September has been a positive start to the autumn term, with children and young people starting back at nursery, school and college after their summer break. We have already seen some fabulous achievements and great work from our council teams to support the children, families in the city. We are looking forward to working in continued partnership with you to inspire and educate the children and young people of Brighton & Hove.
Another positive set of results for the city
We are very proud of the city’s summer results and have seen excellent outcomes in GCSEs, A-level, BTEC and T Level results this year. We had impressive reading SATs results, placing our local authority in the top quartile of outcomes nationally. I would also like to congratulate those with SEND for the excellent outcomes they have achieved. We are very pleased that outcomes for these learners are improving. Thank you for your leadership and congratulations to everyone involved in all of these positive achievements.
Visit to the new Jeanne Saunders Centre
(Head of Family Hubs) at the Centre
The garden at the Jeanne Saunders Centre
I was very pleased to visit the new Jeanne Saunders Centre at Connaught Road earlier this month. The Centre provides intensive early learning and assessment to children with a range of complex needs, including severe language delay and autistic spectrum conditions. The team has created a fresh new environment with spacious, modern areas offering a wide range of opportunities for learning and the Centre now has a larger space to welcome parents, carers and partner professionals to build opportunities for support, information and training. The team has not only created a very special place for early learning for children who have places there, but also to welcome families of children with complex needs from across the city to their drop in groups. Well done to everyone who has worked extremely hard to get the Centre up and running.
Our City Our World
Brighton & Hove teachers, hub leaders, Cllr Rowkins, Max Evans from Let’s Go Zero, and Our City Our World leaders Katie Eberstein and Jonathan Cooper at the training
Sustainability education leads from across the country recently joined us for training in the Our City Our World approach to sustainability, climate change and environmental education, developed in Brighton & Hove schools. Thank you to the teachers who shared their experience of implementing the programme and gave valuable advice. By 2025, the DfE requires all schools to have a sustainability lead and produce a Climate Action Plan. Training has also taken place for sustainability leads and additional training will take place for school leaders and business managers in Climate Action Planning in early 2025.
New Headteachers Induction
On 16 September Deb Austin, Corporate Director - Families, Children and Learning Services, and I welcomed our city’s new headteachers to Hove Town Hall for their first induction session. This was a chance to meet with key officers and learn about the range of services and support on offer. This meeting is part of a package of support we offer to new headteachers that also includes support from an experienced headteacher ‘professional mentor’, additional time from the school partnership adviser and follow up opportunities to meet with key service leads. I look forward to visiting their schools in the near future.
Roots Project at St Mark’s Primary
It has been lovely to hear more about the fantastic ROOTS Project, a Personal, Social, Health and Economic education (PSHE) project St Mark’s Primary School has initiated for its refugee children. The project offers Refugee and Asylum Seeking pupils an opportunity to take part in an art project that celebrates their culture and heritage. It was designed by PSHE and Mental Health Lead and Y6 teacher - Nina Xerri, who crowd funded to be able to deliver the project and provide resources. Over 6 weeks, children worked 1:1 with Miss Xerri to produce a piece of work which reflected their identity, their background and their culture. The pupils explored their home countries, listened to music, tried foods from their home countries and celebrated their ROOTS!
2023/2024 National School Games Mark
I’m delighted to announce that 35 primary/secondary schools from across Brighton & Hove have achieved the School Games Mark award for 2023/24. The School Games Mark is a government-led awards scheme launched in 2012 to reward schools for their commitment to the development of competition across their school and into the community. Participating in this process allows schools to evaluate their PE provision and assists them in developing an action plan for future progress. Of these, 8 schools: Elm Grove Primary, Coldean Primary, Downs Juniors, Brunswick Primary, Cottesmore Primary, Balfour Primary, Hertford Juniors and City Academy Whitehawk – have achieved the Platinum School Games Mark – which means they have achieved 5 years of the Gold School Games Mark. A huge congratulations to all of the schools involved!
Anti Racist Strategy news
Now in its fourth year, the anti-racist strategy has already delivered training to all but four of the city’s primary phase schools. During the September INSET days, Hove Park, Longhill and Kings took the opportunity to benefit from the excellent in-house training on offer to further their anti-racist education journeys. A program of training on diversifying the curriculum has now been set out. The Widen the View training was introduced at the April anti-racist conference and is available to book on BEEM from October. Other training planned includes creating pupil support groups and guiding schools in the process of responding and reporting incidents of racial harm. The team has also been working closely with Brighton Museum. Anoushka Visvalingham of St. Luke's Primary is on the teacher ambassador team for developing diversified resources for schools, Dulani Kulasinghe is working to develop World War 2 resources for schools and the secondary history group has been creating close links through Shareen Hone of Cardinal Newman School.
Oracy Project for Disadvantaged Pupils
Attendees at the launch event
An exciting partnership project is underway between the local authority, the Durrington Research School, the Education Endowment Foundation and several Brighton & Hove schools to develop literacy skills for disadvantaged pupils, focusing specifically on spoken language, communication and vocabulary. Following a launch event earlier this month, colleagues will come together to engage in a programme of professional development with agreed implementation strategies and ongoing support given. Detailed and thorough monitoring and evaluation templates will result in a Brighton & Hove literacy project that will be shared more widely across the city of schools. Further information will be shared through School Partnerships and Headteacher meetings.
Bucking the trend on school exclusions
St John the Baptist Catholic Primary School, Downs Infant School, Westdene Primary and Moulescoomb Primary have all received inspections this term and we await their reports. Ofsted has now published updates to its school inspection handbooks and provided explanation around the interim arrangements this year while they consult on a new framework for 2025. The removal of the one word overall judgement is welcomed by all of us. If your school is expecting an inspection this year, we will be sharing further information through our network events and there are a number of online resources such as this video briefing.
Welcomes
This month, we welcome a number of new Heads to our schools as well as new colleagues to the local authority. We look forward to working with them all over the coming months.
Amanda Easton - Brunswick Primary School (Acting Co-Headteacher)
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Natalie Burley – Outdoor Education Adviser
Kathryn Mitchell – Administrative Officer - Access to Education Team
Goodbyes
After 18 years of working with the council, Rob Caddick, Education Adviser at the Virtual School, is moving into retirement. Rob has worked in various roles with Children in Care over the course of his career and many of you will have worked alongside him to support our most vulnerable children. So many children, teachers, social workers and foster carers will have benefitted from Rob’s wealth of experience and relational approach, he will be very much missed by the Virtual School and across the authority and the city.
Best wishes,
Jo
Keep in touch and follow me on Twitter @JoMLyons
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