Preliminary data and Partnership work shared
Councillor Richard Diment, the new Cabinet Member for Education, introduced himself to head teachers at his first Head Teacher Forum on 8th July 2022. He shared that his remit covered early years through to post-16 and that key issues for him were standards, ensuring resources in mainstream schools were sufficient to meet the needs of pupils with SEN and to understand the impact of COVID lockdowns and disruption on children’s and young people’s learning. He looked forward to visiting schools in the new academic year.
Provisional data on the first Key Stage Two SATs since the pandemic were then shared. Overall, scores were significantly ahead of national and the combined reading, writing and maths score was 64.7% (2019: 69.1%) (National 2022: 59%, 2019: 65%), a smaller fall than national. More details will be shared with schools when it becomes available.
Other headline data on OfSTED judgements and the number of permanent exclusions and suspensions was shared along with information about the Local Authority’s traded offer, safeguarding in education and the widening mandate of the Virtual School to promote education for all children with a social worker, which will involve more partnership working and understanding the strengths and needs relating to education in social work practice.
Next, there was feedback from the Strategic Education Partnership board meeting, which had been used to sense check the Partnership’s work in light of the Education White Paper. (See What next for the Strategic Education Partnership?) and updates from sub-group leaders around their current work. In particular, the Inclusion sub-group shared how the data-sharing agreement to support vulnerable pupils had been refined and improved by its members and concerns around GDPR had been addressed; the Education Performance and Achievement sub-group shared the positivity from their work on the EEF-funded Secondary Transition Project; and School Places and Planning explained how they had refined their priorities in light of the Strategic Board meeting.
Lastly, head teachers were invited to self-nominate to participate directly in the work of one of the sub-groups from September 2022.
