What a super week.

My week started with a meeting with Oldham Local Authority about the impending SEND area Ofsted review.

Ofsted will be in Oldham next week looking at a variety of provisions and services for young people with additional needs. They will also be looking at the quality of education, health and care plans (EHCPs) and home to school transport systems. I’m in the fortunate position of working alongside a number of local authorities. In the past my relationship with Oldham has been tricky. I’ve struggled to understand their rational and, at times, I’ve got into direct conflict with officers.

At this present time, I honestly believe that we are moving forward together.

Our EHCPs support the young people and their families. The curriculum offer in our Oldham schools is strong. Our post 19 provision is quality assured, safe and local. Our employment pathways are the envy of nearly every other borough in the country. All in all, it’s a really positive picture. The strongest element of this new way of working is that we now trust each other. We know there are aspects of the provision that still require improvement but we are not trying to hide it. We know we have gaps around meeting the needs of certain groups of children, we know that our residential/respite provision could be better and we know that we need to further develop the continuum of provision. Some of our teams are meeting the inspectors next week. I’m hopeful of a good outcome.

In the middle of the week I worked on some strategic planning for the multi academy trust. So that our stakeholders are better appraised of the progress all of our schools and organisations are making, we have developed the ADDO (Academy Dashboard and Development Overview). It allows us to assess all aspects of school performance. The ADDO covers a vast range of areas including a visual summary of the schools’ strengths and weaknesses. Data for the ADDO areas is reviewed, discussed and actioned at an Invitational Meeting. The ADDO shows what will be audited and how often. It will allow schools to celebrate amazing practice and decide areas that require intervention.

One of the areas we are keen to understand is the impact of our 1:1 iPad project. New Bridge School will be our latest school where children all receive their iPads. The Learning Centre youngsters received theirs on Wednesday. I think we’ve only got Spring Brook Upper and Springboard left to go now. It’s going to be so exciting.

I spent most of the back end of the week in Tameside supporting the Pupil Referral Service. Rebeckah, one of our executive team, is interim principal and doing an amazing job. It was great to be invited to the management committee meeting to hear how Rebeckah and the trust have really helped move the service forward.

So, all in all a really productive week. No football for me again this weekend (as Levi keeps telling me – Bury’s gone bust!!)

Have a great weekend,

Graham

You can find all Graham’s previous blog entries here