Welcome back!  This week I report on the publication of the Children’s Commissioner’s Growing up Digital Taskforce Report on equipping children and young people with adequate skills to negotiate their lives online, provide information on a SCHOOLS NorthEast Regional Governance Conference and congratulate those who were recognised in the New Years Honours  for their services to education.

Schools should teach all pupils ‘digital citizenship’, says Children’s Commissioner
Yesterday the Children’s Commissioner, Anne Longfield said schools should teach ‘digital citizenship’ to all pupils aged 4 to 14 to help keep them safe online. In a report from her Growing up Digital taskforce, the Commissioner calls for 3 key interventions:

• creation of a digital citizenship programme to be compulsory in all schools from age 4-14 (this would include what it means to be responsible online, how to protect your rights and how to respect those of others. It would also cover how to disengage and engage with the digital world);
• implementation of the intent of the General Data Protection Regulation by introducing simplified Terms and Conditions for digital services offered to children;
• a new Children’s Digital Ombudsman to mediate between under 18s and social media companies.

This follows confirmation by the Government in December that it is considering its position on compulsory PSHE as it attempts to get the children and social work bill passed.

The Commissioner is also supporting a proposal to review the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and bring the articles up to date for the digital age.

SCHOOLS NorthEast Regional Governance Conference – 30 March 2017
SCHOOLS NorthEast is holding a conference at Durham County Cricket Club in Chester-le-Street on Thursday 30 March to support those in school governance roles in carrying out their duties confidently and effectively. The event is also aimed at senior leaders who want to make sure they have a high performing governing board and those looking to recruit new governors. Belita Scott HMI, Ofsted’s National Lead for Governance will be a keynote speaker and key themes will include:

• Ofsted and compliance: what is expected of governing boards and how to make sure you are inspection ready (including feedback from schools that have recently been inspected).
• Selection and recruitment of governors: what makes a good governor and how can schools attract the right people.
• The changing education landscape: helping governors and school leaders horizon scan the changes to come (including changes planned in the National Funding Formula and how schools will have to cope on ever tightening budgets)
• The future economy: the Government is focusing on the destination outcomes for young people.
• Pushing for excellence: best practice in governance (how leaders and Chairs can work more effectively together; the importance of external support; training and development for governors).

The cost is £40 per delegate with SCHOOLS NorthEast Partner Schools attracting a half price discount at £20 per delegate and you can get a third free delegate when you book two places. To book your place at this event, please email info@schoolsnortheast.com.

New Years Honours 2017
Four people from the North East received an award in the New Years Honours for their services to education.  Many congratulations go to Tracey Booth, Chair of Governors at Churchill Community College who was awarded an MBE. She’s been Chair at the College for the past 15 years and is also a National Leader of Governance.

Merry Christmas to all Governors and a Happy New Year

This week I report on the next stage of the consultation on a new national funding formula, the publication of Ofsted’s new ‘improving governance’ study, information on subsidised funding for the Chairs and aspiring Chairs programme and the release of revised Key Stage 2 SATs results and Primary School performance tables .

Schools National Funding Formula
On Wednesday the Department for Education published its response to stage 1 of the consultation on a new national funding formula. The new formula will be introduced in 2018 to 2019 and there will be a transitional year during which local authorities will continue to set local schools funding formulae. The Government also provided an interactive spreadsheet illustrating the impact of the proposed formula on individual schools. You can look up your school on the first sheet of the document or see a full list of schools in the tab ‘NFF all schools’.

The Government announced the second stage of its consultation on the new funding formula and at the same time opened a consultation on High Needs funding. High needs funding is for children and young people with special educational needs or disabilities who need extra support at school, college or alternative provision settings. The Government is looking for views on the weighting for each factor in the proposed formula as well as the transition to and implementation of the formula.

Ofsted ‘Improving governance’ study
Yesterday Ofsted published its ‘improving governance’ study looking at the challenges facing governing bodies in schools. The report draws on evidence from visits to 24 improving primary, secondary and special schools  situated in some of the poorest areas of the country to look at their governance arrangements. It also uses evidence from routine inspections and monitoring visits over the last year and from 2,632 responses to a call for evidence initiated by HMCI in November 2015. The report identifies the barriers faced by governors in these schools and the actions taken to strengthen their professional skills and fulfil their roles as effective, strategic school leaders.

Funded training for Chairs and aspiring Chairs
Leading Governance is running the Governors’ Leadership Development programme for governors in Spennymoor, Durham, with the support of the Governor Services teams from Durham and Middlesbrough. The programmes are open to all chairs and aspiring chairs in the North East.

These six month accredited programmes normally cost £399, but the National College of Teaching and Leadership has made scholarships available, meaning that the cost to you/your school is just £79.

The first session will start on 23rd January 2017. For more information and to register for the programme, please go to www.leadinggovernance.org or call 0121 237 4600.

Primary School Performance Tables and revised Key Stage 2 SATs results
Yesterday the DfE published the Primary Schools performance tables as well as the revised Key Stage 2 SATs results at national, regional and local authority level.

This week I report on the launch of the “growing up north’ project, the publication of the PISA rankings with additional Government funding for Science and the announcement that the National Teaching Service will not be continuing.

Children’s Commissioner launches a project to collect data on the northern education gap
Over the next year, the Children’s Commissioner Anne Longfield will be leading a project aimed at addressing educational inequality in the north of England. She will be joined by an advisory panel (although it should be noted that there isn’t currently a North East representative) to gather data on children in the region to examine factors that influence their progression.

The project will bring together data on pupil outcomes to “increase understanding” of regional differences, look at the ways in which children’s ambitions are shaped by their experiences and assess the opportunities available to young people between and within different regions.

It’s not known if there’s a specific budget for the project or if it will be funded through the Commissioner’s office’s existing funding. This follows numerous other projects/reports that have looked at educational inequality in the north including the Ofsted chief inspector’s last annual report, Sir Nick Weller’s review of schools and the northern powerhouse and a Social Market Foundation commission on educational inequality, chaired by the former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg.

PISA tests: UK lags behind in global school rankings
This week the influential PISA rankings were published showing the UK is still lagging behind leading countries at education and has made little progress in international rankings since results were last published.

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), led by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), provides evidence on how the achievement and abilities of 15-year-olds varies across countries. PISA is conducted every three years and pupils are tested in four subjects (science, mathematics, reading and collaborative problem solving), with one subject the focus each time.

As the data enables countries to benchmark themselves against the rest of the world and to spot strengths and weaknesses in their education system, they have become increasingly influential on politicians.

In maths the UK is ranked 27th, slipping down a place from three years ago, in reading the UK is ranked 22nd, up from 23rd and the UK’s most successful subject is science, up from 21st to 15th place.

To support the teaching of science in schools the Government has announced a £12.1 million investment until 2019. The funding will provide CPD for science teachers, support schools to share best practice and offer tailored in-school support. The programme will be delivered through a network of national science learning partnerships (North Tyneside Learning Trust forms part of the collaboration for the North East Hub) and support schools to encourage more teenagers to take GCSE triple science – physics, chemistry and biology.

Government scraps National Teaching Service
The Government has announced that it will not be pressing ahead with plans for a National Teaching Service (NTS) following an unsuccessful pilot in the North West of England. The initiative, launched by former Education Secretary Nicky Morgan in 2015, was intended to recruit good teachers to work in deprived areas. The goal was to see 1,500 of the country’s “top teaching talent” matched to the schools that need them the most, by 2020.

The North West pilot aimed to enlist up to 100 teachers to work in eligible primary and secondary schools across the region from September 2016. Its been reported that just 54 teachers were recruited after only 116 applied and in total only 24 of those recruited have so far been matched with schools.

This week I report on the publication of the NFER’s research into the evolving schools’ landscape since the introduction of Regional Schools Commissioners, the announcement of additional Government funding to help address school underperformance and the publication of the Government’s response to the Early Years Funding consultation.

Research looking at the educational landscape since RSCs were introduced
New research published by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) looks at the evolving schools’ landscape since Regional Schools Commissioners (RSCs) were introduced in 2014 and explores how regions have changed in terms of the number and proportion of academies and free schools. Key findings include:

• 29% of all state schools in England are now academies;
• the proportion of academies continues to vary by phase and RSC region;
• in 2016 primary academisation has exceeded secondary growth for the 1st time;
• the difference in academisation within regions is greater than differences between regions;
• there are variations in the proportions of underperforming LA maintained schools becoming sponsor-led academies;
• the number of schools in single and multi-academy trusts by region also varies; this may make it more difficult for some RSCs to find sufficient sponsors in the future.

The NFER’s second report will be published in early 2017 using the latest performance data to explore the future challenges RSCs face to support schools in their areas.

New funding for school improvement
On Wednesday, the Education Secretary announced a new wave of funding meant to address underperformance and “help ensure every child has a good school place”. These include:

• from September 2017, a £50m a year fund for local authorities to continue to monitor and commission school improvement for low-performing maintained schools;
• a new “Strategic School Improvement Fund” of £140m will also be set up for academies and maintained schools to ensure that resources are targeted at schools most in need of support to drive up standards;
• the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has committed to spend a further £20m over the next 2 years to “scale up” and disseminate evidence-based programmes and approaches.

The Government’s ambition remains that all schools will become academies forming a fully school-led system, where Headteachers and school leaders collaborate to drive improvement in their schools.

Government response to Early Years Funding consultation
Yesterday the DfE published its response to the Early Years funding consultation which ran for six weeks from 11 August to 22 September 2016. The funding formula will allocate funding for three and four-year olds, both the existing universal 15 hour entitlement and the new 30 hour entitlement for children of working parents. It will commence in April 2017 for the existing 15 hours alongside the funding rate uplift announced in the 2015 Spending Review; and for the additional 15 hours when 30 hours of free childcare is implemented nationally from September 2017.

The formula will feature three funding factors that determine the funding per child that each local authority receives as follows:

• a base rate of funding for each child;
• an additional needs factor, reflecting the extra costs of supporting children with additional needs to achieve good early learning and development outcomes; and
• an area cost adjustment, reflecting the different costs of providing childcare in different areas of the country.

Though nearly 80% of LAs will see hourly funding rates rise, no local authority will face a reduction in its hourly funding rate of more than 10% against its 2016-17 baseline as a result of introducing this formula.

This week I report on the publication of the long-awaited review into education in the Northern Powerhouse, the launch of the new online service proposing to make recruitment of governors easier and information on when we should expect to see the new Governor Competency Framework and updated Governance Handbook.

Independent review into education in the Northern Powerhouse
Yesterday, the Department for Education released “A Northern Powerhouse Schools Strategy”, an independent review led by Sir Nick Weller, CEO and Executive Principal of Dixons Academies in Bradford. The report outlines a series of proposals to “tackle educational underperformance in the North of England” in the following five areas:

• Building teaching and leadership capacity
• School improvement capacity
• Raising standards by closing the disadvantaged
• Curriculum
• System conditions

Whilst the Government has indicated it will invest £70m over three and a half years to improve capacity and raise standards in Northern Powerhouse schools, it is difficult to see how the recommendations in this review could all be taken on-board given the amount of funding available.

Launch of online governor recruitment service
Back in October last year I highlighted a new scheme launched by the Inspiring Governors Alliance to connect skilled volunteers interested in serving as governors and trustees with schools and colleges. It was formally launched on Tuesday this week and run by the National Governors Association (NGA) and Education and Employers, a careers charity, in partnership with the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) and the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT). It will receive funding from the Department for Education for four years.

I have taken the liberty of registering your school and using the skills and expertise gaps highlighted in your skills audits, will search for suitable matches.  I will flag up any suitable matches with the Chair of Governors and Headteacher.

Governor Competency framework and Governance Handbook
Publication of the Governor Competency Framework is expected around the end of this month and advance information suggests that it will not now be used as a basis for the national development of governor training. The new Governance Handbook will also be published at the end of the month. As soon as they are available I will provide governors with a link.

This week I report on the EEF’s study on the positive impact providing a school breakfast club can have in primary schools, the opposition leader’s motion to stop schools collecting pupil nationality and country of birth data and £300 million government funding to help young people enjoy the benefits of music and the arts.

EEF funded study found positive impact from primary school breakfast clubs
The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has published the results of a randomised controlled trial which found that pupils in primary schools who attend breakfast clubs before school benefit from an improvement in their reading, writing and maths. The results are based on the Magic Breakfast project jointly funded by the Department for Education and the EEF.

An independent evaluation by researchers at the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that:

• year 2 pupils attending breakfast clubs experienced an improvement in reading, writing and maths equivalent of two months’ progress over the course of a year
• year 6 pupils experienced a slightly smaller positive impact from attending breakfast clubs
• teachers recognised an improvement in pupil behaviour and concentration and this may indirectly improve the outcomes for children who do not attend breakfast clubs

Offering breakfast clubs is seen as a cost-effective way to raise pupil attainment. Sir Kevan Collins, Chief Executive of the EEF stated that “offering free breakfasts at school is a relatively cheap and straightforward way of alleviating this symptom of disadvantage’’.

Parliamentary motion lodged to stop pupil nationality data collection
On Wednesday, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tabled a motion in parliament to stop the practice of schools collecting pupil nationality and country of birth data. If it succeeds, the early day motion will cancel new laws introduced by the government in September forcing schools to collect the data in their annual census.

Ministers have sought to reassure parents that the additional data will not be used by the Home Office for immigration processes but to help schools to cope better with pupils with first languages other than English.

Under parliamentary procedure, the early day motion, or ‘prayer’, can be used to revoke legislation providing it gets enough support. Early day motions like this act as official public notice that the opposition is trying to secure a debate on an issue. A timetable for a potential debate and vote is yet to be finalised.

£300 million government investment to help young people enjoy the benefits of music and the arts
Today the Schools Minister Nick Gibb announced that over the next 4 years the government will provide £300 million (of which £75 million has already been announced for this year) to a network of 121 music education hubs to work with schools, local authorities and community organisations to get more young people taking part in music and arts. The funding will be administered by Arts Council England, which has a wealth of experience and strategic partnerships to improve music and cultural education for children.

The government will work to ensure that the funding particularly benefits children in the six (West Somerset, Norwich, Blackpool, Scarborough, Derby and Oldham) recently announced opportunity areas, identified as the most challenged when it comes to social mobility, to give those young people access to the best possible music and cultural education.

This week I report on the Schools Minister evidence to MPs in the Education Select Committee regarding grammar schools, the publication of the Sutton Trust’s report on the poor performance of white working class British boys and the IPPR’s report recommending the replacement of lower level apprenticeships with a pre-apprenticeship programme for 16-18 year olds.

Grammar schools to demonstrate how they’ll improve the ‘social mix’
This week Nick Gibb, the Schools Minister, was called to give evidence to the MPs in the Education Select Committee as part of the scrutiny process for the Government’s consultation on re-introducing grammar schools.

Mr Gibb stated that strict conditions would be implemented to increase the number of pupils from poor backgrounds in selective schools and that they would also apply to new and existing grammar schools. He said “Under our proposals, existing grammar schools and new grammar schools would only be allowed to open if they met strict conditions designed to ensure increased numbers of less well-off pupils have access to selective education.” The Minister added that new grammar schools and those looking to expand would have to demonstrate how they would “improve the social mix”.

Poor performance of white working-class British boys
The Sutton Trust, the leading social mobility charity, has urged schools to implement targeted attainment improvement programmes for disadvantaged white British pupils.

Their latest report Class Differences: ethnicity and disadvantage found that white British boys eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) have now been either the lowest or second lowest performing ethnic group every year for a decade. The Trust also found the attainment gap between FSM and non-FSM white British boys to be the second highest at 32 percentage points, with Irish boys in the lead displaying a 46 percentage points difference.

Apprenticeships ‘must address distinct needs of teens’
Yesterday the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) published a report recommending that the Government replaces lower level apprenticeships with a new, distinct pre-apprenticeship programme for 16–18-year-olds. Its report comes as universities have been awarded £4.5m to develop 5,200 degree level apprenticeships from September next year.

The report suggests level-two apprenticeships for younger learners “are often very job specific, do not include much off the job training, and from next year they will not be required to include a recognised qualification”. Instead the IPPR believes a pre-apprenticeship programme should be designed to “address explicitly the distinct needs of younger learners”, with more “off the job training” and general education.

This week I report on the Education Secretary’s Written Ministerial Statement signalling schools in “unviable or underperforming” council areas won’t now be forced into becoming academies, the publication of the Rochford Review in to P scales, the increase in the number of KS2 tests appeals and new guidance on calculating progress 8 and attainment 8.

Shelving of the Education for All Bill
During the half term break the Education Secretary made a Written Ministerial Statement announcing a new Technical and Further Education Bill and, importantly, confirmed that plans to force all schools in “unviable or underperforming” council areas into academies would no longer proceed.

Ms Greening advised there would be no changes to education legislation in this Parliamentary session (which runs until next Summer) and said “Our ambition remains that all schools should benefit from the freedom and autonomy that academy status brings. Our focus, however, is on building capacity in the system and encouraging schools to convert voluntarily.”

Many in the education community have claimed the Government has now all but scrapped the proposed Education for All bill, but experts have said the Government could roll elements from the bill into the new legislation which will be needed to introduce its grammar school proposals.

Rochford Review into P scales published
The report of the Rochford Review, an independent group commissioned by the DfE to review statutory assessment arrangements for pupils working below the standard of national curriculum tests was recently published. Currently, P scales are used to assess and report the attainment of pupils with SEND who are not working at the standard of mainstream statutory assessments. The review recommends that P scales should not continue to be used and that a new approach should be developed. Other recommendations touch on teacher training, sharing of good practice, quality assurance, and the need for further work on the best way to support schools with assessing pupils with English as an additional language (EAL).

Increase in number of Key Stage 2 tests appeals
New statistics published by the Standards and Testing Agency (STA) this week reveal a rise in the number of key stage 2 tests that were subject to an appeal. The sharpest increase was recorded in English reading – from 17,469 reviews to 21,587 this year. The mathematics test had the fewest review applications – 0.7% of tests taken.

Overall, 9.8% of review applications resulted in a successful review this year, with the highest change recorded in the mathematics test where 12.6% of applications resulted in a different outcome. Successful reviews applied to 0.2% of all tests taken in 2016.

New guidance on calculating progress 8 and attainment 8
The Department for Education has recently released information on how progress 8 and attainment 8 measures are calculated. It aims to help governors and trustees to understand the new measures. New GCSE qualifications will be graded from 1-9, but not all GCSEs are being moved to the new system at the same time. The DfE has, therefore, developed a methodology to compare the two parallel systems from 2017. A useful table to help people to benchmark the old A* – G grading system against the new 1 – 9 system is provided in the document and shows how unreformed GCSE’s will be translated into the new grading system.

This week I report on the Secretary of State’s announcement on new primary assessment plans including confirming there will be no Year 7 resits, the publication of technical guidance which defines what is a coasting school and how the DfE is calculating primary progress measures and a new on-line toolkit to measure and monitor children and young people’s mental wellbeing.

Primary Assessment plans
Earlier this week Justine Greening, the Education Secretary, announced that new plans had been drawn up to improve and simplify assessment arrangements given that the pace and scale of assessment changes “has been stretching”.

Whilst statutory Maths and reading resits are not being introduced for pupils in Year 7, resit papers will be made available for teachers to use as part of ongoing assessments. The Government has also said it will be introducing a targeted package of support for struggling pupils.

Under the new plans, the Key Stage 1 grammar, punctuation and spelling test will remain non-statutory for schools this year and there will be no new national tests or assessments introduced before the 2018/19 academic year.

Primary School accountability in 2016
This week the DfE updated the main technical guidance document with a ‘coasting’ schools definition and updated the summary document with further information about how it calculates primary progress measures.

Its proposed definition of a ‘coasting’ school is based on the same performance measures that underpin the floor standards. Therefore, in 2016, a primary school will be coasting if:

• it meets the 2014 part of the definition of fewer than 85% of pupils achieving level 4 in English reading, English writing and mathematics and below the national median percentage of pupils making expected progress in all of English reading, English writing and mathematics; and
• it meets the 2015 parts of the definition – of fewer than 85% of pupils achieving level 4 in English reading, English writing and mathematics and below the national median percentage of pupils making expected progress in all of English reading, English writing and mathematics; and
• it also meets the 2016 part of the definition – if fewer than 85% of children achieve the expected standard at the end of primary and average progress made by pupils is below -2.5 in English reading or -2.5 in mathematics or -3.5 in English writing.

A school will have to be below the coasting definition in 3 consecutive years to be defined as coasting and no school will be identified as coasting until after the 2016 primary performance tables are published in December. Schools will be excluded from the coasting measure if:

• they have fewer than 11 pupils at the end of key stage 2; or less than 50% of pupils have key stage 1 assessments that can be used to establish prior attainment; or
• the school closes within the academic year (except if they reopen as a converter academy).

Subject to Parliament agreeing to the Regulations, the coasting definition will apply to all mainstream maintained schools and academies with the relevant key stage 2 data. It will not apply to PRUs, special schools and academies, alternative provision academies or maintained nursery schools.

New online toolkit to measure and monitor children and young people’s mental wellbeing
A free, online toolkit to measure and monitor children and young people’s mental wellbeing was launched for schools last week. The development of the toolkit was commissioned by Public Health England (PHE) and led by the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families (AFNCCF).

According to AFNCCF, half of all diagnosable mental health disorders are established by the age of 14 and figures published last month by the Office for National Statistics showed the highest number of suicides by 15 to 19 year olds since 1998.

The toolkit aims to support school staff by highlighting a range of validated tools to measure and monitor student mental wellbeing alongside real-life case studies. In turn, school leaders can use the information gathered to assess and develop the personal development, behaviour and welfare of pupils, a key judgement area within the Ofsted inspection framework.

This week I report on the publication of the provisional GCSE results data using the new accountability measures and the potential for a boycott of next year’s SATs by the unions, with an announcement expected from the DfE on primary assessments due at any time.

Analysis of provisional GCSE results data
Yesterday the Government published analysis of provisional GCSE results data which showed for the first time national analysis of Progress 8 scores and other measures in its new accountability system for schools.

From this year, schools are judged based on their attainment 8 and progress 8 scores, attainment in English and Maths and the number of pupils entering and achieving passes in the EBacc subjects (English, Maths, History or Geography, the sciences and a language). Progress 8 measures pupils’ progress across eight subjects from age 11 to 16, while attainment 8 measures average attainment across those subjects.

The data indicates attainment has increased across the headline measures in 2016 compared to the equivalent provisional data from 2015, both for all schools and state-funded schools. The DfE has suggested these increases are likely to be due to a range of factors including a range of behaviour changes as schools adapt to the new accountability system and changes in methodology.

Potential SATs boycott next year
Unions are stepping up their campaign to boycott next year’s SATs tests, with both the NAHT Heads’ union and the NUT teaching union writing to their school leadership members, outlining plans to carry out an indicative ballot this month. The unions plan to hold indicative ballots this month, in order to provide fair notice to members and if successful, the NAHT says a full ballot will be held in March next year.

The NAHT has said that it expects the Government to make some changes to the current assessment following union negotiations with the Department for Education. This seems to have been confirmed by the Education Secretary yesterday, who told delegates at the Schools North East Summit that there would be a new announcement about primary assessments in the next few weeks.