A schools resource pack has been launched to target spending on children with special and additional educational needs...

An interactive website was published today by the Audit Commission, The National Strategies and the Department for Children Schools and Families (DCSF) to help schools determine whether their spending on children with special and additional educational needs is offering value for money and making real improvements to these children’s education.

The website will enable head teachers and their management teams to:
• Identify sources of special educational needs (SEN) and additional needs (AEN) funding for their school;
• Identify their actual annual expenditure on special and additional educational needs;
• Compare their total SEN/ AEN budget with their actual expenditure;
• Identify pupils for whom this funding is to be used;
• Identify what services/facilities are being provided for those children;
• Compare identified outcomes with need and expectations for these children;
• Evaluating the impact of services and facilities on outcomes; and
• Determine whether the school achieves good value for money in its SEN/AEN provision.

The electronic resource is being made available to schools across England and is intended to help schools target their SEN/ AEN funding – a key recommendation of the recent Education and Skills Select Committee report on Special Educational Needs. Information on the schools resource pack is available on the Audit Commission website at: http://sen-aen.audit-commission.gov.uk/.
Chris

My colleagues, Robert Hodgson and Rachel MacHutchon, gave me a flier today outlining the work they have been doing on i-Leeds...

i-Leedsis the Leeds electronic Individual Learning Plan. It's a web-based tool that facilitates conversations between young people aged 9 to 19 and their key adults, helping to support the young person to identify, express and achieve their goals. i- Leeds has been developed with partners across the city building on national best practice around personalised learning and the 'Every Child Matters' agenda.

Robert and Rachel tell me that i-Leeds will help;

• reduce learning loss during transfer and transition;
• signpost to providers of information, advice and guidance;
• increase participation and reduce the number of young people not in education, employment or training;
• provide a communications tool for all extended services;
• support mentoring and coaching approaches;
• support tracking of learners attending work-based learning and Diplomas;
• improve etention, progression and achievement.

If you are interested in using i-Leeds or would like to book a demonstration please contact Rachel at rachel.machutchon@educationleeds.co.uk.
Chris

I had a brilliant lunch today with Rosie Denison and Belinda Roy from the School Meals Team...

They told me about the work they are doing to improve school food and drink, monitoring the quality of the catering providers here in Leeds and trying to improve the take up of free school meals. They also told me about two hugely important project they are working on; a policy on 'Packed Lunches' and 'School Meal Ambassadors'.



The brilliant 'School Meals Ambassadors' project has operated at three secondary schools: Cockburn College, Crawshaw School and Woodkirk High School, and two primary schools: Middleton Primary School and Park Spring Primary School. A group of young people in each school has been trained to monitor school food and to work with the school's catering provider to improve school food. Rosie and Belinda have commissioned Swift researchers to evaluate the impact and sustainability of the initiative. The initiative has helped us develop a toolkit to help all schools adopt this brilliant strategy.

It is important with a huge number of our young people eating packed lunches that we work with schools to ensure that schools help parents and carers provide a healthy and nutritious packed lunch... after all we are what we eat!
We want every child in Leeds to be happy, healthy, safe and increasingly successful... whatever it takes.This work is hugely important in our drive to improve standards and improve outcomes. If you want to find out more about the Packed Lunch policy, the School Meal Ambassadors or the work on Free School Meals contact the team at education.leedsschoolmeals@educationleeds.co.uk.
Chris

Jane Fisher, my colleague from Hovingham Primary School who contacts me regularly, sent me this e-mail about her brilliant website...

"Hi Chris, I have been enjoying your 2 blogs! Is blogging addictive!
I thought you might like to catch up on what new on www.super-school.co.uk
You might enjoy .....

• the Monet pictures on 2Reds page,
• The Food for the Brain group on Get Hovingham healthy, and
• the pictures from round Leeds on the Maths Action Zone.

SATs week coming up - so slightly less time planning, and more time to send emails!read, walk the dog, visit friends and family, and enjoy the wonderful weather.

Thought for the day, from my calendar - "The Secret"
'Your are here on this glorious planet, endowed with this wonderful power, to create your life!
There are no limits to what you can create for you, because your ability to think is unlimited!'
All the best, Jane."

I visited the website and the areas Jane had highlighted and Jane's superschool site is a fantastic celebration of her children's work and the brilliant work colleagues are doing in this wonderful little multi-cultural school serving this very special little bit of Leeds. Why not have a look?

Chris

It has been one of those weeks where I have been thinking about our service to schools and to young people and their families...

I was talking at the induction session earlier in the week and I repeated the Education Leeds mantra about 'happy, healthy, safe and successful... whatever it takes'. We need to remember that 'happy, healthy, safe and successful... whatever it takes' applies not only to our colleagues but to schools, young people and their families who sit right at the heart of everything we do. This is fundamentally what we are all about... our culture, ethos and values are about openness, honesty, trust, engagement and empowerment and must continue to shape the way we work, live and breathe. We must all lead by example and continue to listen to our colleagues, our colleagues in schools and our young people and allow them to help us refine, develop and improve what we do, to influence policy and practice and to develop more intelligent systems of accountability.

Keep the faith
Chris

Calling ALL secondary colleagues

I don't know if you saw it but Npower are looking for are searching for 100 passionate Year 7 'Green-agers' from ten secondary school for their 'Green SOS' competition...

Schools are invited to send a 3-5 minute DVD by 13 June illustrating a 'Green SOS' project they ant to tackle in their local community. The prizes are fantastic...
ten Year 7 students from each of the ten schools will attend a 'Buzz' media training day in London and go on the first ever Green Outward Bound course in the Lake District to develop their leadership skills and learn about environmental issues. They will then have cash, a video camera and until next March to do their project and film the results.

The winning project will receive a #20,000 green fund and the students will all receive a Mac Notebook. The two runners up will receive a #10,000 green fund and the students will all receive a top of the range mountain bike.

To find out more please visit the Npower Green SOS website at www.npower.com/GreenSOS or contact my colleague Steve Ruse in the Healthy School team at Elmete who would be very happy to help.
Chris

I went to the Derek Fatchett CLC today to attend yet another Education Leeds Staff Induction session...

These sessions are really inspiring because I get the chance to meet the new starters who have such enormous potential to add-value to what we are doing and really bring something special to the company. They are some of our most positive, committed and enthusiastic colleagues since they have recently made the choice to join the team. The group were young, apart from Peter Lawrence, Consultant Headteacher working on the 14 - 19 agenda, who is young at heart. They were everything you would want our new colleagues to be; interested, engaged and enthusiastic. There was a significant group of colleagues from the attendance team who are working with schools to tackle on of our key priorities... this is yet another area where, led by Jane Hall, we are doing some brilliant work here in Leeds.

Everyone needs to be happy, healthy, safe and increasingly successful. We all need to coach, support and work with these new colleagues to release their potential and continue to make Education Leeds such a great place to work.
Chris

My colleague Laura Wilson, School Admissions Officer (West), sent me this message...

"Hi Chris, I just wanted to let you know about another of my fantastic primary schools. Park Spring Primary School in Bramley have agreed to take an unusually large number of children this week despite the enormous pressure/chaos of SATs. I think that I am justified in saying that Martin Bennett has proven himself to be a Headteacher who is dedicated to making Park Spring an inclusive school. It has always been a pleasure to work with Martin and his staff, but this week more than ever Park Spring have shown themselves to be a brilliant example of some of the many Leeds school that take a real interest in the wellbeing of particularly vulnerable families. Best wishes, Laura."

It's great to hear from my talented colleagues about best practice across the city.
Chris

As I said, I started the day at the Royal York Hotel at a National College for School Leadership regional conference on 'New Form of School Leadership and Governance'...

I think that the real highlight was the session that Edna Sutton, Director of Children's Services in Barnsley, led. It was brilliant and clearly demonstrated what has been achieved with passion, commitment, determination and political support in one of the most deprived pieces of our region.

We need to connect with Edna and her colleagues to see what we can learn from Barnsley.
Chris

“How do we lead and create the future while at the same time managing and safeguarding the present.”

'The Fundamental Maintenance/Development Dilemma'

I started the day at the Royal York Hotel at a National College for School Leadership regional conference on 'New Form of School Leadership and Governance'...

It was wonderful to see so many old colleagues from across the Yorkshire and the Humber region coming together to look at what must be one of the key issues facing us all. The Conference was facilitated by Mark Pattison and Patrick Scott, National Succession Consultants for the region, and the keynote speakers were Valerie Hannon, Director of the Innovation Unit talking about 'System Leadership: Emergent Models and Building Capacity' and Mel Ainscow, Professor of Education and Co-director of the Centre for Equity in Education at the University of Manchester talking about 'New Structures, New Practices'.

Both keynote inputs highlighted the critical importance of new models of governance to deliver and balance accountability, representation and strategic management. They also stressed the need for system level reflection and intervention leading to local action and system learning in communities.

Mel Ainscow highlighted that the research suggests that:

1. the system has untapped potential to improve itself at both school and authority level;

2. National Strategies have focused minds BUT limited local innovation and creativity;

3. there is a need to strengthen collaboration within and between institutions;

4. evidence, intelligence and engagement can be used to bring a critical edge to this work;

5. improvement work has to be linked to social, economic and community development and improvement;

6. we need new models of leadership and management based on the principle of shared responsibility.

If you want to find out more you can visit the National College for School Leadership website where you will find case studies, including the work Liz and her colleagues have been doing at the Central Leeds Learning Federation. You will also find the 'Next Practice Toolkit' to support system leadership.

Chris