, Big Hearts, Big Thinkers, Big Strengths and Big Talents, with two very special awards also presented to The Care Leaver of the Year and the Child in Care of Year.

The entertainment this year was fantastic. Two of our children in care, both budding musicians, played solo pieces. One played the piano and the other played the guitar. In addition to this, our newly formed Care to Dance group, showed their talents in two dance pieces that were both performed superbly. There was also an amazing table tennis demonstration from some of our very talented young people in care who play regularly with the Brighton Table Tennis Club. The Ceremony was closed with a motivational and very energetic performance by one of our care leavers who is an exceptional rap music artist. Congratulations to everyone involved in this wonderful event and to all of the award winners.

Healing Classrooms - Helping refugee children through art

It has been lovely to hear about the International Rescue Committee’s Healing Classrooms Programme which trains schools and educators on how to offer refugee and asylum-seeking children a safe place to learn and thrive after experiencing conflict and crisis. Children are able to create artwork based around themselves, their families, their countries and culture to promote healing and community through creative expression. Teacher Suzanne Fisher has recently been working with children on a project inspired by Judy Bowman - an African American artist who makes portraits from different fabrics and paper designs - with the children using fabrics from Syria, Afghanistan and more. When contacted about the children’s project, the artist asked to see pictures of the children’s work. The work was also displayed as part of an exhibition in the Library in Brighton and Hove during Refugee Week with personal invites sent to parents to join the celebration. After seeing the exhibition, Judy Bowman wrote to the children to say how happy she was to “see how creative these pieces of art are – they warm my heart”.  

Sixth Annual Brighton and Hove Apprenticeship Graduation

The sixth annual Brighton and Hove Apprenticeship Graduation took place in November with over 150 guests and four special award categories recognising and celebrating graduates, training providers and employers and their invaluable work supporting apprentices across the city. Councillor Bella Sankey, Leader of Brighton and Hove City Council, opened the event which was followed by an employer spotlight from Morgan Sindall Construction. An apprenticeship spotlight focused on teaching apprenticeships with apprentices from the University of Brighton, Downs View Special School and BHASVIC sharing their experiences.  Graduates were presented with their certificates by the Mayor, Councillor Jackie O'Quinn. Congratulations to all of this year’s Graduates and Award winners.

Youth Employment Hub

I am delighted to announce that The Youth Employment Hub has successfully secured year three funding from the DWP. The Youth Employment Hub has supported 684 young people into work, apprenticeships and traineeships. It provides a safe, welcoming space for young people with a number of services being co-located. This ensures all needs are met, from wellbeing to independent living skills and applying for work. 

NHS Taster Day

The Council’s Skills and Employment team, in partnership with the NHS, recently held a taster day at the new Louisa Martindale Building at the Royal Sussex County hospital to raise awareness of the different roles and career pathways available in the NHS.  The day was available to anyone over the age of 16, with collaboration from City Partners DWP, Sussex Council of Training Providers, Youth Employment Hub and the National Careers Service who helped to promote the day. Over 40 people attended the day and were given the opportunity to have a go at simulating keyhole surgery and how to insert needles to take blood. This was an amazing experience for the attendees and gave them an insight into some of the procedures which take place on a day-to-day basis.

Downs Junior School received an inspection this month and we are expecting the report to be published soon.

The Ofsted report for Dorothy Stringer School has now been published and they retained their ‘Good’ grade. Inspectors recognised that staff are ambitious for all pupils and ‘dedicated to inclusivity’. There was praise for leaders and governors, stating that ‘the impact of leadership at all levels of the school is clearly demonstrated in improvements and outcomes’. Well done to all involved.

Welcomes

                                                                Philip Edkins

We welcome Philip Edkins as Acting Head at Homewood College. We wish him well and are all looking forward to working with him.

Best wishes,

Jo

Keep in touch and follow me on Twitter @JoMLyons

Find details here Twitter accounts across all council services.

Power of Reading

 

Fourteen schools from across the city came together earlier this term to participate in the third cohort of the local authority funded offer to train teachers in the Power of Reading led by the Centre of Literacy for Primary Education (CLPE). The training was delivered CPLE’s Primary Adviser Teacher, Darren Matthews, who left teachers inspired and raring to go with starting this approach of using high quality texts to engage pupils in their writing.  Associate Power of Reading school, Rudyard Kipling, hosted this event with their lead teacher, Lindsay Vaughan sharing the impact this approach has had on how teachers teach writing and the improvement in pupils’ engagement with literacy in school and at home. 

Delegates were fortunate to have a presentation from Viviane Schwarz, award-winning author and illustrator of interactive books, picture books, graphic novels, and craft books. This also included how she uses these skills when she lectures in illustration and game design at university level. She provided an interesting and fascinating insight to her journey on becoming a children’s author. If you would like to find out more about Power of Reading, please contact Joyti.Azad@brighton-hove.gov.uk

Darren Matthews delivering a whole school approach to literacy teaching

      Lindsay Vaughan shares the impact of Power of Reading at Rudyard Kipling School

                                   Viviane Schwarz shares her journey with teachers

Youth Employability 2023 Published Results

The Youth Employability team

Well done to the Youth Employability team who now have their full set of published results for 2022-2023. These show that Brighton & Hove is within the second highest performing group of local authorities out of five for our combined Not in Education, Employment or Training and Not Known situations of young people. As well as providing careers advice, the team works with services across the council and post 16 providers to contact every young person in years 12 and 13 to ensure they have been offered a place of learning and then to ensure they have started and if not, offer support. Whilst the team have found 17 year olds are finding continuing in learning difficult, the percentage of both year groups being offered a place in learning is higher than both England and the South East. 

Sustainable Development Goals

This year marks the half way point in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. To help schools recognise the importance of these goals and to celebrate the inspiring sustainability work going on within our city, Our City Our World and The Living Coast UNSECO Biosphere Region have launched a series of 17+1 videos featuring local champions talking about their work and how they are addressing the 17 global goals. Our City Our World recognises the importance of sharing good news stories with young people, and making them aware of local changemakers in our community.  We hope these videos will be useful resources for school assemblies and classroom learning, whilst providing hope for young people and inspiring them in ways they can take action in their schools and communities.  The videos can be accessed here and further news on this story here.

Youth Council Prepares For The future

                 Youth Council Members take part in a drainpipe team building activity 

It’s been great to hear more about the work that the Brighton & Hove Youth Council have been doing to look at how they operate ahead of the launch of their next two year term from January 2024. This work has included looking at things like their structures of influence, to ensure they are listening and feeding back to the young people in the organisations they represent and reviewing the Constitution document which governs how they operate, including election process, membership, terms of office, aims and vision.  These changes are being shared with all Youth Council members to reach a consensus on the final draft and will be officially signed off at a Full Youth Council meeting in the coming months.  If you would like to see a copy of the current Youth Council Constitution or the new version when agreed and signed off please contact John Lewry, Lead Youth Participation Worker at john.lewry@brighton-hove.gov.uk 

Skills and Employment Team Visit Brighton MET College

                           Skills and Employment Team visit Brighton MET College 

The Skills and Employment Team led by Head of Service, Carla Butler, recently visited Brighton MET College - East Brighton College Campus, to meet the college's Senior Leadership Team, led by Principal, Paul Riley, and to tour of the campus facilities. The college and the council frequently work in partnership, and it was beneficial for both organisations to learn about current and future activities and explore further collaboration opportunities. Carla commented, “The college is focused on offering the city’s young people and adult learners a wide range of courses that meet the local skills needs. Seeing our future carpenters and electricians hard at work in the Construction Centre was so inspiring, I am delighted that the college has started offering T Levels this year, with preparations in place to expand the offer next year”.  The college and council's partnership encompasses Apprenticeships, Careers, Construction, ESOL, Pastoral and Wellbeing, Pre-employment, Post-16 Curriculum, SEND, and sharing data and intelligence for DfE statutory returns.

School Games Mark Awards Celebration Event 

                                                   Hertford Juniors award winners

                                               Woodingdean Primary award winners

Well done to 38 schools across the city who achieved the School Games Mark Award for 2022/23.  This is a national award which recognises a school’s commitment to PE, Sport and Physical Activity.  A celebration event was held earlier this month at Sussex Cricket County Ground so that each school could receive their award from the Mayor Jackie O’Quinn. It was a great afternoon celebrating the success of the schools in the city! 

Special mention goes to Hertford Juniors, Elm Grove Primary, Balfour Primary, Downs Juniors, Coldean Primary and City Academy Whitehawk who all achieved the Platinum School Games Mark. To be awarded Platinum status, each school must first achieve the Gold Mark for five consecutive years.  A huge congratulations to the PE leads and staff at these schools for this brilliant achievement.  The criteria for 2023/24 is on the School Games website Your School Games - School Games Mark and the application window opens on 1 May 2024. 

Voices of Young People Represented at NHS Event 

                  Members of the Youth Council with Stephen Lightfoot, Chair of the NHS

In October representatives from Brighton and Hove Youth Council attended an NHS organised event to feed their views directly to the Chair of the NHS – Stephen Lightfoot. Attended by over 30 young people from across Sussex, the event looked at the NHS’s five year plan, preparations for winter services and the aim of the NHS to put the views and interests of children and young people at its centre, given that this group makes up nearly 25% of its users. 

Key themes throughout the day were around the pressure on mental health services, the lack of understanding and clarity on when young people should access services, especially A&E for their mental health, and a feeling of not being heard when issues had been reported. A Young People’s Mental Health Summit is being planned for the spring to look at clarifying and educating young people on mental health services in the city and how to effectively navigate what services are available.  For more information, please contact John Lewry, Lead Youth Participation Worker at john.lewry@brighton-hove.gov.uk

Ofsted reports are now published for Tarnerland Nursery School, St Mary’s Catholic Primary School and Queen’s Park Primary School. Well done to all the schools for their hard work during the inspection process.

St Mary’s Catholic Primary School retained their ‘Good’ grade, with the inspectors stating ‘children thrive at this extremely ambitious school’, with behaviour being ‘exemplary’. They also highlighted that ‘in all subjects, the school’s curriculum is clearly sequenced from early years to Year 6. It is ambitious and relevant to the pupils of St Mary’s through the inclusion of local history studies and community links... Teaching is highly effective through the use of the school’s ‘six steps to successful learning’.

Tarnerland Nursery School was the first inspection for newly appointed headteacher Louise Collings. The school retained their Outstanding grade and the report stated that ‘children are treasured at Tarnerland. They are greeted every day with a smile and are exceptionally well cared for.’ Inspectors also noted ‘the curriculum really thinks about what children will need when they move on to primary education.’ Also, ‘communication and language are intricately woven throughout the school day. Talk is the number one priority. Staff make exceptional use of opportunities to speak to children. Ambitious vocabulary can be heard as adults model and expand children’s speech’.

Queen’s Park Primary School was graded as a school requiring improvement, although inspectors recognised the positive changes that have happened recently, with ‘decisive and effective action’ being taken by the new headteacher and the newly formed leadership team. The report identified that staff morale is high and pupils are happy. ‘The very youngest children, who have only just started school, have settled well and engage confidently with the many activities on offer’ and ‘the expectations of what pupils will learn and how they will behave are increasing following new guidance and training for staff’. 

Dorothy Stringer School had an inspection in October and the report should be published soon.

Best wishes,

Jo

Keep in touch and follow me on Twitter @JoMLyons

Find details here Twitter accounts across all council services.

Connecting Careers Provision

                      

Well done to Brighton & Hove City Council’s Skills and Employment Team who were recently recognised by the Careers Hub for their work in connecting careers provision in schools and colleges to the needs of local economies. The Careers Hub team work with secondary schools, colleges, apprenticeship providers and businesses to connect careers education with the world of work to enable the city’s young people to make informed choices about their future and to better understand the range of career options on offer. Commenting on the award Carla Butler, Head of Skills and Employment said: “I am delighted that the efforts of my service which spans apprenticeships and pre-employment, the employability service, the local employment scheme for construction, and adult education hub were recognised for the work they do supporting education and employment pathways in the city”. 

Cooking Across Continents 

It’s been great to hear more about the Youth Council’s Social Action Project – Cooking Across Continents - which recently held a cooking event for migrant women in the city. The Youth Council had run a dragon’s den style event within its membership earlier in the year and the winning project then applied for funding to run ‘Cooking Across Continents’ - a project recognising that migrant women can struggle to engage with social opportunities. The aim was to create a safe and accessible space for women to connect over the common ground of cooking and food.  17 women in total attended the event representing 8 different nations, supported by 5 young people and the wonderful team at the Community Kitchen. The project was a collaborative piece of work between the Youth Council, Brighton and Hove Food Partnership and the Network for International Women – Brighton and Hove. Participants left with a voucher to enable them to cook beyond the event.

Hove Park School 

Congratulations to Hove Park School which has been selected as one of only 15 schools nationally to achieve the prestigious role as lead Languages Hub school for the National Consortium for Languages Education (NCLE). This followed a highly competitive process during the end of the summer term ending in a final endorsement of the selected schools by the DfE. The focus will be to support a network of schools in the area by training partner schools to share best practice, discuss ideas and support quality language learning activities.  The key aims of the Languages Hubs will be to encourage high quality language teaching in schools; increase languages uptake at GCSE; support levelling up opportunities for disadvantaged pupils; address the performance of boys and better recognise and support the rich diversity of languages in addition to English spoken by one in every five of the school’s pupils.

James Sandford, Director of Lead Languages Hub, Hove Park School said “This is a prestigious national collaborative project. We are excited and looking forward to working with all our partners and stakeholders at primary, secondary and sixth form schools in the area to realise an important vision for the future of our students and our local community.”  For more information, please follow the link here.

Youth Council’s Transport Campaign 

Earlier this year, representatives from the Youth Council’s Bus Transport campaign met with councillors, council officers and senior staff from bus operators in Brighton & Hove as part of the Enhance Partnership to present their Bus Transport Manifesto. Highlighting three key areas that were important to young people: Price, School Travel and Safety.  Their ideas and suggestions were met with enthusiasm by officers, councillors, and operators alike, with a desire to work with the Youth Council closer going forward, and agreement to follow up on some of their key issues, as well as to better connect with young people.  If you’d like to know more about the campaign or see the Youth Council’s Bus Transport Manifesto please email john.lewry@brighton-hove.gov.uk 

Peter Gladwin Primary Awarded UNICEF UK’s Rights Respecting Gold School Award

Congratulations to Peter Gladwin Primary School which has recently been awarded UNICEF UK’s Rights Respecting Gold School Award in recognition of the fabulous work the school does around children’s rights.  Pupils learn about rights in a variety of ways: through lessons, through art and environmental projects and through the school’s charters.  This encourages them to build positive relationships with one another founded on dignity and a mutual respect for rights. The Award was achieved following an assessment visit at the end of the summer term where the assessor said it was “evident that children’s rights are embedded across the school and underpin every facet of school life”.  Well done to all of the staff, pupils and families involved in this amazing achievement.

Campaign to Recruit School Governors

Brighton & Hove City Council has recently launched a campaign to recruit governors to help run our city’s schools. Although there are already over 600 governors in schools across Brighton & Hove, more are always needed and there are currently vacancies at various schools across the city.  To learn more about becoming a governor, and what it involves, please follow this link.

Apprenticeship Inductions

Good luck to all of the new apprentices who have recently started on their Apprenticeship journey. The Apprenticeship Team started 18 new apprentices working across our Repairs and Maintenance team in housing, Dorothy Stringer School and Hill Park School. These are amazing opportunities for both the apprentice and schools.  Some feedback received so far includes: “Everyone has been really helpful and supportive, I am really enjoying the opportunity. It feels great to work with my own tools” – Sarah and “I love my apprenticeship! My colleagues are great to work with, the supervisors and managers are really supportive and the operatives take their time to teach me everything I need to know. I really enjoy helping tenants in their homes. The work is very varied, so I feel like I’m learning a lot” – Josh. The Apprenticeship Team is currently looking at building a cohort for January 2024. For further information please contact Gavin Graham at Gavin.Graham@brighton-hove.gov.uk or 01273 293320.

We have started the term with 3 Ofsted inspections at Queens Park Primary, St Mary’s Catholic School and Tarnerland Nursery, where new headteacher Louise Collings had Ofsted in her third week as headteacher. We look forward to seeing the results. Congratulations to Goldstone Primary who were inspected before the summer holidays on retaining their grade of Good. The report said: ‘Pupils thrive at this friendly school. They are happy, active and excited to learn. One parent summed up the views of many by saying, “My child skips into school each day and comes out buzzing” and 'the curriculum has been carefully designed to engage and interest all pupils. Teachers implement the curriculum well'.

Welcomes

This month we welcome a number of new Headteachers to our city’s schools.  We look forward to working with them all over the coming months.

Rachelle Otulakowski, Headteacher, Longhill High School 

Louise Collings, Headteacher, Tarnerland Nursery School

Rachael Durneen, Acting Headteacher, Hertford Schools

Vicki Strange, Headteacher, Peter Gladwin Primary School

Helen Hawkins, Headteacher, Patcham Infant School 

Best wishes,

Jo

Keep in touch and follow me on Twitter @JoMLyons

Find details here Twitter accounts across all council services.

End of Another Academic Year

 

As the end of another challenging academic year approaches, I would like to thank you all for your dedication, resilience and commitment in navigating the challenges and adversity you have faced to keep the children and young people of Brighton and Hove at centre of everything you do.  I hope you find time for a well deserved break at some point this summer.

Goodbye and Thank You

It’s that time of year where we say goodbye and thank you to colleagues who have made an amazing contribution to children and families in the city. We would like to wish them all the best for the future. We will miss them all and hope they will keep in touch.   

                                    Zoe McGuigan, Headteacher, Hertford Schools

Chris Taylor, Headteacher, Patcham Infant School

Karen Harrison, Headteacher, Peter Gladwin Primary School

Bill Holland, Acting Headteacher, Longhill High School

Anna Keene, Head of School, Hangleton Primary School

Julie Plumstead, Headteacher, Tarnerland Nursery

We also say goodbye this month to Sue Franklin who will be leaving her role as Principal Educational Psychologist/Head of Learning Support Services (BHISS). We wish Sue all the best for the future.  Tracey Williams, currently Assistant Principal Educational Psychologist, will be taking up the post from 1 September and we look forward to working with her in her new role.

Primary Summer Development Day 2023

A group of thirty primary school PSHE Co-ordinators attended the summer professional development event, ‘Everyone Included’, which was held this year at the Brighton Museum. Staff from Allsorts LGBT+ Youth group gave an inspiring key note speech, ‘LGBT+ Inclusion and Education’ and participants took part in a very useful discussion. Members of the Anti-Racist lead teacher team led a successful session evaluating the new PSHE units of Good To be Me and Growing an Anti-Racist School and presented the next steps in this project. We also welcomed Angie Lynn from City of Sanctuary who relaunched the School of Sanctuary programme. It was a wonderful afternoon of learning and thinking and we received very positive feedback. Well done to Isabel Reid and Sarah Jackson for another brilliant programme.

Secondary Summer Consortium 2023

Secondary colleagues across the city also attended their own Summer Consortium, 'Planning for anti-racism in PSHE as part of a whole school approach’ which was held at Brighton Pavilion.  Participants had the chance to think and discuss implementing and teaching anti-racist work in PSHE and the need for this to be a whole school approach. They had a go at activities and examined lesson plans, giving very valuable and insightful feedback. These resources will be shared next year. Attendees also had an opportunity to look at data around pupil voice and the differences between the experiences of our students across the city.  Thank you to Angela Simmonds and Hannah Kinchin-Frost for another lovely and collaborative programme with plenty of positive feedback.

School Games Mark Award

Congratulations to St Paul’s CE Primary School who have recently been awarded the School Games Mark silver level award. This award is a national grading that examines the levels of participation in all aspects of the PE curriculum. Following the promotion of the Daily Mile, girls' football and Change4Life activities at St. Paul's, the school has now been awarded the silver mark level. Well done to everyone involved.

Goldstone Primary School was inspected earlier this month and we are awaiting the outcome.

 

Best wishes,

Jo

Keep in touch and follow me on Twitter @JoMLyons

Find details here Twitter accounts across all council services.