Autumn Term Newsletter

“In partnership for an outstanding future"

Tel: 01748 850111 Ext 8126

Mob: 07747 697445

Email: info@swaledalealliance.org

Administration:

Richmond School,

Darlington Road,

Richmond, North Yorkshire

DL10 7BQ

Swaledale Alliance

An Introduction to our first newsletter May I take this opportunity to say a huge welcome to all our new mem-bers. The Alliance has grown significantly over the last few months and this has provided us with some exciting challenges. I’d also like to say a big thank you to Andrea Offord and Lucy May Garrick who continue to work tirelessly for us all to ensure that the administration and manage-ment of our work runs smoothly. The Alliance has never been so busy as it is now and I see no reason why this trend shouldn’t continue! The subject-specific network meetings have now become established and dates for the rest of the academic year are available. The website contains up to date information about virtually all our activities, so please make use of it. We thought that it was timely to try to pull all our current work streams together into a newsletter so that schools and their governing bodies can see what is going on across the Alliance now and into the future. We hope that it is of some use to you. As always, your feedback is essential to us to ensure that our work is ‘on the button’. Please don’t hesitate to contact a member of the team if you have any suggestions, comments or concerns. Have a great Christmas and New Year! Mike White, Headteacher, Brompton-on-Swale CE Primary School

Congratulations to our newly appointed SLEs and PSTs! We’re delighted to announce that the colleagues listed below have been successfully recruited into the following roles: Peer Support Teachers Sarah Leonard (Y3/4, Masham CE Primary School) Victoria Rowley (FS1/2, East Cowton Primary) Amanda Sharp (EYFS, Michael Syddall Primary) Specialist Leaders of Education Kelly Weighall (EYFS, Rich-mond CE Primary) Gemma Costello (Science, Fed-eration of Abbey Schools, Darling-ton)

Headteacher Challenge Groups Over 20 headteachers have signed up for the ‘Challenge Groups’ which will be starting in the New Year. More information will be coming soon! NB: Please note the change of date for the introductory twilight session which was previously advertised as Thursday 29th January. This clashes with the LA’s mini conferences for headteachers and governors. Therefore, the rearranged date will be the following Thursday - 5th February, 4.30pm at Richmond School.

Professional Development for Higher Level Teaching Assistants Since Easter, a cohort of 6 experienced teaching assistants have participated in the first cohort of our HLTA Development and Assessment Course which aimed to both develop teaching assistants into HLTAs by teaching them how to teach whole classes as well as preparing them for the extensive assessment required to be-come an HLTA. The course has been a real success with all trainees providing feedback that was at least good - and mainly grading the quality of delivery and impact on their practice as ‘outstanding’. Due to this success, our training team of Steve Whelerton (Local Leader of Education and Headteacher at Staindrop CE Primary), Sam Marino (SLE for ITT and NQT Development, Brompton-on-Swale CE Primary) and Angela McCormack (Experienced HLTA, Brompton-on-Swale CE Primary) will be repeating the course in the spring and summer terms. For full de-tails of the course and how to book a place please contact Lucy May Garrick email: info@swaledalealliance.org

Further opportunities are also available now for experienced HLTAs. Steve and Sam are currently developing course materials to develop a CPD pro-gramme to support HLTAs who have at least a couple of years of experience and would like to develop their skills further. This programme will be advertised within the next month.

NPQML - Currently recruiting for the spring term During the 2013/2014 academic year, we successfully ran the National Professional Qualification for Middle Lead-ership in partnership with Carnegie Leaders (Leeds Beckett University). This was led for us by Charlotte Wardle (DHT, Richmond School), Sarah Beveridge (HT Leyburn Primary) and Nicola Dobson (HT Bolton-on-Swale Prima-ry). Currently we are recruiting participants for cohort 2 of the programme to start at the end of January 2015. The full cost of the programme has a RRP of £1050 but through our partnership with Leeds Beckett we are able to offer the programme at heavily subsidised rates particularly for partnership schools. Please note however, that scholar-

ships are only available for this forthcoming course and will not be available after September. We already have a number of delegates signed up for cohort 2 but we do need your support if we are going to take advantage of the scholarships and provide a viable course. Please contact Andrea Offord (Alliance Business Manager) if you would like a place.

The Restructuring of the Executive Board Due to the significant change in Alli-ance membership since September, the Executive Board have reconstitut-ed themselves in order to be more representative of Partnership Schools. The details of this will be communicated with all members at the start of the spring term. Needless to say that we will be looking for a number of headteachers to represent schools on the Executive Board as well as a governor of a school to sup-port our work. Further infor-mation will be available both via email and on the website shortly.

Life without Levels - Where are we up to? Understandably there has been a lot of interest and discussion about our work on the ‘life without levels’ agenda over the past few months. The Assessment Working Party (AWP) set up in Sep-tember has already selected and evaluated a number of different sys-tems to replace a levels-based assessment scheme, including commer-cial programmes and ‘custom made’ options. The outcome of this re-search was that, in November, the AWP selected Essex Target Tracker as the most appropriate solution which met the (stringent!) criteria the group had devised. We have moved into a trial phase of Target Tracker, and this is currently being undertaken in the schools which are part of the AWP. Each school is evaluating a different aspect and age group (e.g. Maths in KS2, Sci-ence in KS1, EYFS etc.) The feedback from this trial will be considered in the second week of January. Pending the outcome of this meeting, we are hoping to have a recommendation to present to all interested Partnership Schools at that point. We will then move into a procurement phase, contact Target Tracker and secure a ‘best value deal’ for the Alliance. Watch this space… Rob Campbell (HT Ravensworth Primary)

The Swaledale Alliance - from a geographical perspective! The 52 Partnership Schools have been highlighted on the map below. All schools are now working within a small cluster, as North Yorkshire schools have done traditionally, which seems to be effective. The Executive Board would appreciate receiving comments from clusters about our current struc-tures and any suggested improvements.

Key Swaledale Wensleydale Catterick Northallerton Small Schools Bedale

Have you accessed the website yet? The Swaledale Alliance website contains a great deal of infor-mation for schools wishing to take advantage of what it has to offer. It’s well worth a look. Here are some of the high-lights! Specialist Leaders of Education SLEs are outstanding leaders who are available to support leaders in other schools devel-op their own leadership in a particular area. Our SLEs are all listed with pen-portraits. Peer Support Teachers PSTs are outstanding teachers who are willing to share their own practice with others. Why not arrange a visit?

The Core Offer This is the document that outlines what is available to members of the alliance. It is downloadable from the ‘About Us’ page. CPD Events and training opportunities Visit the CPD page for information of current and upcom-ing professional development opportunities.

Support Request Form Any school requesting specific support via the alliance can do so via this e-form available the School to School Support page. Assessment Worried about the ‘life without levels’ agenda? All the current assessment publications have been compiled on the Assessment page, available via the School to School Support page.

www.swaledalealliance.org

Initial Teacher Training Update Our current group of Trainees has made a highly promising start to the year. From the beginning, they have pulled together as a team, which was espe-cially evident during their Teesdale Residential, where they learnt about ‘the outdoor classroom’. They were then able to put their theory into practice when later they visited Arkengarthdale C of E Primary School, where they participated in a Forest Schools lesson as part of their Tutorial. Our Trainees have been exceptionally well-supported by Class Teachers and ‘Teacher Educators’ (formerly known as School Based Mentors) in our host schools. Whilst many TEs already bring a wealth of experience and expertise to the role, there has inevitably been some upskilling to meet the challenge of a continually developing programme. Next term, our trainees will have a five week placement in partnership schools (you will already know if you have one coming to you). This starts in January and finishes at half term. We held our first Open Afternoon at Richmond Methodist Primary School in November, during which possible appli-cants were given the opportunity to view our School, our Training Room and spend time with the current Trainees. We plan to recruit ten Trainees for 2015-2016 and applications are already in progress. As there will be 10 students next year, we will need to have another school base for them during the autumn term

(five is about as many as we can manage at Richmond Methodist School). Watch this space…

Mark Allison and Helen Ring (HT and DHT, Richmond Methodist Primary School)

A Guide for Effective Pupil Premium Reviews The Teaching School Council has recently developed a new guide for schools who wish to review the way they are using their pupil premium funding. The guide, developed in partner-ship with Sir John Dunford, sets out a simple, six-step process for a review. There are also case studies from a reviewer and three schools that have previously commissioned reviews. For more information visit http://tscouncil.org.uk/guide-effective-pupil-premium-reviews/

FFT Aspire We had 20 responses regarding our email asking whether schools would like training on fft Aspire. We are currently in nego-tiations with fft and hope to run a CPD session in February. From early discussions, we should be able to keep costs much lower than other offerings. We will be in touch with schools shortly with further details.

Do you like the idea of working collaboratively to train our own Teaching Assistants? We are currently in discussions with CACHE, Darlington College and another Teaching School Alliance who has taken the plunge and developed their own TA training package, providing the Level 3 Certificate in Supporting teaching and learning in schools (a very popular TA qualification). The alliance would be able to have a major input into the content of the programme and train our own teaching assistants in a similar way that we train our own teachers. TAs would be placed in Alliance schools for at least 2 days per week across a year (potentially having two placements during this time). Currently, the idea is in its infancy but we are pushing forward with it and would hope to have something in place by September 2015. We would be particularly interested in hearing from anyone who has had experience of delivering this qualification in the past. Our Teaching Assistant CPD Working Party (next meeting on Tuesday 13th January, 1.30pm at Brompton-on-Swale CE Primary School) always welcome new mem-bers and will be discussing this at length.

School to School - Peer Reviews Many Teaching School Alliances are actively promoting the ‘peer review’ model to challenge and support each oth-er’s school improvement and preparation for inspection. In simple terms, schools work collaboratively to assess each others’ schools in order to help to provide external validation of a headteacher’s judgements via lesson obser-vations, analysis of data and work scrutiny as well as focussing on the effectiveness of leadership and management at all levels. With the significant slimming down of the LA’s offer to schools, it seems pertinent that we look into the feasibility of using different approaches to support and challenge each other effectively, especially at those difficult times preceding inspection. With this in mind, I’m looking to pool some of the good practice that is available in order to see if we can trial something in our Alliance. If you would like to be involved in supporting me with this please get in touch. Mike White, Headteacher, Brompton-on-Swale CE Primary School

The Future Things never stand still! We thought that you might be interested in reading about some projects that will be coming up over the next few months.

Network and Development Groups - Dates for the rest of the Academic Year

EYFS Network Group 25th November, 27th February

Primary Computing Development Group 17th November, 23rd February, 17th June

Primary English Development Group 24th November, 9th March, 8th June

Primary Mathematics Development Group 4th December, 19th March, 18th June

Primary Modern Foreign Languages 14th January, 16th April

Primary Science Development Group 17th November, 10th February, 30th April

Primary Writing Moderation Group (KS1) 1st December, 26th March

Primary Writing Moderation Group (Lower KS2) 2nd December, 29th April

Primary Writing Moderation Group (Upper KS2) 4th December, 30th April

SENCO Development Group 11th November, 3rd March, 9th June

We are pleased to announce the forthcoming event at Richmond School

Using ICT to deliver the new Primary Maths and Literacy Curriculum conference 4th June 2015

The day will be delivered by Lee Parkinson, (@ICT_MrP) a classroom teacher who specialises in using technology to raise standards across the curriculum. Colleagues may have seen him in action at the LA’s recent English Con-ference. Lee’s engaging and inspiring approaches will help teachers to provide stimulating and motivating lessons for both Key Stage 1 and 2 pupils. The conference will explore how the internet can be used in schools beyond researching, and how tools such as ipads can really impact on teaching and learning. With a focus on Literacy and Numeracy, the day will also include ideas that can be applied across the whole curriculum. Look out for the flyer or to book a place now please contact Lucy May Garrick: info@swaledalealliance.org