Haringey Schools BulletinOfsted has released its 9th School Inspection update (external link), providing some useful clarity around “short-inspections”, safeguarding, new GCSEs, technical qualifications and how inspectors will liaise with executive leaders and the board of trustees in multi-academy trusts (MATs).
The secretary of state for education, Justine Greening, has announced her intention to put Relationships and Sex Education (SRE) on a statutory footing, "so every child has access to age appropriate provision". At the moment, all schools in England should have an up- to-date sex and relationships (SRE) policy. This is a statutory obligation for all maintained schools, but an advisory measure for academies and free schools. The move will be made as an amendment to the Children and Social Work Bill (external link) and will require:
The Department for Education will "lead a comprehensive programme of engagement to set out age-appropriate subject content and identify the support schools need to deliver high-quality teaching". The statutory guidance (first introduced in 2000) will be updated and is expected to come into force in September 2019. Parents will continue to have a right to withdraw their children from sex education should they choose to do so.
The amendment will also "create a power enabling the Government to make regulations requiring PSHE to be taught in academies and maintained schools".
The legal responsibility for the safe management of asbestos lies with the “duty holder”. The duty holder is the person responsible for maintenance and/or repair of the school – typically the employer. For community schools, community special schools, voluntary-controlled schools, maintained nursery schools and pupil referral units, the employer is the local authority. For academies, free schools, voluntary-aided and foundation schools, it will be the school governors or the trust.
Governors and trustee should ensure that their schools have suitable asbestos management procedures in place and receive regular reports so they can be confident that the duties are being complied with.
The government has confirmed funding (external link) from April 2017 of nearly £60 million to support children with special educational needs and disability (SEND).
The announced funding includes:
The publication provides non-statutory guidance for anyone in a strategic leadership position within maintained schools and academies and aims to help school leaders review their staff structures regularly as part of annual school improvement, curriculum and financial planning.
The guidance acknowledges there is no single staff structure, or approach to reviewing staffing, that will suit all schools in order to deliver excellent pupil outcomes. It also explores the contextual factors such as funding, pupil demographics and school improvement priorities that play a key role in decisions around workforce planning.
The guidance includes:
Staffing structures should be reviewed regularly to see if it still fits the school’s priorities, especially if those priorities have recently been changed. Governing boards have a clear strategic role to play in appointments at senior leadership level (headteachers, deputy/assistant headteachers and school business manager), but all other appointments should be delegated to the headteacher.
This is a reminder that there will be a meeting for Headteachers and Chairs of Governing Bodies to hear the feedback from the initial stakeholder engagement sessions run with the Education Development Trust and ISOS Partnership about the future model of School Improvement in Haringey. The meeting is on Friday 3 February at 8.30 – 10.30 am in the Professional Development Centre, Downhills Park Road, London N17.
The timelines help schools find out about future changes, as well as identify upcoming activities that may benefit students.
The government has released the Building our Industrial Strategy Green Paper (external link), reaffirming its commitment to apprenticeships and creating “a proper system of technical education”. The Green Paper seeks to outline how the system will help the half of young people who do not take A-levels or go to university, and “those parts of the country where more people take a technical track”.
New plans outlined by the government include:
The Local Government Association (LGA) has called on the government to make small local authority (LA) maintained schools exempt (external link) from paying the Apprenticeship Levy. All employers with an annual wage bill of over £3million will have to pay to the levy at a rate of 0.5% of the total wage bill. . However, in schools where the local authority is the employer, they will have to contribute to a levy (if there is one) regardless of their individual wage-bill.