This week I’ve provided a link to Ofsted’s Lead for Governance you tube video on questions Governors might be asked by Ofsted Inspectors, information on the phonics roadshows being offered by the Department for Education and calls by doctors and academics to ban tackling in school rugby.

Thanks to Sheena Lewington for sharing this insight from Belita Scott, Ofsted’s National Lead for Governance, who provides some examples of what governors might be asked during inspection.

DFE ANNOUNCES A SERIES OF PHONICS ROADSHOWS
To mark World Book Day yesterday, Schools Minister Nick Gibb announced a series of events to help schools share best practice and help children become confident readers. The new drive has been launched in response to the latest phonics screening check results, which show that despite strong progress there are still regional variations in the proportion of children reaching the expected standard in reading by the end of year 1. The North East roadshow is taking place at Bishopton Redmarshall C of E Primary School in Stockton on Tees on 15 March and there are only 2 places left.

CALLS FOR SCHOOLS TO BAN TACKLING IN RUGBY
In an open letter to ministers more than 70 doctors and academics are calling for a ban on tackling in rugby matches played in UK and Irish schools as they say injuries from this “high-impact collision sport” can have lifelong consequences for children.

Supporters say rugby builds character and other forms are less challenging and a spokesman for the Department for Education said: “Team sports, such as rugby, play an important role in developing character… we expect schools to be aware of the risks associated with sporting activities and to provide a safe environment for pupils.”

This week I highlight the Education and Adoption Bill passing through Parliament and its impact on coasting or failing schools, the DfE’s initiatives to improve children and young people’s mental health and the launch of an initiative to encourage more reading of literature in secondary schools.

EDUCATION AND ADOPTION BILL PASSED THROUGH PARLIAMENT
The Education and Adoption Bill completed its passage through Parliament on Tuesday evening and included new measures that allow swifter intervention where a school is coasting or failing. Inevitably we will see more schools become academies and key clauses in the Bill include:

• Coasting schools, as labelled by the Regional Schools Commissioner (RSC), will be eligible for intervention. The definition of a coasting school has not yet been finalised and will be part of a second piece of legislation subject to MPs’ vote.
• New powers are given to RSCs to issue schools with a performance, standards or safety warning notice. The RSC issuing the notice will also have the power to decide how much time the school is allowed to respond and improve.
• The academy conversion for Inadequate schools must be ordered by the Education Secretary. They can also make academy orders for schools deemed to be coasting, but this is not a mandatory duty.
• Consultation is no longer required for forced academisations.
• LAs and Governors are now required to co-operated in the event of forced academisation.
• Education Secretaries will be given powers to set the actions Governors will be required to take in forced academy takeover, and impose deadlines.
• Education Secretaries can also revoke an academy order if other means of improvement or closure are deemed a better option.
• Academy trusts and chains taking over maintained schools are responsible for communicating their improvement plans to parents. This does not mean they will be consulted on the changes.
• Academy funding agreements must include a provision which allows education secretaries to end agreements for coasting academies.

In the next and final step, the Education and Adoption Bill will be taken to Her Majesty the Queen for royal assent. This will turn the bill into an act of Parliament and its measures will come into force as soon as possible.

 
IMPROVING CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE’S MENTAL HEALTH
The Department for Education (DfE) is seeking views on the most effective support methods to help improve the mental health of children and young people. The Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, has announced a £1.5 million fund driven by young people to help them develop support networks and talk about mental health, with online advice and workshops to help set them up.

The DfE has also updated its counselling guidance, which provides practical, evidence-based advice, informed by experts on how to make sure school counselling works for children and young people.

 
LAUNCH OF 100 CLASSIC BOOKS IN SCHOOLS INITIATIVE
One hundred titles are being offered as part of a new initiative from Penguin Classics, following a call for action by Schools Minister Nick Gibb to ensure there is more classic literature being taught in schools. The 100 titles – taken from Penguin’s Black Classics series – range from the earliest writings to early 20th century works, span fiction and non-fiction, poetry and prose, and are intended to offer a springboard for children to discover the classics. All the titles are by authors who died before 1946 and are therefore out of copyright.

Penguin is offering Secondary schools classroom sets of 30 copies of each of the 100 titles for a package price of £3,000, allowing pupils to read along with their teacher and classmates. The offer will run between March and June 2016 for delivery in time for the new school term in September 2016. Schools can register for further information at: edu.penguinclassics.co.uk

This week I look at the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) and the Government’s response to the House of Commons Education Committee report ‘Life Lessons: PSHE and SRE in schools’.

INFORMATION ON THE ENGLISH BACCALAUREATE (EBACC)
Today the Department for Education published information on the Government’s policy on the English Baccalaureate (EBacc). The EBacc is a school performance measure which allows people to see how many pupils get a grade C or above in the core academic subjects at Key Stage 4.

The measure was introduced in 2010 and all pupils who started Year 7 in September 2015 (this academic year)  will take the EBacc subjects when they reach their GCSEs in 2020. The EBacc is made up of:

• English
• Mathematics
• History or Geography
• the sciences
• a language

GOVERNMENT RESPONSE: LIFE LESSONS: PSHE AND SRE IN SCHOOLS
A year ago the Education Select Committee published a report which recommended that Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) should be introduced as a statutory subject in primary and secondary schools.

On Tuesday the Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, responded to the Chair of the Select Committee advising that the Government would not be making PSHE a statutory subject.   The Government’s response to the Report’s recommendations has been published and Nicky Morgan has stated that over the next few months her Department  will produce an action plan and recommendations for improving PSHE, including publishing a comprehensive PSHE toolkit for schools through the Sutton Trust/EEF.

This week I look at the changing education landscape with the academies programme and multi-academy trusts, the use of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) Teaching and Learning Toolkit in shaping decisions on the use of Pupil Premium funding and the next round of an international reading study of 10 year olds.

EDUCATION SECRETARY: ALL SCHOOLS TO BECOME ACADEMIES
As we are all aware the education landscape is changing with the Government’s drive for more academies and collaboration and partnerships between schools. This was evidenced yesterday when the Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, spoke at the Leicestershire Academies Spring Conference and the transcript of her speech makes for very interesting reading.

The Education Secretary stated that the academies programme was expected to grow and expand until all schools became academies. She talked about improving the education system through school-to-school support with the most sustainable, accountable and efficient way to achieve this being through multi-academy trusts. She also highlighted the importance of school governors because of the skill, expertise and wisdom they brought to running schools.

MAKING USE OF THE SUTTON TRUST-EEF TEACHING AND LEARNING TOOLKIT
In November last year I highlighted the publication of a research report commissioned by the DfE regarding the performance gap between pupils from more and less advantaged backgrounds in England. The report highlighted the work of The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), an independent grant-making charity dedicated to breaking the link between family income and educational achievement. As some of you might already be aware the EEF in conjunction with the Sutton Trust has developed a Teaching and Learning Toolkit which provides guidance for teachers and schools on how best to use their resources to improve the attainment of disadvantaged pupils. The Toolkit covers 34 topics, each summarised in terms of their average impact on attainment, the strength of the evidence supporting them and their cost.

When you are discussing the use of Pupil Premium funding and its impact in your Governing body meetings do you know if your school is aware of or using the Toolkit and could this be helpful?

SCHOOLS TAKING PART IN THE PROGRESS IN INTERNATIONAL READING LITERACY STUDY 2016
The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) measures the reading ability of 10-year-olds, which can then be compared with other countries. The study is run by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) on a 5-yearly cycle. A randomised sample of 170 schools from across England have been selected to take part in the next round of the study taking place between May and June, with the results published in 2017.

This week I highlight the new website to help prevent extremism in children and young people, North Tyneside’s success with the publication of the latest GCSE performance data and the DfE’s first symposium on character education.

PREVENTING CHILDREN FROM EXTREMISM
Earlier this week saw the launch of a new website (Educate Against Hate) by the Department for Education, offering advice on preventing extremism for parents and teachers. Further measures were also announced to protect children in and out of school including:

• a significant escalation of Ofsted investigations into unregistered, illegal independent schools, following the closure of 3 unregistered schools in Birmingham before Christmas;
• a new tougher approach to prosecuting illegal unregistered schools, including publishing details of when the government will take forward prosecutions and a call to local authorities to identify any settings of concerns that Ofsted can follow through, with a commitment to strengthen closure powers;
• a consultation on registering children that go missing from school, improving information shared between schools and local authorities, to reduce the risk that children taken out of school go missing, following Ofsted inspections of schools in Tower Hamlets and Birmingham last year.

LATEST GCSE PERFORMANCE TABLES
The latest GCSE performance tables were published this week and whilst almost 65% of pupils in our region scored 5+A*-C grades at GCSE level, this was below the national average of 66.5% in the latest performance tables.

The great news is that the highest performing Local Authority area in the North East is North Tyneside, where 72% of our pupils achieved 5+ A*-C grades. We also topped the national average of 91% for 5+A*-G grades by 1.8 percentage points.

CHARACTER EDUCATION SYMPOSIUM
Yesterday the Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan hosted the Department for Education’s first character symposium, discussing what excellent character education looks like. Listing traits as “those qualities that enhance us as people: persistence, the ability to work with others, to show humility in the joy of success and resilience in the face of failure. Character is about being self-aware, playing an active role within communities. It’s about selflessness and self-discipline as well as playing a full role in society.”

The DfE is currently building the evidence base to develop the best approaches and will look to the Character Awards as a gold standard as to what works in character education. An online digital platform will be provided where teachers can share best practice about character education, evaluate new ideas and find online professional development materials – as well as sharing their own data to build a proper evidence base.

In this week’s Update I highlight the new school efficiency metric tool, updated timeline guidance and the launch of a new mentoring campaign to support struggling teenagers.

NEW SCHOOL EFFICIENCY TOOL
The DfE has introduced a new metric tool to help mainstream schools understand whether they can improve their efficiency relative to other schools and you might want to consider whether you want to use this tool at your next Finance/Resources Committee meetings.

The metric provides schools with an indication of their efficiency, based on pupil attainment and the money used to achieve it, relative to statistically similar schools. This is intended to prompt schools to think about where they can become more efficient and how they could focus their resources to support measures to increase attainment.

GUIDANCE: TIMELINES
The DfE has provided guidance for Headteachers and Governing bodies of maintained schools, academies and pupil referral units, to help understand and plan for the compulsory legal requirements schools must meet.

MENTORING CAMPAIGN TO SUPPORT STRUGGLING TEENAGERS
The Government has announced the Chair of Capgemini UK and the Careers and Enterprise Company, has agreed to lead a major campaign to encourage business people and professionals to volunteer to act as mentors to young teenagers at risk of dropping out of education or achieving less than they could.

The new campaign will be led through the Careers and Enterprise Company, which was set up to give young people better access to access to high quality careers education, advice and guidance through more effective employer engagement with schools.

Welcome back after the Christmas break. In this week’s Update I highlight the consultation on revisions to statutory guidance on keeping children safe in education, amended guidance on behaviour and discipline, best practice advice on handling complaints and issues around parental responsibility, as well as the announcement of the new National Schools Commissioner.

CONSULTATION ON PROPOSED REVISIONS TO GUIDANCE ON KEEPING CHILDREN SAFE IN EDUCATION
On 22 December last year the Government issued a consultation on proposed revisions to its statutory guidance for schools on keeping children safe. The consultation document explains the proposed changes which include:

• In the “Summary” reinforcing the importance of Part One as a starting point for all staff in schools and colleges to read and understand;
• Increasing the focus on the importance of a child centred and coordinated approach to safeguarding;
• Emphasising further the role that individual staff play in safeguarding and the fact it is everyone’s responsibility;
• Highlighting the importance of early help and how it sits in the wider safeguarding system;
• Highlighting the importance of data sharing;
• Clarification on the role of the designated safeguarding lead and cover for the role;
• A new section to cover online safety;
• Aligning and clarifying training requirements for the designated safeguarding lead and staff;
• Updating the inspection section to reflect the Ofsted framework; and
• A new section covering children with special educational needs and disabilities.

The draft guidance has also been issued and if you would like to respond to the consultation, responses should be submitted by 22 February 2016, either online or via email (safeguarding.schools@education.gsi.ogv.uk) or post (Michael Bell, Level 3, Bishopsgate House, DfE, Feethams, Darlington, DL1 5QE) using this response form.

AMENDED GUIDANCE ON BEHAVIOUR AND DISCIPLINE
The DfE has updated its advice for school leaders and school staff on developing a school behaviour policy to reflect that, from this month, schools will no longer have an obligation to use home-school agreements.

BEST PRACTICE ADVICE FOR SCHOOL COMPLAINTS PROCEDURES 2016
This new advice from the DfE provides best practice for schools in creating and revising complaints procedures and how to deal with complaints, replacing the School Complaints Toolkit 2014. Over the next couple of weeks, I will compare this with our existing Complaints Guidance and Procedures document and will bring a revised document to Governors this term if any changes need to be made.

The DfE has also produced advice on dealing with issues relating to parental responsibility which you might find helpful.

NEW NATIONAL SCHOOLS COMMISSIONER
A new National Schools Commissioner has been appointed by the Department for Education. Sir David Carter, currently the Regional Schools Commissioner (RSC) for the South West, will succeed Frank Green who completes his term as Schools Commissioner at the end of January 2016.

Merry Christmas to all Governors and a Happy New Year

In the final Update before Christmas I have highlighted new guidance from the NGA on the statutory framework for school governance, the DfE’s updated Myths and Facts document, a new consultation on staffing and employment advice for schools, the Government’s vision for apprenticeships to 2020 and the publication of a report in to PE and Sports Premium funding in primary schools.

NEW NATIONAL GOVERNORS’ ASSOCIATION (NGA) GUIDANCE ON STATUTORY FRAMEWORK FOR SCHOOL GOVERNANCE
This new guidance provides a practical overview of the legal framework in which governing bodies of maintained schools and academy trust boards must operate. A helpful read for new Governors and a good reminder for experienced Governors, it explores the legal requirements that school’s governance arrangements must comply with, including how the membership of the board is decided, how meetings will be held and how decisions will be made.

UPDATED DFE MYTHS AND FACTS DOCUMENT PUBLISHED
The DfE has published a revised version of its Myths and Facts document for schools.

CONSULTATION STAFFING AND EMPLOYMENT ADVICE FOR SCHOOLS
The Government is seeking views on plans to revise its guidance on managing staff employment in schools. The revised non-statutory advice ‘Staffing and Employment Advice for Schools’ has been prepared to replace the department’s statutory Guidance on Managing Staff Employment in Schools.

GOVERNMENT VISION FOR APPRENTICESHIPS TO 2020
The Department for Education (DfE) and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) have outlined the Government’s vision for apprenticeships until 2020. This revolves around improving the quality of apprenticeship provision, raising the profile and financial benefit of apprenticeships with employers and helping young people get into apprenticeships and work. Although much of this document is aimed at employers, it is useful for governors to know how the government intend to reform apprenticeships and what impact this will have upon schools and 6th forms.

PUBLICATION OF REPORT INTO PE AND SPORTS PREMIUM FUNDING IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS
The DfE has published its research into the PE and sport premium, its use and effect in primary schools.

This week I’m covering a range of subjects – an update to the statutory guidance on supporting pupils at school with medical conditions, publication of the 2015 phonics screening check and assessments at Key Stage 1 and 2, amendments to the Education and Adoption Bill to include academies and free schools, an initiative to improve better mental health provision in schools and new research into looked after children (LAC).

UPDATED STATUTORY GUIDANCE ON SUPPORTING PUPILS AT SCHOOL WITH MEDICAL CONDITIONS
The Government has updated the document including clarifying the distinction between statutory and non-statutory guidance and adding references to the SEND code of practice.

PUBLICATION OF THE 2015 PHONICS, KEY STAGE 1 AND KEY STAGE 2 ASSESSMENTS
This week saw the Department for Education publish provisional information on the 2015 phonics screening check and assessments at Key Stage 1 as well as updated information on the national curriculum assessments at Key Stage 2, including breakdowns by pupil characteristics.

EDUCATION AND ADOPTION BILL UPDATE REGARDING ‘COASTING SCHOOLS’
Earlier this week, the government confirmed that the Education and Adoption Bill, which is currently passing through the House of Lords, will be amended to include academies and free schools under the same “coasting legislation” as maintained schools.

INVESTING IN BETTER MENTAL HEALTH PROVISION IN SCHOOLS
Last week the Secretary of State for Education, announced plans to establish closer co-operation between schools and the NHS’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). The initiative, which will test a ‘named single point of contact’, will operate in 22 pilot areas across the country (including Sunderland) and involve 255 schools. It is intended to improve joint working and provide a more consistent service to children and young people.

NEW RESEARCH INTO LOOKED AFTER CHILDREN (LAC)
New research suggests children in long term foster families make better progress at school compared to those ‘in need’ i.e. those from troubled families who remain with their birth family. The research also found that:

• each additional change of care placement after age 11 is associated with one third of a grade less at GCSE
• young people in care who changed school in Years 10 or 11 scored over five grades less than those who did not
• for every 5% of possible school sessions missed due to unauthorised school absences, young people in care scored over two grades less at GCSE
• for every additional day of school missed due to fixed term exclusions, young people in care scored one sixth of a grade less at GCSE

Schools receive £1,900 of pupil premium funding for each looked after child (LAC). Do you know how many children at your school are LAC and what their attendance is like, have you asked what the impact of this funding is having on the progress of these children and if there are differences between these pupils and their peers, what is being done to support them?