News

Please see the following article announcing the extension of the Opportunity Area programme.

 

The English Hub is setting up an Open University/UK Literacy Association Teacher Reading Group, which will provide 6 free CPD sessions on reading for pleasure, delivered by their specialists. Please see the attached leaflet for more information on the course and how to register your interest.

We are seeking your support in promoting the governance leadership and clerking development programmes currently available to boards and clerks across the country.  

As you all know, effective governing boards are key to securing the improvements and efficiencies we need schools across the system to achieve over the coming years. This means a focus on building the capacity of governance leaders (e.g. chairs, vice chairs, committee chairs) and professionalising the quality of clerking to improve the effectiveness of boards. The 10 governance development programmes we are funding aim to do just that.    

Please note that with effect from 1 June, the eligibility criteria has been amended for the governance leadership programmes to enable more boards to benefit from the funded provision on offer.

Providers are currently recruiting across the country for 2019/20 cohorts, so please do spread the word through your networks, stakeholders and contact with schools and trusts.

If you require any further information please email: Governance.development@education.gov.uk

 

Education Secretary sets out plans to prevent the most vulnerable children missing out on school, raising visibility of those who have needed a social worker

Read more:-

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-measures-to-support-disadvantaged-children-in-schools

Background

The Raising Aspirations Pilot will provide support for secondary schools and colleges to address the needs of disadvantaged pupils and will fund projects which seek to raise their aspirations.

From early April, colleges, secondary schools or a consortium of secondary schools will be able to apply for grants ranging from £7,000 to £50,000. Projects should support an increase in activity to raise aspirations amongst disadvantaged pupils by strengthening engagement with employers, widening pupil’s experiences of jobs beyond their home communities or engagement with young role models working in priority sectors. An evaluation of the pilot will also be undertaken, and the pilot will culminate in a best practice workshop.

The Combined Authority has been delivering the Enterprise in Education service since 2015 and is currently working with 90% of Leeds City Region’s secondary schools and colleges. This pilot provides a unique opportunity to address ‘cold spots’ through a fund only available to schools and colleges in order to design solutions for the most disadvantaged communities. The pilot will also deliver against the Strategic Economic Plan’s priority of “skilled people, better jobs, great education connected to the business”.

The Combined Authority will be responsible for managing the scheme and it will enhance and complement the work undertaken by the Local Enterprise Partnership’s Enterprise Coordinators. Applications for grant funding will be made against an eligibility criteria.

Aim of the pilot

• Pilot a grant scheme that allows schools flexibility to tailor innovative solutions for employer engagement, according the need of their students, to raise aspirations.
• Support secondary schools and colleges to achieve high quality careers education and demonstrate progress towards the ‘Gatsby Benchmarks’ in line with the Government’s Careers Strategy 2018
• Support the Combined Authority’s ambition to give extra support to the most disadvantaged learners to increase aspirations and promote social mobility.

The scheme will aim to deliver an enhanced model of enterprise education to 3,500 most disadvantaged learners in the Leeds City Region and will engage an additional 20 employers to deliver 6,000 employer encounters.

How will the pilot work?

• The call will be open for an initial period of 12 weeks. A further call may follow depending on how many projects are supported in the first round.
• An Enterprise Coordinator will, as part of their caseload of schools/colleges, act as the Combined Authority Lead and support schools with their application.
• Schools and colleges will complete a full application form using guidance notes.

What funding is available?

The pilot will award grants ranging from £7,000 to £50,000 to mainstream secondary schools and colleges.

Grants can be used to support new or existing projects (with no displacement of funds); non-staffing/administration costs; staff cover costs; training costs; transportation cost; volunteer expenses; physical materials; small-scale equipment.

Criteria

A school or college must:

• Be a state funded secondary school or college located in the Leeds City Region. This includes mainstream secondary schools including special educational needs and pupil referral unit provision where pupils are ‘on roll’.
• Be a part of the Leeds City Region Enterprise Adviser Network

• Have a nominated ‘Careers Leader’ in place who is committed to or has already undertaken relevant training.

An application / project must:

• Benefit young people aged 11-18 who are from disadvantaged backgrounds (up to 25 for SEND pupils).
• Be a new project or increase the scale of an existing project. Grants cannot be used for displacement of existing activity.
• Involve employer engagement either directly with pupils or indirectly through other beneficiaries such as teachers and parents/carers.
• Commence and complete between September 2019 and July 2020.

Timeline

 

Activity	Date
Raising Aspirations Schools Pilot opens	Early April
Final deadline for applications	21 June 2019
In principal decision	Letters issued to schools 8 – 17 July
Delivery of projects supported by the Raising Aspirations Schools Pilot	September 2019 – July 2020
Evaluation of activities and collated case studies	May 2020 – October 2020

Contact

More detail is available to all applicants through the guidance notes.

To find out more about the pilot, please contact the Enterprise in Education Team at the West Yorkshire Combined Authority

Tel: 01133481812, Email: enterpriseadvisers@the-lep.com

Born in Bradford is embarking on an exciting new project called ‘ActEARLY’. This will bring together different groups of people including researchers, policy makers and people living and working in communities from Bradford. We will be developing new and exciting projects to improve the health and happiness of families living in Bradford. The vision is to promote a healthier, happier, and fairer future for children through a focus on improving environments that influence health, and enhancing life opportunities. We will be co-producing our research with members of the community, researchers and other key stakeholders.

To launch the ActEARLY project Born in Bradford are asking anyone who lives or works in Bradford to let us know what they think helps keep our children happy and healthy.

Please click below to take part in this survey:

https://borninbradford.nhs.uk/haveyoursay

Volunteer to be a School Governor

Attention – All School Leaders, Governors and Employers

This is a unique FREE opportunity to hear how you and your staff can play an essential role in shaping the futures of young people and how new and existing skills can benefit
companies and schools.
Speakers from a range of organisations will present different perspectives on governance which will be of interest to schools, employers and prospective governors.
Date: Tuesday 18th June 2019
Time: 5:00pm – Networking Buffet; 6:00pm to 9:00pm – Presentations
Venue: Suite 2013 & Legends, Bradford City FC, Valley Parade, BD8 7DY

Booking: Please email S4B.Events@bradford.gov.uk

As part of Priority 1 in our delivery plan (strengthening school leadership and the quality of teaching), the Opportunity Area invested in support for primary literacy in 31 Bradford schools.

Methodology

Schools were prioritised using a data-driven methodology. Each school was given a score in 8 equally weighted literacy metrics, which were:

1. Proportion of students eligible for pupil premium funding in each school.
2. Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index (IDACI) score for each school. This gives a percentage score based on the level of deprivation for a school’s postcode.
3. Early Years Communication and Language scores, averaged over three years.
4. Early Years Literacy scores, averaged over three years.
5. Key Stage 1 scores in reading and writing, averaged over three years.
6. Phonics scores (proportion of children passing the phonics check in Year 1) averaged over three years.
7. Average progress scores in reading and writing at Key Stage Two, averaged over three years.
8. Average attainment scores in reading and writing at Key Stage Two, averaged over three years.

For each metric, each school receives a priority score out of 1, based on how highly they score in this area. The priority scores for each metric are added up, to give an overall score out of 8 for each school. Schools did not have to score highly in every metric to be prioritised for support.

Schools that are already receiving (or were due to receive) funded OA school-to-school support* are removed from the list of prioritised schools. They are then replaced by the next-placed schools on the list.

The chart below demonstrates how the methodology works in order to prioritise schools.

*The Opportunity Area also intends to publish the full list of schools receiving in OA-funded school-to-school support, and will do so in the coming months.

List of participating schools

• All Saints Church of England Primary School
• Beckfoot Allerton Primary School
• Beckfoot Nessfield
• Bowling Park Primary School
• Brackenhill Primary School
• Crossley Hall Primary School
• Dixons Manningham Academy
• Fagley Primary School
• Farfield Primary and Nursery School
• Farnham Primary School
• Frizinghall Primary School
• Grove House Primary School
• Holybrook Primary School
• Keighley St Andrew’s CofE Primary School and Nursery
• Laycock Primary School
• Lidget Green Primary School
• Lower Fields Primary School
• Miriam Lord Community Primary School
• Our Lady of Victories Catholic School
• Princeville Primary School
• St Anne’s Catholic Primary School
• St Clare’s Catholic Primary School
• St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School (Bradford)
• St Mary’s & St Peter’s Catholic Primary School
• St Matthew’s Catholic Primary School
• St Oswald’s Church of England Primary Academy
• St Philip’s CofE Primary School
• St Stephen’s CofE Primary School
• St William’s Catholic Primary School
• Victoria Primary School
• Whetley Academy

The deadline for schools to submit applications for Essential Life Skills funding has now passed. No further applications will be accepted.

Funding for activities has been delivered to all 206 schools and colleges in Bradford Opportunity Area.

We thank schools for all their hard work in developing proposals, making applications and delivering activities for their pupils. We would like to ask that schools continue to complete monitoring returns as per the requirements of their grant agreements(https://bradfordopportunityarea.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/els-mi-template-final-220518-bradford.xlsx).

Any unclaimed funds will be utilised by the Opportunity Area to deliver a number of additional Essential Life Skills activities, including grants for young people (launching soon), a young entrepreneurs programme and STEM aspiration centres. More details to follow.

As part of the Opportunity Area’s Primary Careers programme, in collaboration with Bradford Pathways, the first of four networking events between primary headteachers/teachers and employers will be held on the 29th March 2019 at Bradford City Football Club.

The events are designed and developed in collaboration with primary school headteachers in order to support them build relationships with employers, and embed career awareness and aspirational activity in their curricula.

The Primary Careers programme will help tackle career stereotyping in primary school aged children (as identified by studies such as Drawing the Future) to help raise aspiration and enable greater access to rewarding careers.

All primary schools in the Opportunity Area are eligible to send up to two representatives to the event. There will be a further event in Keighley this academic year and two more next academic year.

To register for a place visit Eventbrite through the following link, Primary Careers Networking Event.