Enabling All Young People of Kent to Receive a First Class Education with Outstanding

Enabling all young people of Kent to receive a first class education with outstanding governance strengthening school improvement.

The government has set out a challenging agenda for schools and Local Authorities in raising standards and improving schools. Governing bodies have a vital role to play in ensuring that happens.

The Kent Governance Team is your dedicated team who will work with you to meet the needs of individual governors and governing bodies of all the county's schools, in the light of national legislation and guidance. We are:

North Kent (Dartford, Gravesham, Sevenoaks): Suzanne Mayes

South Kent (Ashford, Dover, Shepway): Tina Gimber

East Kent (Canterbury, Swale, Thanet): Lorraine Monkhouse

West Kent (Maidstone, Tonbridge and Malling, Tunbridge Wells): Julia Durcan

Thank you for your feedback and welcome to our Term 3 Update! We welcome Julia Durcan to the West Kent area as your new Governor Support & Development Officer.

Introduction from the new Head of School Improvement

Dear Governors

I am writing to introduce myself as the new Head of School Improvement for Kent. Over the coming months I hope to visit a wide range of schools and also meet as many of you as possible in person at briefings and meetings. Kent is a county with a great deal of good practice to be shared and replicated. One of my responsibilities is to ensure that we provide schools with high quality support and advice. I hope I am able to achieve this aim at a time of changing national policy, increased autonomy and diversity in educational provision.

We share with you the aspiration that every child and young person will have the opportunity to thrive and prosper. I am excited to be here and look forward to working with you to build on the great work you are doing for the education of children and young people of Kent.

I am also writing to inform you that Linda Pickles, Interim Head of School Improvement – Primary, will be taking a leave of absence during January and February and will be returning on 1 March 2016. Tammy Mitchell will be acting Senior Improvement Adviser for East Kent during Linda’s absence.

I would like to thank Nigel Blackburn for his immense contribution to education in Kent. He will continue with supporting my induction and leading on some initiatives such as developing the International Baccalaureate.

My team and I will endeavour to do all we can to support you in your work.

I would like to wish you a successful and prosperous New Year.

Anton Francic

Head of School Improvement

Reminder! It is time for District Governor Briefings

We would like to encourage Governors to continue to book on via CPD on line as this does give us guidance on refreshments and seating. We hope that attendance will continue to grow as many governors expressed how important it is for these networking opportunities and service updates.Agenda’s have been circulated – ensure you book your place via CPD. We look forward to seeing you!Kent Governors CPD Online

Chair of Governors Position

It has come to the attention of the Leadership & Governance team that a couple of Governing Bodies have been unable to elect a Chair. We have also looked on the CPD system and there are many schools without a Chair of Governors showing.

Please could you ensure your clerkshave updated the system within the next week and ensure your Chair of Governors is entered on there. This is vitally important because any Governing Bodies without a Chair on the system are in danger of being considered at risk so it is crucial we have the information recorded.

If a Chair is not elected and the school has been given some time to hold an extraordinary meeting to address the matter they will be sent a pre-warning letter. The leadership of the school is seriously compromised if there is not a substantive Chair in post. The School Governance (Roles, Procedures and Allowances)

Ofsted Inspection Dashboard

Governors should all now be aware of the Inspection dashboard. This has been created to support new inspection arrangements from September 2015. The dashboard is a tool showing historic data for inspectors to use when preparing for inspections. During inspection, inspectors will give most weight to the outcomes, attendance and behaviour of pupils currently in the school, taking account also of historic data.

The dashboard is designed to show at a glance how well previous cohorts demonstrated characteristics of good or better performance. It contains a brief overview of published data for the last three years using clear visual displays that are quick to interpret. Anonymous primary and secondary dashboards are available in the RAISEonline library1.

Schools’ dashboards will be updated following each RAISEonline release. The current dashboard shows 2014 national comparativedata.

Schools can access their dashboard by logging into RAISEonline, clicking on the ‘PDF documents’ link and clicking on the ‘Inspection dashboard’ tab. It is important that Governors use this document and discuss a narrative around the strengths and weaknesses highlighted on the front page.

Dashboards have been produced for all schools that have 2014 data and have a RAISEonline summary report. For queries about locating a dashboard, please contact .

SEN Information Report

Kent took part in a pilot SEN Local Area Inspection during 2015 during which it was pointed out by the Lead HMI that many schools were not complying with the requirement to publish an annual report about the effectiveness of their SEN arrangements. The template SEN Policy / SEN Information Report, available on KELSI and which many schools have used, has a section (3g) for schools to say HOW they will evaluate the effectiveness of their SEN arrangements, but the HMI was unable to locate on websites she visited any document which contained the findings of this evaluation.

To help Governing Bodies comply with this requirement we have produced a template for reporting this which captures the following information which can be found in your RAISEonline summary report; incidence of identified need with national comparators, incidence of need type, pupil outcomes for pupils with SEN with national comparators, attendance data for pupils with SEN with national comparators. There will be twoversions; primary and secondary and will be uploaded to KELSI once finalised:

It also contains information available from the school; funding for SEN received by the school, exam concessions arranged for pupils with SEN, transition arrangements, review of the interventions being delivered by the school, whole school training for SEN delivered in the last 2 years.

Governors may also use the opportunity of this document to publish their Equality objective.

This template is not exhaustive and you may wish to add to it with information specified in 3g of the SEN Policy / SEN Information Report, or update that section to match the information you have reported.

The School Improvement Advisers who deliver AENupdate training to SENCOs will be sharing these template documents with them during January, and all schools now have access to their 2015 RAISEonline summary report.

Supporting the attaintment of Disadvantaged Pupils

The Department for Education (DfE) has published new research exploring what is working in schools to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils. The research was undertaken by researchers from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), Ask Research and Durham University on behalf of the DfE.

A survey was carried out of headteachers and senior leaders in 759 primary and 570 secondary schools across England, which were identified as being ‘more’ or ‘less’ successful based on the attainment of disadvantaged pupils and progress over the past three years. Interviews were also carried out with 49 school leaders. The survey focussed on the strategies the school had used to raise attainment of disadvantaged pupils, and how successful these had been. The key findings include:

Schools had used a large number of strategies (18 per school, on average) in order to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils since 2011.

• Most schools (93%) had received support from governors for their plans to improve disadvantaged pupils’ performance and over half (54%) had received such support from local authorities.
• The two most common methods used by schools to judge the success of their strategies were pupil performance data and pupils’ work. However, a majority of schools also said they conducted their own evaluations. In addition, a majority also said they judged their strategy’s success by the professional opinions of teaching staff and/or positive pupil reactions
• Nearly two thirds of schools said their most effective strategy had originated from within the school, and 31% said it had come from the Sutton Trust/EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit.

The researchers also compared more and less successful schools to identity seven building blocks for success, and have produced a briefing for school leaders based on the findings.

Although it is positive that nearly all respondents had received support from their governing board, the research did not explore the nature of this support. Governing bodiesare ultimately responsible for how the pupil premium is spent, and therefore it is vital that they are confident that interventions are making the expected impact. See the pupil premium page in the Guidance Centre for more information.

Governing bodies should be acutely aware of their own school demographics and whether some groups are performing worse than others and addressing any imbalances that arise. See our Knowing Your School guide for more details.

New Governance Handbook now available

On Thursday 26 November, the Department for Education (DfE) released its latest edition of the Governance Handbook (previously Governors’ Handbook). This handbook is an essential resource for governors and trustees.

For more information on the purpose of the handbook and the changes that have been made please visit the NGA news page

New DfE Financial Efficiency guidance – hot off the press

Please look at the guidance published this week regarding Financial Efficiency –providing direction and questions for governors, including ability to access financial benchmarking -

Recruitment

We are joining forces with SGOSS in January to really promote governance across Kent and hope this will result in vacancies being filled. We need you to play your part in this so please support us in ensuring, as a GB, you register your vacancies with SGOSS – see the links below. Can you also please ensure you follow up promptly with any leads you may receive as a result of contacting SGOSS. Many thanks for your support with this and by working together we can hopefully reducing the amount of governor vacancies we have across the county.

Interested in becoming a governor? Click here/ Already a governor, resigned or no longer wish to volunteer? Let us know/ Vacancies on your governing body? Click here

The Leadership and Governance Team are also working with the Kent Graduate Programme and promoting the excellent CPD opportunities for Graduates to become involved in school governance and this has already had an impact in Graduates coming forward and applying to be school governors.

Have you got Succession Planning on your Agenda?

Following on from recruitment, it is important that Governing Bodies are being pro-active when it comes to succession planning. As part of the Leadership and Management of the school it is vital that you ensure there is sufficient capacity on your Governing Body to allow for leadership continuity should your Chair or Vice Chair resign.

Update from Kent-Teach

Don’t be caught out advertise for September 2016 vacancies today.

Did you know January to May is our busiest recruitment period where the Kent-Teach website receives the most amount of traffic?

As well as experienced teachers that are currently applying for positions, there are also a large number of trainee teachers who begin searching for their first teaching post for September 2016. So don’t miss out on these wonderfully enthusiastic and passionate candidates and start promoting your school on Kent-Teach by advertising now.

Kent-Teach can offer advice and support for your school’s recruitment so please get in touch. We wish you the best of luck with your recruitment.

Chairs Conference

Thank you to those who attended the Chairs Conference and I am sure if you did attend you will agree that it was a very worthwhile day with input from informative and inspiring speakers. One of the topics covered was the wellbeing of your Headteacher and this is key in the present climate where headteachers are difficult to recruit. Governors may be able to secure a bid via the Kent Association of Headteachers to fund a mentor for a new Headteacher. Please contact your local KAH representative Kent Association of Headteachers - kelsi.org.uk

RAISEonline 2015 Key Stage 4 results data now available

Unvalidated data from the 2015 Key Stage 4 results is now available on the interactive section of RAISEonline. This information does not take into account any late marking or amendments to grades in light of appeals. However, it does give schools a detailed insight into their performance in the KS4 results.

As governors do not have direct access to this information, they should ask their headteachers to provide if for them at an appropriate time (i.e. at an attainment committee).

Consider Governor E-learning to complement your development programme

E-Learning provides an opportunity for governors to access training more easily from their own homes, offices and schools and can also be used promote discussion about a range of topics or whole governing body training in governors meetings.

E learning can supplement conventional face-to-face training, rather than replace it and can be useful both as an introduction for governorship and continued professional development for more experienced governors.

This is a quote from a 2014 Ofsted report.

“Training for governors is regular, making good use of online resources so that they can access it when convenient. This enables them to have a clear understanding of how the school’s performance compares to others, both locally and nationally.”

Both GEL and Modern Governor Packages can be purchased at a reduced cost through Governor Services. Your clerk should be able to advise you if your governing body have bought any of these packages. If so you can log on at the web addresses below and set up an account for yourself under your school name.

If your governing body wish to purchase either or both of these e-learning please email your request and school details to

The following links will provide you with more information and the opportunity to sign up for a month’s free trial available from both GEL and Modern Governor or

Complaints – Best Practice for schools

The DfE have just produced their latest guidance on complaints and best practice – please take a look at this and amend your policy accordingly.Best Practice for School Complaints

Governor Long Service Certificates

Just a reminder that you can request a long service certificate for Governors from the Leadership and Governance Team if they have served for more than 8 years as a Governor. Please allow 2 weeks for the team to process. You can email the team via .

Governor’s responsibility with regard to School Milk

The School Food Standards, as you may be aware, came into force in January 2015 and legally require all schools, excluding academies established between September 2010 and June 2014, to make milk available to children at any time during the school day (many of these academies comply with the standards anyway).

The Alliance has produced a guidance briefing to ensure that school governors are best positioned to fulfil their legal duty to require their schools to comply with the standards. This will also enable children in their schools to enjoy the health, educational and social benefits for milk.

The Alliance’s briefing provides context to the requirements and offers advice on ensuring that children choose to drink milk – for example, by providing it as a mid-morning snack, and ensuring that it is chilled and appropriately packaged. References to the EU School Milk Scheme and the Nursery Milk Scheme as ways of helping schools meet the requirement are included. The Alliance has also outlined the health, educational and societal benefits of milk as a further incentive.

Please find the briefinghere.

Reminder about CPD online