This message has been brought to you by Rachel Cross, Senior Education Liaison Officer.
This is your half termly update on the Local School Improvement Fund (LSIF) and events linked to school improvement in Slough.
Firstly, exciting news; a group of 10 schools have been identified and agreed to be a part of the national bid to the 'Strategic School Improvement Fund' for funding to be used for an improvement project in these 10 primary schools. The project is focused on raising attainment and improving progress in reading, reducing the attainment gap in KS2 between PPG and non-PPG while raising standards overall, using SOLO Taxonomy to align planning, refine formative assessment and provide structured feedback to increase challenge and deepen thinking. Heather Clements (HMCT Consultancy) was brought in to work with heads and wrote the bid on our behalf.
On the 11th May I represented Johnny Kyriacou at the Regional School Commissioner's offices in strict set of criteria. Unfortunately, I had to leave the room whilst the Slough bid was discussed but I hope, based on other bids, that ours got through this round. We will find out whether or not we have been successful in July!
I attended the Education Scrutiny with Johnny where we presented the work that the local authority is doing to support schools of all types of schools in Slough. It was good to be able to let our local councillors know how much is happening in schools and the proactive approach that is being taken by the local authority with its team of consultants who have been carefully matched to schools and also the exciting work that is happening thanks to the funding available for school to school support. They were very impressed!
Rachel Gallyot and I attended the Academies Show in London. It was useful listening to Sean Harford speaking about the curriculum and the expectations of Ofsted in school inspections. Likewise, we attended a session on well-being and recruitment as well as the changing face of professional development and learning for staff. We have this week received the presentations for the sessions so I will go through these at half term and will share with you the most useful of these.
Rachel and I have also met up with Manni Sanghera who runs School Direct from UCGS as a result of trying to find ways to recruit more teachers in Slough. We had explored the TES Straight to Teaching route but this is quite expensive and then we found out that UCGS run a number of routes into teaching - right on our doorstep, and without cost. We are now working as a team, with Navroop from Wexham Primary joining us too, to put on a big re-launch of School Direct so that all schools get an up-to-date picture of all the routes on offer. The re-launch is happening at:
The Barn, Wexham Court Primay School
4th July | 4:00pm - 6:00pm
Manni has sent an email with details of how to sign up on Eventbrite. We hope to see lots of schools represented.
Following on from my February update, I am pleased to say that Rachel, Johnny and I met with two representatives from the DfE regarding the work the local authority is doing with regards to the wider remit of school improvement.
"Slough has created something exciting and wanted this exploring"
- Dame Kate Dethridge
During the meeting we were able to give lots of information which they found extremely useful and this will be presented as part of their paper on innovative approaches being taken to school improvement.
Please click on the attached document below for further updates on Local School Improvement Fund and Mental Health.