Subject: FAO Head Teachers - weekly news update 10

Text Box: SCHOOLS NorthEast weekly update
The future of our region is in school

Apologies for the late arrival of this week’s update as a result of technical difficulties.

This week... make sure you and your pupils wrap up warm!

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News and Events

Heads Up a great success

Many thanks to all who joined us for the ‘Testing Times’, Heads Up last week. At the event,

Professor Tymms prompted a lively debate on the subject of the changing environment of testing and monitoring in the UK’s schools.

He called for increased diversity in both the curriculum and testing arrangements in the UK, and stressed the importance of a establishing

a solid evidence base before the introduction of new initiatives and further reforms. To read Professor Tymms’ presentation in full, go

to the news page of our website – http://www.schoolsnortheast.com/content/news.html. Don’t miss the article in The Northern Echo yesterday:

‘New school reports ‘make little sense’, which features Professor Tymms and Jonathon Morris of Moorside Community Technology

College, County Durham, both of whom were interviewed for this article at the Heads Up event.

http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/3938426.New_school_reports____make_little_sense

SCHOOLS NorthEast surgery: Working with the media

Want practical help from the experts on how to deal with journalists, get positive publicity for your school and manage any issues

that could jeopardise your reputation? SCHOOLS NorthEast launches the first of a series of support surgeries on working with media.

This introductory session will help you to understand how to approach the media and the techniques you need to ensure that you get

your message across. The event will be held on Thursday 22 January from 9.00am-11:00am at One NorthEast’s Head Offices

in Newburn Riverside, Newcastle. The session is free and open to all, but places are very limited so get in quick! Further sessions will

be offered subject to demand.

For more information and to register your interest in attending please email – k.stonehouse@schoolsnortheast.com or call 0191 280 5037

Call out for case studies

SCHOOLS NorthEast is co-ordinating a response to the recommendations of the National Council for Educational Excellence. In the new

year we will be holding an event to develop an action plan for the implementation of the Council’s ideas in the North East, working with

Universities for the North East and regional business leaders. Throughout this work, we want to showcase the fantastic activities already

happening in our region’s schools so please let us know if your school has any interesting case studies on how your school has:

· Worked with business or industry

· Worked with universities

· Worked with other providers, schools and/or colleges

· Demonstrated an innovative approach to engaging parents

Email us at info@schoolsnortheast.com or call 0191 2805037 if you want to shout about your success (and make sure that lots of others hear about

it too).

FAO: Science co-ordinators

Royal Society of Chemistry – school lectures

Following on from the sixth form chemistry lecture on 10 December, the Royal Society of Chemistry offers an exciting 4 day programme of

Lectures and demonstrations for schools. Aimed at students from years 6, 9 and 10-13, a range of guest speakers will discuss Forensic Science,

the world’s oceans and extreme adventures in earth sciences. Expect flashes, bangs and other explosions in chemistry too.

Held at the Herschel building, Newcastle University from the 15-18 December.

For more details go to the events section of our website – www.schoolsnortheast.com/contents/events, or if you would like to attend any or all lectures,

contact Ross Harrington at r.w.harrington@ncl.ac.uk to book your places.

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News round-up

Local News

· New school reports ‘make little sense’ (The Northern Echo)

· Enterprise week pupils Go Bananas for challenge (The Northern Echo)

· Schools face axe in spending cuts (The Northern Echo)

· Pupils will dig deep in bypass planting (The Journal)

· Schools cash: wait and see (The Journal)

Credit crunch and BSF

· Darling brings forward school building cash (The Guardian)

· £800m school cash brought forward (BBC News)

· Chancellor speeds up school building to beat recession (Children and Young People Now)

· Money brought forward to improve schools (The Independent)

· Schools design scheme comes under attack (The Guardian)

Single-sex classrooms

· Should children be taught in single-sex classrooms? (The Independent)

· Single-sex science lessons 'would be good for girls' (The Guardian)

· Boys and girls should be taught separately for key subjects, says schools minister (Daily Mail)

· 'Intimidating' boys put girls off science, minister says (The Independent)

· Let boys and girls all learn in the same class (The Independent)

Academies and diplomas

· Diplomas 'not hard enough' for brightest pupils, claims head (Bernard Trafford in the The Telegraph)

· Despite sponsors and high pay for teachers, there is no 'academy effect' (The Guardian)

· Academies hijacked by middle-class families (The Times)

· Fear over lack of academy schools sponsors (Financial Times)

· City academies improving at faster rate than state schools (The Independent)

· Government launches inquiry into academy funds allegations (The Guardian)

· Diplomas threaten our independence (article by Bernard Trafford in The TES)

· New AQA Bacc passes heads' test (The TES)

‘Slipping’ science standards

· Experts warn of 'catastrophic' drop in school science standards as exams get easier (Mail online)

· Science exam standards 'eroded' (BBC News)

· Dumbing down school exams risks 'catastrophe', warns Royal Society of Chemistry (The Telegraph)

State school on Saturday

· State Schools start opening on Saturdays (Times online)

· Saturday school boost for pupils (BBC News)

Teachers flock to private sector

· Teachers take flight from state schools (The Independent)

· Teachers leaving state schools for private sector 'in droves' (Times online)

· More state teachers are quitting jobs for better working life in independent schools (Daily Mail)

Other educational news

· Primary school 'hit list' revealed (The Telegraph)

· DCSF: white parents ‘show less interest in education’ (The Independent)

· Stressed pupils perform badly (BBC News)

· New fast-track head scheme looks to career-changers (The TES)

· Schools minister shifts focus to parents (The Guardian)

· Truancy: Number of parents jailed trebles (The Guardian)

· School breakfast clubs improve social skills and attention (Children and Young People Now)

· Shakespeare suffers slings and arrows of Sats fortune (The Guardian)

· Ofsted: Pupils should run own businesses (Times online)

· Parents are flocking to a new primary school in Sussex where pupils don't take tests (The Independent)

Star pupil

Hays travel – The Sunderland-based travel agents are offering ten per cent discounts to parents in County Durham if they take

a break during official school holidays. £1,000 prize draw for parents who book by the end of February and £1,000 to the school

their child attends is also up for grabs. Hays struck the deal with Durham County Council to run the incentive in response to the

serious problem of children taking holiday during term time.

Could do better

Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare has been removed from the SATs tests for 14 year olds resulting in up to 50 per cent of

teachers dropping out of the training courses run by the RSC to aid the teaching of Shakespeare to teenagers. Alas poor Shakespeare!

Head to Head - a week in the life of a North East Head Teacher

David Pearmain has been Head Teacher of Kenton School in Newcastle for the last 10 years. Previous to this David was Head

Teacher of Armthorpe School in Doncaster. David states that Kenton is ‘much bigger (and better of course, as long as they won’t be reading this in Doncaster!’.

Last week was busy as usual with Governors’ meetings, lots of teething issues about our new building (but it’s great), Progress

Coaching Y11s into a sense of urgency about their GCSEs, parents’ evenings and the only bad thing – a visit to the dentist, about

which I am a coward.

The two best things that happened last week were meeting our prospective Y7 students and their parents and seeing how excited

and full of hope for their futures they were, and seeing even more terrific art work go up along the new school corridors.

The biggest disappointment at school last week was realising that not even a brand new state of the art school is going to give a

small minority of our teenage students a positive attitude to their studies

The funniest thing that has happened at school last week was a Sgt Pepper-style group cartoon, of all the staff as characters

from the Simpsons, being hung in the corridor. I will not reveal which Simpsons character I was.

One thing would make your job easier last week would have been whole-hearted support from all our families, not just most of

them.

Top of your to do list for this week is get to the shops in time to buy my wife’s Christmas present.

My hero of last week was my son, who rowed on the freezing Tyne for his club, even though he had a stinking cold

My Villain of last week was also my son, for giving the rest of us his stinking cold.

If someone donated £20 000 to my school I would put it towards equipping our new community arts centre.

My question for next week’s Head is: What announcements would you most and least like to hear from the DCSF this week?

If you would like to take part in our ‘Head to Head’ feature and tell us all about your week, please contact the team at

info@schoolsnortheast.com or call us on 0191 2805037.

Funding and opportunities

Develop your links with the local community

Community Spaces is a £50 million open grants programme managed by Groundwork UK as an award partner to the Big Lottery Fund.

It is part of the Big Lottery Fund’s Changing Spaces initiative. Community Spaces helps local community groups create or improve green

and open spaces to improve the quality of life in their neighbourhood. These may include play areas, community gardens, parks, wildlife

areas, ponds, courts and village greens, kick-about areas and pathways. Your school will be eligible for the grants if it has ‘friends of’

groups or a PTA that is a registered charity.

For more details go to - http://www.community-spaces.org.uk/module/news/display/newsdisplay.aspx?news=23

North East in a Nutshell – know your region

Berwick's mighty Elizabethan fortress and fortifications are the best preserved in Europe and useful as the border town prides its

independence and due to a technicality was allegedly at war with Russia for the majority of the last century!

Wise words

“What we need is a metamorphosis of education – from the cocoon a butterfly should emerge; improvement only gives us a faster

caterpillar”

B.H.Bethany in “Systematic Change – Touchstones for the future school”, Ed. Patrick Jemlink, 1996.

SCHOOLS NorthEast is your network. Please get in touch with your ideas, concerns, views and experiences- email: think@schoolsnortheast.com

....and don’t forget, if you’ve missed any of our previous weekly news updates, you can find them at:

http://www.schoolsnortheast.com/content/new-resources/weekly%20news.html

To unsubscribe to this weekly update, please email us at – info@schoolsnortheast.com

Have a good week!

SCHOOLS NorthEast Team

Katie Stonehouse

Communications Officer

SCHOOLS NorthEast

Tel: 0191 280 5037