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Categories
Governance

New National Funding Formula for schools

The government has announced the long-awaited second stage of consultation into a new national funding formula for schools. It is proposed that changes will be made in two stages:

  1. From April 2018: funding will be re-distributed between local authorities (LA) but LA formulae will remain as a transitional year.
  2. From April 2019: a National Funding Formula (which the DfE have styled a hard NFF).

What might the proposals mean for your school? Visit the Schools national funding formula page on the DFE website (external link)   and then download the database called Impact of the proposed schools NFF.

The consultation closes on 22 March 2017. 

Categories
Events Schools

Explore your data with FFT in London

FFT Education is holding their hands-on, computer based introductory course Exploring Your Data with FFT Aspire in London on the following dates:

  • Tuesday 21 February – East London
  • Wednesday 22 February – West London
  • Tuesday 21 March – Central London

The practical course explains the evaluation, target setting and student explorer dashboards, plus gives you the opportunity to get to grips with analysing groups of pupils, subject performance and individual results through FFT Aspire's interactive functionality. The course is suitable for both primary and secondary schools. Each course is led by an FFT expert and costs £290 plus vat per delegate.

To book, or to find out more information, please visit FFT Education's website (external link)

Categories
Health and Safety

Fraud alert

Fraudsters are sending out a high number of ‘phishing’ emails to personal and business email addresses, pretending to come from ‘donotreply’ followed by a name similar to a recognised security or policy address, for example: ‘donotreply@city-of-london.pnn.police.uk’. The subject line currently is shown as a series of random numbers and letters: ‘RNP0024D5D73B3A’ and ‘KMBT_C220’ have both been seen.

The emails include an attachment – a .zip file, usually with the current date followed by random digits in the file name. These attachments contain a password stealing component, with the aim of stealing your bank, PayPal or other financial details along with your email or web log-in credentials. Many of them are also designed to steal your Facebook and other social network log-in details. A very high proportion also contain ‘Locky’ ransomware that, once downloaded, will encrypt files and demand money (typically about £350) to recover the files.

Protection/Prevention Advice

Having up-to-date virus protection is essential; however it will not always prevent your system from becoming infected. Please also consider the following actions:

  • Don’t click on links or open any attachments you receive in unsolicited emails or SMS messages. Remember that fraudsters can create an email address to look like one used by someone you trust. If you are unsure, check the email header to identify the true source before you open any attachment or click on any links.
  • Always install software updates as soon as they become available, the update will often include fixes for critical security vulnerabilities.
  • Create regular back-ups of your important files. It’s important that the device you back up to is not left connected to your computer as any malware infection could spread to that too.
  • Don't pay extortion demands – there is no guarantee that access to your files will be restored if you do pay.
  • If you think your bank details have been compromised, contact your bank immediately.
  • If you have been affected by this, or any other scam, report it to Action Fraud by calling 0300 123 2040 or visit Action Fraud's website (external link)   
Categories
Early Years Governance

Early Years Funding Consultation – government response published

On Thursday 1 December the Department for Education published its response (external link) to the Early Years Funding Consultation. The consultation launched in August was the third strand of the funding consultation. The outcome of the consultation is that:

A new early years national funding formula will allocate funding to local authorities (LAs) for the existing 15 hour entitlement for all three and four year olds and the addition 15 hours for children of eligible working parents. This will include a base rate and an uplift for additional needs.

  1. Hourly (average) funding rates will be increased to: £4.94 from £4.56 for three and four year olds and £5.39 from £5.09 for two year olds
  2. There will be a minimum funding rate to LAs of £4.30.
  3. LAs must pass at least 93% of funding to providers.
  4. For the duration of this Parliament an additional £55million a year supplementary funding will be provided to LAs to support maintained nursery schools in recognition of the higher costs these providers face.
  5. LAs will be able to use a limited set of funding supplements (no more than 10% of funding allocated to providers) to take account of deprivation, rurality/sparsity, flexibility and quality (workforce/leadership qualifications), and for English as an Additional Language.
  6. A new disability access fund will be introduced to support access to free entitlements – £12.5m per year (equivalent to £615 per child accessing their free entitlement).
  7. Legislation will be brought forward to require all areas to set up a local inclusion fund for children with special needs and disabilities.  In future this will need to be included in the Local Offer.
  8. The Early Years Pupil Premium will continue.
Categories
Consultation School Admissions

Harris Academy Tottenham – consultation on proposed admission arrangements for 2018/19

Harris Academy Tottenham are consulting on their proposed admission arrangements for the academic year 2018/19.

Please see the letter from Harris Academy Tottenham (PDF, 288KB) with regards to their proposal to give priority to children of staff at the school.

If you have any comments on these proposals please write by Monday 23 January 2017 to Ms Ana Arsenie, Admissions Officer, at the Academy address, or email to admissions@harristottenham.org.uk

 

Categories
Governance

New Funding for School Improvement

The Secretary of State has announced (external link) some further work on School Improvement and funding.   

Further details and criteria for bids and the allocation mechanism, will be provided in due course but we do not expect the new fund for local authorities to be significantly more than the minimum of £50k given the overwhelmingly high performance of Haringey’s maintained schools.

Categories
Governance

Ofsted Annual Report 2015/16

The Ofsted annual report into the education system in England has been  published, by Sir Michael Wilshaw, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector (HMCI).

Presenting his fifth and final report as HMCI before stepping down this month, Sir Michael said “a world class education system is within our grasp – but only if serious capacity challenges are urgently addressed”.

Sir Michael also stressed that a north/south ‘geographical divide’ meant the most able pupils in the North and Midlands were less likely to reach A/A* at GCSE. He said: “Standards can only truly be considered high if they are high in every part of the country and for all pupils regardless of background or ability.”

As well as the report’s main headlines, there were several points made throughout about school governance including how changes to the education system will increase the importance of the role of governing boards and how weak governance is often found to be at the root of school failure.

Visit the NGA website (external link) to read more about the report.

Categories
Outstanding for All Awards

Outstanding for All Awards: event media

Thank you again to everyone who joined us at the Outstanding for All Awards last week on Monday 5 December at Alexandra Palace.

Some pictures on the night have already been uploaded to our Facebook OFA album (external link) and Flickr OFA album (exernal link). If you require copies of high quality pictures, please make your request to joss.dempster@haringey.gov.uk

The videos that were played on the night are also available to view online on our YouTube OFA playlist (external link). Please feel free to share (and like!) the link.

If you missed the twitter feed on the night, we have the highlights of the ceremony on Storify (external link) which includes the videos as well.

Last, but not least, if you attended the event, please could you provide your feedback on our event evaluation form – it will only take you a few minutes. Please could you return your feedback by 18 December.

Categories
Events

Unison training seminar – 23 Jan 2017

UNISON are holding a Training Seminar for School based members on 23 January 2017, the event will take place at The Cypriot Centre in Wood Green. The aim of the seminar is to increase the capacity and knowledge of locally based representatives. The event is initially being opened to up to two representatives per school.  For further information please contact Haringey UNISON on 028489 3351. Topics covered will include school funding reform, Academies, and the future of schools.

I would encourage all schools to facilitate the attendance of UNISON members at this event which is Trade Union training, and as such those attending should be granted paid time off to do so. Trade Unions play an important part in our Schools and we value their input in both supporting individual members and dealing with the increasing range of issues in Schools.

Sincerely,

Rory Kennedy
AD for Schools & Learning

Categories
STEM

Free STEM competition

Please see below information on the Primary & Secondary Engineer Leaders Award. This is a free STEM competition which requires primary and secondary pupils to interview engineers and then design a solution to a problem in response to the question, “If you were an engineer, what would you do?”

This is the second year the competition is running for London schools with UCL. As well as two winners from each age group, UCL will select a winning design and a team of engineers from UCL will make it!

The design chosen from last year was by 5 year old Mahika Sharma who designed the ‘Smart Stick’ a modern interpretation of the white stick for blind people which has vibrate alerts and audio alerts via Bluetooth. The competition was highly successful in Scotland which over the last four years has had 22,000 children enter.

Information – Primary London (PDF, 1MB)

Step by Step London Primary (PDF, 2MB)

Information Secondary London (PDF, 1MB)

Step by Step London Secondary (PDF, 2MB)