Happy Wednesday!

Standardisation of Maths Assessments

As Maths is a priority for the region, there is an opportunity to get involved in the NGMT assessment trial which starts this term (Monday 20 January - 14 March 2025). As outlined in our last 'WOW', we believe that standardised assessments can support effective collaboration, individual school and whole project improvements. They can provide more sophisticated data to evaluate impact and our independent evaluators have recommended that we develop use of these in addition to statutory assessments.

WELL is exploring how we can support our schools with effective and efficient approaches to standardised assessments in Maths. There may also be potential to enable a group of WELL schools to use this as a powerful individual and collaborative driver for improvements.

Therefore, we would like more of our schools to consider this and take advantage of this opportunity. Please share this positive assessment opportunity with your Maths Leads if they are not currently on the 'WOW' mailing list.

To express an interest in participating in this trial, please complete THIS FORM and return to WELL@cumberland.gov.uk by Friday 10^th January 2025.

To find out more about NGMT Testing, please find a link to the GL Assessments 'Introducing NGMT' video HERE.

White Rose Assessments

We are also aware that a number of WELL schools already use White Rose termly assessments. Last term, we asked whether schools might be interested in exploring how WELL would be able to support standardisation of these assessments, without additional workload, if a sufficient number of schools came forward. This has not been the case to date, so we are extending the opportunity for schools to express an interest by emailing WELL@cumberland.gov.uk until Friday 17th January 2025. 

'Expert Reading Instruction' Primary Reading Pedagogy Project 

Town End Research School 

As you know, WELL is committed to offering high quality, evidence informed PD programmes, which link to the specific priorities that have been identified by our schools. We are therefore delighted to have secured a PD programme, to be delivered by Town End Research School, including Stella Jones.

Stella has designed, implemented and monitored a wide variety of evidence-informed programmes. She works closely with the EEF Research School Network and the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to provide high quality, research-informed PD and support for practitioners. Stella is highly skilled at making educational research tangible, accessible and implementable. This programme will specifically focused on Reading Pedagogy.

Please see HERE details of what the programme involves.

The commitment includes two members of staff attending three face-to-face sessions and engaging with the additional support/webinars/resources to be provided etc.

The programme will start on Friday 14th March and the dates for three sessions are as follows:

• Friday 14th March, Venue TBC
• Friday 2nd May, Venue TBC
• Thursday 5th June, Venue TBC
  

This funded PD programme will be limited to a maximum of 25 schools, so to express and interest please contact WELL@cumberland.gov.uk by Friday 24th January 2025, if this fits with your priority and it is feasible to engage.

Spring Learning Community               

Thursday 30 January 15:30 - 17:00, Online

We are looking forward to seeing all our Great Teaching Toolkit schools again at the Spring Learning Community Meeting, which will take place on Thursday 30th January 15:30 - 17:00 via teams.

GTT Leads and at least one teacher focusing on Dimension 3 or 4 are required to attend this community meeting. Please 'accept' this meeting invite if you haven't do so already, or email WELL@cumberland.gov.uk for the link to be resent. Any preparation for this session will be communicated with all attendees in advance.

TA INSET Day Session

Thank you to the more than 200 TAs who joined us at the INSET Day MITA session on Monday 6th January.

Sally will be contacting the Headteachers / SENCOs participating in this project with next steps and all TAs that attended Monday's training with the slides from the INSET Day session by the end of this week.

Annual Events Planner and Programmes Padlet 2024/25

The WELL Programmes Padlet outlines all of our high quality professional development programmes available for 2024/25.

All WELL Events and upcoming training sessions are detailed in the WELL Annual Events Planner.

Events on the Annual Events Planner with a 'green dot' are bookable via SLA Online/ School Development Team. For all other events, please email WELL@Cumberland.gov.uk directly to express an interest.

The Annual Events Planner is a live link and will be updated throughout the year.