August 2015

Outcomes are improving

August has been the time for holidays when many of us have taken that well deserved break. I managed to have a lovely two week break with my family in the sun in Andalucía. It was very hot and a real opportunity to regroup as a family of four and build those bonds of attachment. We all had an amazing time, even if a little exhausting! I hope you all managed to get away or have a good break away from work and you are feeling refreshed ready for the academic year ahead.

It has also been the time when our young people receive their exam results whether it be A/AS levels or GCSEs and a busy time for schools, colleges and the council analysing and collating the results and planning the strategic work needed in the coming academic year to respond to the findings to and improve outcomes.

Exam results 2015

I’m delighted to be able to write that this year we have improved education outcomes across all phases of education in the city, from early years to A-Level. You will have read in my July blog about our 2015 improvement in early years and primary results showing a strong trend of improvement over time.

The DfE have released this week the provisional national Primary data. I am delighted that attainment in Brighton & Hove is good. The percentage of children achieving L4+ in reading writing and Maths is up by one percent (82% from 81% in 2014). This is two points above the English average and three points above the statistical neighbour average. Brighton & Hove's, result is above East and West Sussex and all of our statistical neighbours with the exception of Bath and NE Somerset who also averaged 82%.

A-Levels

The rate of A-level students passing with good grades in Brighton & Hove has also increased, for the fourth year running, with a number of schools and colleges delivering their best ever results. Provisional results suggest that the city has outperformed the national average by almost six percentage points, with 59.2% of A-level entries achieving A*-B grades. This figure is also nearly six percentage points above last year’s total of 53.5%. The overall pass rate for A-levels in the city this year is 98% and slightly exceeds the national figure. For the seven schools and colleges offering A-Levels there is an improving trend across the city with five of the seven matching or exceeding the national figure. Well done all.

GCSE

There has also been a big overall rise in GCSE performance this year. Provisional results suggest that city-wide the percentage of pupils achieving A*-C in English is above the national average at 73% against 65% nationally. In Maths the percentage of pupils achieving A*-C is also above the national average at 69% against a national figure of 63%. The ‘benchmark’ figure for the proportion of students achieving 5+ A*-C grades including English and Maths has risen by six percentage points from 54% in 2013-14 to 60% this year. Several schools are reporting seeing their best ever results. The headlines from some of our schools that are particularly positive; PACA achieving 60% five or more A-C grade GCSEs including English and Maths, up by nine percentage points, Dorothy Stringer improving by eight percentage points up to 73%, Blatchington Mill up by 10 percentage points up to 70%, Patcham improving by 12 percentage points, up to 59% and Varndean improving by 10 percentage points, up to 58%.

Over the past two years as a LA we have been focusing on leading much needed work in Maths. This work has included lesson sharing projects, network meetings and ‘Maths Meets’, as well as increased partnership and sharing best practice involving schools and universities. I am therefore delighted with some of the outstanding Maths results in the percentage of pupils achieving A-C (82%) at Dorothy Stringer, Cardinal Newman (79.5%) and Blatchington Mill (76.7%). This is the type of collaborative work I hope we will continue across the partnership going forward. Well done to all the young people, teachers and parents, we are very proud of these achievements.

In the autumn we will begin to unpick further details of the data and look more closely at the gaps in achievement we have, particularly for our vulnerable groups.  Although I am delighted outcomes are moving positively in the right direction we have much more to do to close the gap for these students and ensure all are prepared with skills and qualifications needed for adult life.

Goodbye and thank you

Michael Nix

In September we will say goodbye to Michael Nix our Head of Education, Planning & Contracts. Michael is retiring after many years’ service in local government and the Learning Skills Council and we wish him a joyous retirement. He will be greatly missed by colleagues here and across the wider partnership. I would like to thank Michael for his positive contribution to learning and education in the city and in particular his recent work moving forward our school organisation strategy.

Also leaving the council is Gill Meyne, our Family Learning Programme Manager, as she moves on to pastures new. She will be greatly missed by colleagues here and across the adult learning partnership, we thank Gill for her positive contribution to family and community learning in the city.

New headteachers and principals starting in September

I would like to wish all our new headteachers success for September and hope they enjoy their new roles:

• Adam Sutton as acting headteacher at Moulsecoomb Primary
• Alex Wingham as acting headteacher at St Martin’s CE Primary
• Ashley Harrold at Blatchington Mill
• David Hulbert as interim headteacher at Homewood College
• Joanne Smith at Rudyard Kipling Primary
• Karen Harrison at Peter Gladwin Primary
• Katie Scott at PACA
• Maddie Southern as acting headteacher at Hove Junior
• Martyn Giddens at Bevendean Primary
• Rob Neidermayer-Reed at Hove Park
• Wendy King at the Bilingual School

It also gives me great pleasure to inform you that City College Brighton & Hove has appointed Sharon Collett as their new Principal and Jon Rollings as their Chief Operating Officer. They join Nick Juba their new CEO designate and these latest appointments now complete their Executive Team.  A new era of educational and training excellence for City College, Brighton and the wider city region.

I know you will be, eager to meet and start work with them all.

We also wish well three of our experienced headteachers;

• Shaun Collins who will be leading the new Brunswick Primary School as Davigdor and Somerhill come together from September
• Emma Lake who will be formally leading Hangleton Primary, as the two ‘new schools’ have come together, and Benfield Primary
• Gayle Adam as executive head at the CDP Federation

Other new appointments

Helen Emerson will be seconded from her substantive post at Dorothy Stringer School to the LA Team on a part time basis this year working closely with Sam Beal (Partnership Adviser, Health and Wellbeing).  I am sure you will welcome Helen into this role and as before the key focus for her work will be to work with national organisation Mentor to review and develop secondary school provision of drug, alcohol and tobacco education as part of our PSHE work.

Rachel Carter

Rachel Carter will be taking up the new Post 16 Learning and Skills Partnership Adviser role. Rachel will be joining the Standards and Achievement team, from September 2015. Rachel has been a governor at St Andrew’s Primary School for seven years and has worked on projects with schools and businesses locally, and the university of Brighton's profitnet programme, over the last 10 years. Prior to that Rachel had a long career in the BBC, both in the public service and commercial divisions. Rachel will be working across the partnership to improve our outcomes for post 16 young people and drive forward much needed changes needed in relation to learning and skills.

Sport and PE in Schools

Keep an eye out in September for this brand new initiative to help support sport and PE in schools is to be piloted by Sky in Brighton & Hove. Launching on the 14 September, the Sky Take Back initiative will provide free sports kit and equipment to local schools who help recycle redundant Sky Boxes and broadband routers. Schools collecting these boxes will be able to exchange each box for Sky Reward Points which can be used to purchase a wide range of free sports kit and equipment. Full details will be sent out to schools in September via the bulletin along with full information as to how we intend to develop and improve our whole approach to children’s sport across the city.

Post 16 - Employer skills task force

It is great news that a new Employer Skills Task Force has been formed by Brighton & Hove City Council and local businesses with an aim of establishing thousands of apprenticeships for young people in the city. Sussex County Cricket Club chief executive Zac Toumazi is the Chairman of the Employer Skills Task Force.  It is hoped that the Task Force will boost the number of apprenticeships commencing in the city. I look forward to updating you further on developments and success of the task force in future blogs.

Pride 2015

Leaflets created Blatchington Mill School

August is the time of fun and festivals and this year’s Pride was a great success and included significant involvement from the city’s Children’s Services and partner agencies. Prior to Pride, ru-ok? staff created leaflets which were issued to schools across the county. Enthused by the leaflets Schools got pupils to engage with the importance of Pride and produce their own inspiring leaflets. The photo captures the leaflets developed at Blatchington Mill School.

In previous years police and St John ambulance staff have ensured that such children and other revellers were kept safe; this year their work was assisted by the creation of the “Pride Buddies”. At the entrance to Preston Park a Youth bus, which was stationed there, which received a constant stream of young visitors requesting water, sun cream, biscuits or a seat in the shade where they could recover from their overindulgence. Most young people kept themselves safe and appeared to have a great time. Thank you to Children’s Services staff who worked closely with the police to provide children and young people with support outside of the park areas.

Every school day matters – Every lesson counts!

I am sure you will all agree that encouraging full school attendance, reducing persistent absence and the number of holidays taken in term time should be a top priority for us all. I’m really pleased with the partnership working that is taking place between the LA team led by Gill Manton (Attendance Co-ordinator), Ellen Mulivhill (Head of Behaviour and Attendance) and our schools.

Earlier this year, we introduced a new Code of Conduct, which is the provision for administering Fixed Penalty Notices for non-school attendance across the city. The launch included supporting documents aiming to achieve widespread consistency, understanding and an improvement in school attendance which requires a strong partnership approach. In addition to this, we have put in place the school attendance clusters that are beginning to gather momentum locally and this method is proving to be a popular approach amongst school staff. An important part of our work includes the new Education Investigation Service which includes Fixed Penalty Notices, Interviews under caution and prosecutions. I am pleased to say that we are now fully compliant with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and the guidance from the Department for Education. We are also keeping a very close eye on our school attendance figures as we are determined to continue to support all schools to achieve the very best attendance. The local data gives us an initial indication that the persistent absence figures have improved for 14/15 against Government data for 13/14. I look forward to seeing further improvement.

Exclusions

We have received the national and statistical neighbour results for the 2013/14 period on the number of permanent exclusions and fixed term exclusion. The results show our performance against the 152 LAs nationally and I am pleased to report we have made significant progress and are now 9th out of 152 for our performance relating to low permanent exclusions. This is a real improvement and now seems to be consistently low showing that our work to develop an effective and responsive behaviour partnership (BAP) is making a real difference. Well done to all involved across primary, secondary and special.

The data on fixed term exclusion is less positive. However there has also been significant improvement in our work to reduce fixed term exclusions at secondary and we will continue this work with headteachers and BAP in the autumn. Our primary fixed term exclusions data is currently more of a cause for concern. I am therefore looking to open a dialogue with headteachers at our first meeting in September so we can work together to begin to address this.

Hass Yilmaz

Hass Yilmaz

It is with great sadness that I inform you that Hass Yilmaz our Principal Educational Psychologist passed away on Thursday 13 August. His wife Tee said that he died peacefully at home surrounded by her and their children as he wanted. However those who have had contact with Hass throughout his illness will know how resolutely thankful, cheerful and philosophical he was, grateful for all life had given to him and keen to reassure everyone that he was coping OK with the prognosis. He was a remarkable colleague and friend to so many who will be fondly remembered and missed.

Headteachers Induction

As we have 11 changes of headteachers in the city in September and we have revised our headteacher induction programme and will be looking to develop, in partnership with headteacher colleagues, a programme that will support their personal development and assist in improving outcomes in the schools across the city. Leadership of schools is vitally important to the success of our children and young people and we need to make sure we value our leaders and provide them with maximum support and challenge. The first induction session is taking place on 15 September 2015.

Leadership Conference

I am looking forward to seeing headteachers, college principles and other senior school leaders at our Leadership Conference on 2 October 2015 entitled ‘Inspirational Leadership’ and I look forward to welcoming Tim Brighouse (former chief commissioner for schools) and David Cameron (Director of The Real David Cameron Ltd) as speakers. Almost 100 people have already signed up so far – please contact Yasmin Jenner (schools.training@brighton-hove.gov.uk) to book your place.

Other dates for your diaries

25 September 2015 Secondary and Continuing Education Partnership meeting, 12:30-2:30pm (location TBC)

13 October 2015 Primary Headteacher meeting (AM, exact timing and location TBC)

03 November 2015 GSP Meeting, 6:30-8:30pm, City College Brighton & Hove

Keep in touch and follow me on Twitter @JoMLyons, I'd urge you all to set up accounts for your schools if you don't already have one.

July 2015

Jo’s July Blog

Goodbye and Thank You

This is the time of year where we have to say goodbye to some headteachers and this year in particular there are a number that are moving on. We will really miss them all.  I wanted to thank them formally on behalf of everyone in the city council, Children’s Services, for their contribution to the lives of young people and their families in there own schools and those across the city.

Janet Felkin, as well as successfully leading Blatchington Mill School as a creative and inclusive leader, you have been the chair of the Secondary Schools Partnership and built and facilitated links and development across the secondary school community as well as the Hove Partnership. We know you have planned a well-deserved holiday in September but I hope we will see you doing further work across the city in the future.

Janet Felkin at her Tea Party 

Ged Cotton, thank you for your excellent leadership and wealth of experience and knowledge of the early years and KS1 which has led Davigdor Infants to Outstanding. We will miss your witty and challenging contribution to our heads meetings!

Jenny Aldridge who has taken Rudyard Kipling Primary on a positive journey leaving the school in a really strong place. I have been particularly impressed with your commitment to Every Child a Reader and so happy that you were awarded inspirational manager of the year! We wish you all the best as you are able to spend more time with your grandchildren and travel to exotic places.

Aaron Sumner, who has shared the headship with Jenny this year and is leaving the city to take up a headship in London. We have been very lucky to have you, we are sorry to lose your expertise as a strong leader in the city but I do hope you enjoy London life.

Joanne Smith I want to thank you for all the great work you have done at St Martin’s CE Primary, taking the school to good and building a strong committed team with a really positive ethos. I know you will do a fabulous job as the new headteacher of Rudyard Kipling Primary.

Catherine Keith, who has brought a vibrant and rich curriculum that combined excitement and rigour and deep learning based around texts. You have made Peter Gladwin Primary a wonderful place to learn. We are hoping that you will be able to continue support work in the city next term in another capacity.

Janis Taylor from West Hove to Hove Junior, another headteacher whose extremely strong leadership has led the school on a journey of success. Janis you have also led the expansion of Hove Junior, a major project so crucial to the city. I am delighted that you won’t be leaving us altogether and will be doing some city school improvement work.

Wendy King has taken Bevendean Primary on the journey to be judged as good, with a really positive and inclusive ethos. We are sad you are leaving the school, but pleased that you will be staying in the city as head of the Bilingual School. We are all looking forward to continued close work with you and the school as an important member of our city partnership.

A thank you to Kim Bolton your strong leadership as the executive head of the CDP federation, successfully bringing together three special schools and for your massive contribution to the cities SEN strategy. I’m delighted that you will be joining the LA team to do SEN improvement work from September.

Simon Charleton, I’d like to thank you for your leadership and work at Homewood College working with some of the most vulnerable and challenging young people of the city. You have worked effectively building partnerships with a range of agencies to make a real difference for young people and families.

I also want to thank Peter Merchant, interim Principal at PACA, Laura O’Grady, acting head at Bilingual School and Austin Hindman, acting headteacher at Hove Park for their contributions.  You have done a great job keeping the schools moving forward during the interim period.

Thank you also to Adam Sutton who has moved to Moulsecoomb Primary as interim head. A big thank you to Dawn Oliver at Brackenbury Primary for releasing him.

We wish Rose Wisdom from our Local Authority team well as she moves on to pastures new. Rose has been with the council for 14 years, in recent years as Partnership Adviser for School Governance and Leadership. She will be greatly missed by colleagues here and in schools and governing bodies. She has been a huge support to many governing bodies working through challenging times and has led the Governor Support team to be one of the real strengths of the city.

Rose and her tea towel at her leaving party!

I’m delighted to congratulate City Academy Whitehawk and King's Secondary School for the good outcomes of their recent Ofsted inspection. It was a pleasure to read the reports and see how well the schools are doing. Well done to the staff, parents and children and young people.  We are looking forward to working in continued partnership with both Schools in the new academic year.

New Ofsted Framework

From September 2015 there will again be change with a Common Inspection Framework (CIF), which covers all the education services that Ofsted inspects, including maintained schools and academies, early years settings, non-association independent schools, Further Education (FE) and skills providers. This new framework is "designed to bring together” the inspection of different education settings to “provide greater coherence across different providers that cater for similar age ranges”. A separate inspection handbook has been produced for each type of provision covered by the CIF.

Ofsted will make graded judgements in the following areas:

• Overall effectiveness
• Effectiveness of leadership and management
• Quality of teaching, learning and assessment
• Personal development, behaviour and welfare
• Outcomes for children and learners
• The effectiveness of early years and sixth form provision, where applicable

Outstanding schools will continue to be exempt from routine inspection, but Ofsted will retain the power to inspect if performance drops or other concerns are raised. The exemption from routine inspection does not apply to 'outstanding' special schools, PRUs and maintained nursery schools. However, under the new CIF, these settings will have the short inspection if they have been rated 'outstanding' or 'good'.

Good schools will be inspected every three years in a short inspection. This will either confirm the judgement of good or convert to a section 5 inspection if the inspector believes it could be outstanding, or convert to a section 5 inspection if the inspector does not find enough evidence for the judgement of good. School which are judged to require improvement will be linked to and monitored by HMI.

More details can be found here and on the Ofsted website.

Primary Results

Provisional Results for 2015 show that for every age group there has been improvement. This makes a strong trend of improvement over time. We are also finishing the year with 84% of primary schools judged to be good or outstanding, which is an increase from last year. However, there is still work to be done to ensure that every child in our schools is able to achieve well. We are making sure that we are rigorous in our identification and challenging and supporting school leaders.

This year's results show;

• the measure for EYFS has risen year on year.
• 75.2% of Year 1 pupils passed their phonics check. This is a six percentage point increase from last year (when it was 69%).
• Provisional results for subject at level 2+ show slight increases in all areas.
• The 2015 the LA result for Reading, Writing and Maths (RWM) L4+ is 81.6% (82%), Last year’s result was 81%, and last year’s national was 78%.
• RWM at L5+ this year is 25.7% (26%), last year it was 24% and the national figure last year was 24%.

At present, schools are deemed to be below floor standards if fewer than 65% of pupils achieve level 4 in English and maths combined and are below the national median for progression by two levels in English and maths. There are two schools that look likely to be below the floor standard. Schools that have achieved over 90% for RWM are; Patcham Junior, Stanford Juniors, Westdene Primary, Balfour Primary, Hertford Junior, Hove Juniors, St Mary’s Catholic Primary. Cottesmore Catholic Primary, St Bernadette’s Catholic Primary, Peter Gladwin Primary and Aldrington CE Primary. Well done to all.

Apprenticeship Matching Event

Young people meeting providers at the Apprentice Matching Event

A big thank you to all who attended or referred young people to the Apprentice Matching Event. 59 young people attended on 2 July, the majority aged 16-18 who were dressed to impress. Young people have given positive feedback including “…opportunities, and hope”, “an interview with who I wanted” and “lots of help to improve my CV”.

The event was attended by 16 providers and four employers, with a total of 116 vacancies covering a variety of sectors. Providers feedback included “seeing lots of motivated young people”, “very popular event with lots of potential candidates” and “Great meeting young people ‘'face to face’ very enthusiastic”.

Thank you also to the apprentice ambassadors and Emma Jones, Education and Inclusion Administrator, who did an amazing job on the day of routing young people to the right training providers!

We will be having much more discussion with you all in the autumn on how work in partnership to increase numbers on apprenticeships.

Independent Travel

I am really pleased to celebrate the achievements of a significant number of our young people with SEND who have now gained the skills and confidence to be able to travel to and from school more independently. More students are on the journey towards greater independence and good partnership working with parents and high expectations, coupled with a good independent travel programme have been key ingredients to this success. Some of our schools have done particularly well promoting this work and supporting young people; e.g. Cedar Centre and Patcham House. Resources are still available to schools who want support to run an Independent Travel Training Programme for their pupils with SEND, please contact us for advice and support.

“When I first went on the bus it made me feel very happy and grown up. I started to go with two buddies, but now go on my own. I would never go back on taxis. I prefer buses and it makes me feel grown up''. Y10 student in a special school with Autistic Spectrum Conditions (ASC).

Schools participating have also identified a more general increase in confidence and motivation in their pupils who have been part of the programme and this has certainly contributed to the broader discussion about how Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCP's) can encourage more creative use of resources to support access to the curriculum and accelerate learning, rather than develop a learned dependence.

''Not having a TA by your side every day of every week really motivates me to take part more in class and to talk to my peers''. Y10 student with visual impairment.

Our colleges tell us that students who have been taxied to school up to Y11 and who do not have the confidence to travel around the city independently are those who are less likely to successfully sustain their college placement or be able to get appropriate work experience.

We owe it to our young people to prepare them for all aspects of adulthood, so everything schools can do to encourage young people to become more independent is tremendously important.

Sussex School Games Finals - Well done team Brighton and Hove!

Tri golf at the School Games Finals

Thank you to those schools that went to K2 Crawley on the 8 July to participate in the School Games finals. Over 1500 children attended and I hope they all had a good day! It is great that so many schools across Sussex take part and to see Brighton & Hove schools do so well, with the best ever Brighton & Hove team finish in 5^th place! So well done to all of the teams.

Quicksticks hockey at the School Games Finals

Coldean Primary Schools Sports Award Evening

On 15 July the children from Coldean Primary School celebrated their sporting achievements at a special 'Sports Awards Evening' at Brighton University. The children arrived with their families all suited and booted for this special event.

Sprinter Rion Pierre opened the evening with an inspirational talk outlining his interesting journey to becoming a member of Team GB. The children received awards for the variety of sporting events they have represented the school in this year - athletics, swimming, golf, football, netball and tag rugby to name but a few. The awards were presented by Rion, Charlie Harris and Emil Ásmindsson (both under 21 players from Brighton and Hove Albion).

The evening was a true celebration of a school who has embraced the recent drive to improve the participation in sports. The passion of the PE leads to support the youngsters of Coldean was evident.

Stuart McConnachie, Executive Headteacher said "Evenings like this make it all worthwhile! It is wonderful to see the children and their families celebrating the children's achievements. The evening also highlights the outstanding partnership work going on in the school - Brighton University, Brighton and Hove Albion and the Sports Partnership team have all helped Emma Hughes and Andy Wilson (PE leads at Coldean Primary School) make tonight so special. I'm a very proud head teacher. It was particularly great to see the outstanding sportsmanship amongst the youngsters as they cheered on every trophies recipient."

Rion Pierre, Emma Hughes, Charlie Harris and Emil Ásmindsson at the Sports Award Evening

Adoption Support

I chaired another successful steering group this month.  It was an opportunity for us to discuss the children’s services recent Ofsted and the positive reference in the report to our adoption support work. We were also able to review the work we have done over the past year.  I’m delighted we have moved so far forward with our strategy ‘Attachment Aware Brighton’ with a clear training offer in place across the city open to all schools.  Skilling our schools teams up and building capacity will enable schools to adapt the curriculum and there practice to better meet the needs of our adopted children and raise their achievement.  We have now identified attachment champions in schools who will promote the work and ensure best practice is in place.  We have also agreed a new Personal Educational Plan approach we will now roll out across the city so that all adopted children have a clear plan linked to the pupil premium recourses which we believe will make a real difference.  Please take a look at our Adoption Support Passport to find out more.

Moulsecoomb Primary School

Congratulations to Moulsecoomb Primary School for winning gold in the prestigious South and South East in Bloom awards.

In Bloom judge Chris Murphy said “This is a very impressive entry. The children are enthusiastic and knowledgeable. There is very good provision of natural areas in the grounds for both play and the discovery of wildlife and habitats. The use of the school grounds as an outside classroom and learning resource is quite simply outstanding.”

The grounds boast ponds, orchard, world garden, World War 11 garden, a fairytale forest, Iron Age, Mesolithic and Neolithic roundhouses and vegetable gardens. They also have chickens and have planted hundreds of trees, bulbs and wildflowers.

Adam Sutton, headteacher, said “We’re really proud to achieve this prestigious award and to be recognised as providing an excellent outside learning environment for our children. The Gold medal is testament to the hard work of former head Charles Davies and all the staff at Moulsecoomb Primary School.”

Parent governor Warren Carter who also runs Moulsecoomb Forest Garden project said “The transformation of the school grounds over the years has been remarkable and relentless and gives endless opportunities for children to learn outside the classroom. Sitting in the school fields you would never know the school is next to the noisy Lewes Road. I am proud to tell people that my children go to such a fantastic school.”

Keeping in touch

We have heard again from Hugh Baldry (Schools Partnership Adviser), who sent thanks for all the goodwill messages which he says have made a real difference and helped him through the treatment.  He is on the fourth and final cycle of chemotherapy and then has to wait to see what effect it has had on the lymphoma.  Please keep sending Hugh your good wishes.

Happy Holidays

I’d like to wish all our headteachers, college principals, support staff, children and young people a well-deserved summer break.  Thank you for your contribution to the implementation of education, learning and skills this year.

I will be enjoying a couple of weeks in the sun with my family before returning for the A/AS Level and GCSE results.  Look out for my August blog!

Keep in touch and follow me on Twitter @JoMLyons, I'd urge you all to set up accounts for your schools if you don't already have one.

June 2015

Jo’s June Blog - 23 more days to engage in outstanding teaching and learning

June has been a bright, sunny month and it’s been a great opportunity to increase the amount of outdoor learning, as well as preparing for all those sports days coming up. It’s also been a challenging time with SATs and exams for many children and young people, and as always Ofsted continuing to inspect the city’s schools. It is not long to go now for our children and young people, teachers, school and college staff before they start their well-deserved summer break. However, we do still have 23 more days of opportunity to engage in some more outstanding teaching and learning.

School and College Leaders Business Meeting

I was pleased to open the School and College Leaders Business Meeting on Tuesday 9 June and hear from the voices of community members and students about the difference that schools can make to the wellbeing of children and young people. For example Louisha, who is pictured skipping with her friends, explained how her school, St Luke’s Primary, removes barriers so that she can access the same quality of school experience and learning as all other pupils. Louisha along with other people with impairments will feature in a locally developed Disability Equality DVD that will be disseminated in September.

Louisha and friends at St. Luke's Primary

Ryan from Allsorts Youth Project and two students from Blatchington Mill School joined us to talk about what makes a Trans inclusive school and the challenges faced by Trans children and young people and their families. The Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit is available on Pier2Peer. http://www.school-portal.co.uk/GroupDownloadFile.asp?GroupId=1244399&ResourceId=4978569

It was an inspiring and challenging event and the good practice shared by a range of schools and colleges provided practical ways forward for other schools. In the feedback one Headteacher commented:

“A really well planned mixture of practical advice (Ramadan), inspiring young people, the academic - social context.”

Ofsted - Children’s Services

We were pleased to receive our Children’s Services Ofsted inspection report following our four week inspection. The full inspection report is now available to look at on the Ofsted website.

Ofsted found that Children’s Services in Brighton & Hove have made improvements since our last inspection and we have no serious failings that leave children at risk of harm, but we still require improvement to be rated as ‘good’.

Ofsted found;
• The leadership of Children’s Services is good and we have useful performance and quality assurance processes to drive these improvements.
• Our services, advice and support for our looked after children, those being adopted and those leaving our care are good.
• When children are at risk of harm, social workers recognise it and quickly take action to protect them.
• Social workers, police and other professionals in the city work well together to know which young people are at risk of being sexually exploited and ensure they take the right actions to protect them.
• Our social workers know the children they work with well.
• Children who are disabled have social workers who understand their needs and are good at assessing with them what services will best help them and their families.
• Our new Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) is effective.

In a separate review, Ofsted rated the city’s independent Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) arrangements as ‘good’.

The Virtual School

I was particularly pleased to read in our recent Ofsted report so many positives about the work of our Virtual School; with recognition of its ambition for its children and the positive changes it has made recently such as introducing new PEPs and broadening its remit to focus on the needs of adopted children, which although new appear to be having success.

The Ofsted report said;
• The education of children looked after is supported well by a strong Virtual School.
• The Virtual School provides good support and oversight taking individual needs into account.
• Children in care do well at school, have good attendance and do not get excluded very often.
• The Virtual School takes a strong, proactive role and provides good support to all children who have been adopted, as well as those who are subject to a special guardianship order.
• There is effective joint working between schools and social workers

Secondary and Continuing Education Partnership

It was great to join the Secondary and Continuing Education Partnership Meeting this month, where creative and cultural learning and engagement was the focus. Peter Chivers (Head of Music & Arts) and members of the Our Future City team presented on the progress to date on the development of a number of 10 year impact goals. These goals have been developed over the last few months through a process that has involved over 900 colleagues and young people.

We were also pleased to hear a presentation from colleagues at Artswork, the Arts Council England Bridge organisation for the region, alongside a thought provoking item that focused on closing the gap by providing a rich and diverse cultural offer, from board member Richard Bradford (Headteacher at Dorothy Stringer School). This was followed by a challenging debate and sharing of ideas of how we can further develop our offer for children and young people.

For more information please visit the Our Future City website at www.ourfuturecity.org.uk or follow on Twitter @OurFutureCityBH

New Learning and Employment and Skills Partnership

I was very pleased to attend the newly formed Learning, Skills and Employment Partnership on 8 June. Our learning and skills agendas are key to the city’s future and it was good to see the coming together of partners from across these two important areas. The purpose of this group is to raise aspirations and achieve the best possible outcomes for all our future citizens in terms of learning, skills development, business growth and employment opportunities in the city.

Nick Hibberd and Hilary Ferries presenting at the Learning, Skills and Employment Partnership Meeting

We successfully brought together representatives and stakeholders from schools, colleges and key organisations to lead the Learning, Skills, Employment and Business Growth agenda on behalf of Brighton & Hove Connected. Through working together more effectively I am sure we can improve outcomes for young people and I do hope that our representative headteachers will attend and lead with us.

It was our annual LSCB away day this week where I joined colleagues and partners from across the city to review our work over the past year. It was an opportunity to celebrate the good Ofsted judgement the LSCB received and look at the outcomes of this year’s learning reviews and areas we need to improve.

Graham Bartlett, Chair of LSCB 

We spent the afternoon in challenging debate agreeing priorities for the coming year that will form part of our new business plan and ensure we tackle safeguarding issues as a strong city partnership.

Attachment Aware Brighton & Hove

On Tuesday 23 June I attended the Virtual School conference at the AMEX stadium with over 100 staff from schools. The key focus of the day was raising awareness of attachment issues and how it can affect children in care and those adopted. Our excellent key note speaker Louise Bomber (Attachment Support Teacher & Therapist) taught us all some practical techniques that schools can use to best support these children.

The conference also included a session by the Children in Care Council, our Educational Psychology Service and Mark Storey (Headteacher of Virtual School) and Rob Caddick (Key Stage 2 & 3 Advisor) from the Virtual School. It was refreshing to hear from Cottesmore Primary School on the fabulous work they have been doing to meet the needs of our children in care and adopted children. During the conference I was delighted to launch our adoption passport, a useful resource to support parents of adopted children and our school staff and other professionals http://www.fosteringinbrightonandhove.org.uk/content/adoption-support-passport.

Feedback was excellent and there is real enthusiasm that is further growing to support these children and young people in a truly 'Attachment Aware Brighton'.

Child Friendly City

I was very excited to meet with a steering group of colleagues from across Children’s Services to begin to look at the concept of ‘Child Friendly City’ for Brighton & Hove. We looked at the framework of criteria issued by Unicef for defining and developing a Child Friendly City and the work Leeds have done and benefits they have discovered. The framework identifies the steps to build a local system of governance committed to fulfilling children’s rights. The group is bringing together the work that is already being done across the city and identifies any gaps. You will be hearing more as we engage the city in this initiative to make Brighton & Hove an even better place for all our children and young people to grow up.

I am delighted to have received the Ofsted report on Patcham Juniors since my last blog. The school was judged as good. To go to good from a category is very rare so huge congratulations to Ashley and his team. Congratulations also to King's School who had their first inspection and were judged to be good and to Royal Spa who maintained their judgement of outstanding.

This means we end June with no schools in the city judged as inadequate. Ofsted have just published data that shows that of 31 March, 82% of schools nationally were judged to be good or outstanding. Our most recent figure is 84%.

I’m sure you are all aware there are changes to the Ofsted framework in September which has now been published https://www.gov.uk/changes-to-education-inspection-from-september-2015. Please take a look.

All exams and testing have finished now and the results are beginning to come in. I took the secondary forecasts report to my management meeting this month and was pleased to see the positive predictions. I look forward to the real results in August.

School Governance

It has been really good over the year to have met regularly with governors in a range of different contexts. This has given me the opportunity to talk and gain their perspectives on a range of strategic matters regarding schools and leadership, and also provide support and challenge so we can raise standards.

I met with the Secondary Chairs’ of Governors this month, which was a follow up to our positive and focussed meeting in the Autumn Term. We had a wide ranging discussion on school places and budgets and predictions of outcomes. It was good to hear from this group of governors the positive impact that partnership working is having on schools, and how the voice of governors is being strengthened through their representation on various city-wide bodies.

I was sorry to miss this month’s Governance, Strategy and Partnership Meeting; the last one of this academic year. However, I was pleased to hear they found presentations on assessment, children in care and adopted children and British Values helpful and that there was challenging debate. My thanks to Rose Wisdom (Partnership Advisor - School Governance & Leadership) and her team who organise this so well.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our governors from across the city for the time and commitment they have given to our schools this year.

Celebrations

Momentum is an excellent and well regarded mentoring scheme created by the University of Brighton and has been running for over 10 years. Students who may need support, particularly those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, who have a disability or who may be lacking in confidence, are paired with mentors to exchange knowledge with a view to improving their confidence and employability, and to enhance their prospects of career success.

I am delighted to announce Rose Wisdom (Partnership Advisor - School Governance & Leadership) was selected to receive an award from a very impressive cohort of mentors and was praised for her flexibility and selfless attitude.

Rose Wisdom with her mentoring award from Momentum

Congratulations also to Rachel Simmonds (Headteacher, West Blatchington Primary), who has just been awarded Headteacher of the Year and to West Blatchington Primary for securing the prize of School of the Year. This was happy reading in the press and really good to see the excellent leadership and drive for improvement recognised at this school.

Rachel Simmonds with pupils from West Blatchington Primary

The Importance of Apprenticeships

On Thursday 2 July the council is bringing together training providers, employers and information advice and guidance professionals at an apprenticeship matching event. It’s a great opportunity for young people (aged 16 - 24) to meet training providers offering live apprenticeship vacancies in Brighton & Hove.

There will be advisors on hand to meet young people and find out about their current situation and what they are looking for. They will let young people know what kinds of vacancies are available so they can speak to the right training providers and employers. Find out more about our apprenticeship matching events online or contact Shiromi Cabraal on 01273 290735 or email Apprenticeships@brighton-hove.gov.uk.

Best wishes,

Jo

Keep in touch and follow me on Twitter @JoMLyons, I'd urge you all to set up accounts for your schools if you don't already have one.