the website for anapoly limited
Lipson Learning Cooperative Trust began with two schools in its charge: a large secondary school and a small to medium sized primary school. But now, after the creation of Lipson Cooperative Academy, only the primary school remains within the original trust. Are the constitutional arrangements of the trust appropriate for the changed circumstances? I think not, mainly because they are now top heavy. The purpose of this posting is to explore the options for dealing with this.
The term ‘parent’ is defined in section 576 of the Education Act 1996 as:
Ofsted report – School governance: learning from the best
Department for Education press notice
The floor standard will go up from 2014 – primary schools where fewer than 65 per cent of pupils achieve the expected level (Level 4) in the 3Rs, and which do not achieve above average progress in these subjects, will be below the floor. The current floor standard requires schools to have 60 per cent of their pupils at level 4 or above in English and maths, plus the progress measures.
New data will be published by the Department for Education showing the proportion of primary children who achieve a “good” Level 4 in the 3Rs – those who are truly “secondary ready”. This will be until the current system of levels is removed from 2016.
Schools judged by Ofsted to be neither good nor outstanding, and who are not closing the gap between their disadvantaged pupils and their other pupils, will be ordered to draw up action plans – alongside experts – on how they will spend their pupil premium money.
Summer school programme – which helps children make the transition from primary to secondary school – to be repeated this year.
An earlier post noted health & safety advice published by the Department for Education in December 2012. This confirms that schools must set out health and safety arrangements in a written health and safety policy and points to the HSE’s website which “contains useful information and a simple two-page template that any employer can use to create a health and safety policy“. Also, Annex A of the DfE advice lists additional key elements of a health and safety policy.
I ought to compare our current policy, which uses a model produced by the local authority, against the latest advice.
Plymouth Governors’ Briefing No 21 in January 2013 offered this advice about Disclosure & Barring Service checks which have taken over from CRB Checks.
“Mark Grimley wrote to schools in June to confirm Plymouth City Council had taken the decision to cease its three year rolling programme of DBS checks. The issue of whether you decide to cease a rolling programme within your school is clearly a matter for both the head teacher and Governing Body.
If your school has decided to cease its rolling programme, an additional measure that can be used to promote safeguarding is the issue of an employee declaration to prompt the disclosure of any convictions, cautions, warnings or reprimands that may have arisen post appointment. Although this requirement is highlighted within ‘codes of conduct’ and in most school principal statements, a declaration provides an additional control measure which heightens the importance of disclosure. A draft declaration was attached to Mark’s letter which you may wish to adopt, and this can be issued (for example) on an annual or three yearly basis.
Where schools adopt self-declarations in place of a rolling renewals programme, the process will be managed directly by the school itself and the Council will not require details of when the self- declarations have been undertaken or the next date that they are due to be issued. We would advise that you add a further column to your Single Central Record to record the date that each self-declaration has been signed and completed. If you have any questions about this please contact Simon White, Safeguarding Manager on 307144.“