David Dickinson, Dirk Gilleard and I started the day early having breakfast with headteacher colleagues from the Rothwell Family of Schools...

We talked about the brilliant work going on in these schools, the successes and the challenges we face, the progress with the Children's Services Review and the opportunities that exist within the new world where everyone is going to be offered the opportunity to become an Academy. This is a great group of colleagues and we must ensure that the Council builds on their understanding of, and insights into, the real issues we are facing as we move forward to create a new children's services directorate and particularly the challenges around the most complex and challenging families these schools are working with. We talked about the opportunities that lie ahead and we agreed that, over the next few months, we must continue to build brilliant multi-agency provision consistently across Leeds and share and network with colleagues in social care, the police and health. We must continue to focus on quality, standards and outcomes while we use the opportunities with the new curriculum to nurture passion, enthusiasm, determination, persistence and patience across the children's services workforce.

It was a brilliant start to the day with some great colleagues and we need to do more of this; to talk more, to share more, to network more and to celebrate more as we build the future together.
Chris