It’s been quite a week. We’ve had everything – preparing for an Ofsted local area review, putting the Springboard Project back on track, yet more work on our dashboard, a coffee morning and dealing with the usual school based issues. So, where do I start….

The local authority wrote to us earlier in the week to tell us that they are being inspected. The Local Area SEND Inspection evaluates a number of key areas and is undertaken jointly by Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission and Her Majesty’s Inspector. The inspection will take place over 5 days starting on Monday and the team will visit a number of local and out of borough educational provisions. The inspection team will report on the following key aspects in arriving at a judgement:

• the effectiveness of the local area in identifying children and young people who have special educational needs and/or disabilities
• the effectiveness of the local area in assessing and meeting the needs of children and young people who have special educational needs and/or disabilities
• the effectiveness of the local area in improving outcomes for children and young people who have special educational needs and/or disabilities

They are meeting our New Bridge Leadership Team and the Trust’s central team, local governors, families and young people on Wednesday morning. We will send you their final report later in the term.

I was asked to meet with the Department for Education on Thursday to update them on the progress of the Springboard Project. You will no doubt recall that we had a setback earlier in the Summer relating to commissioning places. I was delighted to hear, at the meeting, that the local authority have now agreed to work with our Trust and we can get back to planning for the opening of our new free school. There is no doubt that the new free school will give our children at Spring Brook further opportunities. I’ll keep you updated over the coming months.

Rita, Jenny, Geoff and Liz have spent most of the week working on the dashboard. It has been a monumental piece of work. We have now got to a position where all our children have had their progress data for English, Maths and ICT placed into the new system. The team that have worked on this are at the cutting edge of designing a bespoke and unique system that wll give you (and our classroom teams) superb information about the progress your child makes within school.

Finally, I’d like to mention our team at Spring Brook Upper who have had a particularly tricky week! Our trustees, governors and myself would like to commend your resilience; we never, ever underestimate your dedication and commitment to our children. From a personal perspective I’ve decided to base myself down at the Dean Street site for the next few months to offer some support to Mel and Alison and be there for our team. I’m really looking forward to seeing one of our other schools in full operation.

Our Macmillan coffee mornings were a great success, thank you for all your support. As always it was great to meet you and hear so many lovely comments about our schools. I’m sure the heads of sites’ blogs will have pictures and articles galore.

Anyhow, that’s it for this week. Have a great weekend,

Graham

You can find all Graham’s previous blog entries here