Subject: Weekly News Update 34
This week... digest the Education White
Paper: Your Child, Your Schools, Our Future: Building a 21st Century
Schools System announced this afternoon. The package of proposals will set out
‘pupil and parent’ guarantees, a series of
legally enforceable entitlements and expectations and the
introduction of school report cards. The White Paper has been trailed
as heralding the end of centralised control of school with the
scrapping National Strategies in favour of local approaches and
solutions, devolution of school improvement funding direct to
schools and emphasis on the importance of local and regional
collaboration. Look out for a SCHOOLS NorthEast white paper
special update winging its way to your inbox this evening.
Also this week....
Do you have a sports teacher who has trained Olympic champions?
Is your science teacher leading the way in innovation?
The Journal is compiling a list of the region’s top 500
influential people and has asked SCHOOLS NorthEast to help find
Educators who have influence beyond their own school. Email think@schoolsnortheast.com
with your ideas.
It’s My Money Week! What better time (than during a financial crisis) to get your
school involved in My Money Week, an event
that aims to provide a nationwide focus on financial capability for young people in
primary and secondary schools, whilst bringing
schools and their local communities together to learn more about
managing money in a practical and relevant way. To find out
more about My Money Week activities, go to the Funding and
opportunities section or visit www.pfeg.org/index.html
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SCHOOLS NorthEast EPIC Summit 2009...
Book your place today!!!
You’ve only one month left get receive Early Bird discount
on your place at the inaugural SCHOOLS NorthEast EPIC Summit!
The unique event will be held on 8 October at Wynyard Hall
and will combine discussion of the big issues facing education and
our region, with practical guidance and inspiration to help you
make a difference in your school and community. For more details
of what’s going on at the Summit and to book your place, go to –
www.schoolsnortheast.com,
clicking on the Summit logo in the
middle of the homepage or the Events page.
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News and events
Regional school procurement service
It has never been more important for schools to get the best
value from their budgets and to help schools do this, the DCSF have
Funded an Educational Procurement Centre (EPC) programme, to
provide schools with the skills, tools and support to help them
Buy better. A North East EPC team has been set up to deliver
this free procurement service for schools in a way which suits them.
Schools will have access to a dedicated Schools Procurement
Partner (SPP) who will work with, listening and giving advice and
provide practical support on purchasing issues. They will also
work with other schools in the region to share knowledge of local good
practice and to assist schools to undertake Procurement Health
Checks. The programme also offers free professional development
such as online training courses to improve procurement knowledge
and to help you to engage more effectively with suppliers to
achieve a better outcome when buying goods and services.
For more information on the EPC
service visit www.teachernet.gov.uk/management/epc. To find out about the regional EPC service, contact
your local EPC Manager: alan.cross@dcsf.gsi.gov.uk
Find out ‘What The Open University can do for schools and
colleges’
You are invited to a conference to discover what The Open
University can do for your school, your teachers and your pupils. The
day-long event will introduce both current opportunities for
schools and new developments including the OpenLearn for Schools
scheme, an Apprenticeship pilot and the embedding of the Young
Applicants in Schools and Colleges Scheme into the 14-19
Diplomas. Information on CPD opportunities will also be
available. Refreshments and lunch will be served.
Date: Thursday 2 July at The Open University in
the North, Baltic Business Quarter, Gateshead from 10.00am to 3.00pm.
For more details contact Carol
Wilkinson - C.L.Wilkinson@open.ac.uk
or tel: 0191 4776100 Go to – www.schoolsnortheast.com/content/events.html
To download the flier/invite.
The Final ‘Bounce back’ Master Class
Book your place on the final
‘Bounce Back’ workshop and receive a Master Class in promoting happiness and building
optimism
and resilience in children,
young adults and their families. Following on from the success of previous
events, the final Master Class
offers even more advice to help
practitioners develop positive thinking strategies and
resilience in their pupils. Schools from South
Tyneside will report back on
delivering the UK Resilience Programme to children and young people from the borough.
You will also
hear about the developments
with North Tyneside schools using the 6th ECM strand: Be Spirited.
Guest speaker Mary Gordon,
founder of 'Roots of Empathy'
in Canada, to talk about key strategies on 'how to foster resilience and
optimism in Early Childhood
and Families'. The workshops
have been organised by Gateshead and Newcastle City councils
and supported by GONE and
Northumbria University. The
cost per person is £99.
Date: Monday 6 July at Newcastle
Business School @ Northumbria University.
For more information or to sign
up, contact Helen Walker - helen.walker@newcastle.gov.uk, 0191 2115391.
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News round-up
SCHOOLS NorthEast in the news
Regional news
Northumberland
·
MP's
concerns Academy will not have governing body (News
Post Leader)
·
Northumberland
pupil contracts swine flu (News Post Leader)
·
Bede
Academy will raise expectations (News Post Leader)
·
Youngsters
are first to experience art installations (News Post Leader)
·
Work
to improve Hexham school (News Post Leader)
·
Blythe
pupils celebrate National Vegetarian Week (News Post Leader)
·
Celebrating
success at Blyth middle school (News Post Leader)
Tyne and Wear
·
Bobbies
go back to school (Sunderland Echo)
·
Newcastle
pupils victorious in civil engineering contest (bdaily)
·
Pupil
proves hoodies make business sense (bdaily)
Durham
·
Durham
school students in UK debate finals (The Northern Echo)
·
Darlington
school rewarded for online work (The Northern Echo)
·
School
plans for playground (The Northern Echo)
·
TV
star opens Durham pupils’ greenhouse (The Northern Echo)
·
Awards
for top pupils (The Northern Echo)
·
Creative
Crook children publish book (The Northern Echo)
·
Novel
idea for school project (The Northern Echo)
·
Golden
report for Barnard Castle’s Team GL (The Northern Echo)
·
Dragons
receive pupils' business plans (The Northern Echo)
·
Academy
students to take memento (The Northern Echo)
·
Fairy
tale art for creative children (The Northern Echo)
·
Sites
for Durham academy identified (Sunderland Echo)
Tees Valley
·
Council
leading way with out of school learning (Gazette Live)
·
Normanby
Primary pupils band together to boost fund (Gazette Live)
·
School
celebrating its 150th birthday (Gazette
Live)
·
Teesside
truancy levels up on last school year (Gazette Live)
National news
White paper speculation
End
of national strategies
·
Plans to scrap
National Strategies supported by unions (Children and Young People Now)
·
Dropping
primary school literacy and numeracy strategies 'long overdue' (Times Online)
·
Key
schools policy to be amended (BBC
News)
·
Labour
to junk Tony Blair's flagship school reform (The Guardian)
·
Key schools policy to
be ditched (BBC
News)
·
Schools
to get more freedom over lessons (Daily Telegraph)
Parent/school
guarantees
·
Parents
face fines if pupils behave badly (The
Guardian)
·
Struggling
pupils promised one-to-one tuition (Independent)
·
Court threat
for pupils' parents (BBC
News)
School
improvement budgets
·
Schools
to get control of improvement budgets (Children and Young People Now)
Collaboration
and federation
·
Forced to
collaborate? 'Failing' schools put in state-run chains (TES)
·
Heads
could receive £120,000 as part of school 'mergers' scheme (The Guardian)
·
Worst
schools to be forced into mergers (Times)
·
School
merger plans 'should not be rushed' (Daily Telegraph)
·
Superheads:
can they really save our sink schools? (Times)
Exams
·
'Simple'
Sats tests face criticism (Daily
Telegraph)
·
Sats
in hands of below-par markers (TES)
·
Sats
replacement system 'even more stressful for pupils' (The Guardian)
·
Vocational exams on the
increase (BBC News)
Ofsted
·
Ofsted
finds schools failing on new secondary curriculum (The Guardian)
·
Ofsted
report reveals data on very young children excluded from school (Times Online)
·
Ofsted
report reveals data on very young children excluded from school (Times Online)
School leadership
·
Turnaround heads
urged to show leadership (TES)
·
Attributes
of successful head teachers highlighted (Children and Young People Now)
·
Leadership key
to narrowing gap in children's outcomes (Children and Young People Now)
Apprenticeships
·
Fewer young people begin
apprenticeships (BBC News)
·
Drop
in apprenticeships a 'devastating blow for young people' (The Guardian)
Primary teaching
·
Sutton
Trust says primary schools need top graduates as teachers
(Times)
·
Primaries
should offer teachers better incentives, says report (Children
and Young People Now)
·
'Extend
10k bonus to primaries, too' (TES)
Other educational news
·
Hidden
surge in classroom sex attacks (Times)
·
Specialist
schools: The colour of money? (TES)
·
Personality
test set to weed out weak teachers (TES)
·
One-third of science
schools fail to field a single GCSE physics candidate (TES)
·
Funding deal puts
teacher training at risk (TES)
·
Oh
joy, swine flu plus Ofsted (TES)
·
'One
size fits all' schools failing bright pupils (Daily Telegraph)
·
School
ruling 'will cause admissions chaos' (Daily
Telegraph)
·
Schools
'need not expel under-7s' (BBC News)
·
Sexualised
primary pupils worry Ofsted (The
Guardian)
·
Balls
sacks governors over £1.6m bonus payments (The Independent)
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Star pupil
Creativity...
creativityintheclassroom@guardian.co.uk.
Could do better
University Admissions
As the recession
sparks a huge increase in university applications, thousands of A-level
students face the prospect of not getting a
place in September.
The Daily Telegraph reports that the demand for degree places has surged this
year by almost 65,000 as a result
of the rise in
applications from mature students. With tougher entrance criteria, few extra
places available and over-recruiting fines
being imposed on
institutions, A-Level students face an unsettling few months as they wait to
hear if they have a university place
after the summer.
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Head to Head
Working
on it!
Last
week was
The
two best things that happened at school last week were
The biggest disappointment at school last week
The
funniest thing that has happened at school last week
The one thing that would have made my job easier last week
I have four things to do before the end of term
My hero of last week was
My
villain of last week was
If
my school was doing a ‘dance’....?
My question for next week’s Head is: ‘To lead others you must
walk behind them’. To what extent do you agree with this old
Chinese proverb?
If you would like to take part
in our regular ‘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.
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Funding and opportunities
My
Money Week (29th June- 5th
July) is part of the My Money programme, a financial initiative led by the
Personal Finance Education
Group (pfeg) and
funded by the DCSF in order to provide an engaging and holistic approach to
financial capability education in schools.
Visit the pfeg website
for extra support during this week and for lesson plan options and resources to
inspire your teachers and pupils
to get to grips with
personal finance. Go to - www.pfeg.org/our_work_in_education/index.html
Give
your school a ‘Money-Makeover’
Celebrate My Money
Week by getting lots of practical money saving tips for yourself and your
school from ‘Martin Money’ – GMTV’s
money saving expert.
His website offers a huge amount of advice on how to reduce your outgoings and
save money. Sign up for Martin’s
free weekly
MoneySaving email and receive regular money suggestions and also a fantastic
range of freebies including; children’s stories,
learning games, GCSE
revision notes, spelling bee tests, posters and Kleenex tissues!
Go
to - www.moneysavingexpert.com/
What
are your legal and HR needs?
All schools need to know what their
legal responsibilities are and how these fit in with the responsibilities of
the Head Teacher, the local
authority and the Secretary of
State for Children, Schools and Families. Trusts, Federations, and Academy
developments mean that the
legal environment surrounding
schools becomes ever more complex. It is, therefore, imperative that you
can access the most appropriate
range of legal services as
possible. Leading regional law firm Muckle LLP's Education Team is working to help improve the level
of service
and
quality of legal advice available to North East schools. They have
prepared a short questionnaire that should take just a few moments
to
complete and that would help them design and develop legal services that are
tailored to your needs.
To
access the survey, go to – www.muckle-llp.com/schoolsnortheastsurvey
From
last week....
Apply
for a local food grant
As
part of The Big Lottery’s Changing Spaces programme, Local Food is a £50
million project that distributes lottery
grants to a
variety
of food-related projects to help make locally grown food accessible and affordable to
local communities. If your school is
currently involved in a
food-related project and needs funds to continue with it, or if you would
benefit from a little help to start a
project that fits the bill, go
to - www.localfoodgrants.org/news?aid=1558
to find out if you would be eligible. The deadline for applications
for grants under the Local Food
programme has now been extended to Friday the 21 August.
FAO
Secondary schools
Free
books for Year 7 pupils
Last
year over 672,000 year 7 pupils in England received a free book and were given
the opportunity to meet the authors though the
Booktrust’s
Booked Up programme. The scheme continues this year and the list of
twelve specially selected titles is available online
now for your Year 7 pupils to choose from. The FREE books
will be delivered to your school. Register today and get your Year 7 pupils
passionate
about reading!
Go
to - http://www.bookedup.org.uk/Public-Library-space
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Wise words
“Don't tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and
let them surprise you with their results”.
George Patton
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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