ALLOW City of Wolverhampton Education Providers' Bulletin: 14 December 2021

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Education Providers' Bulletin

Tuesday 14 December 2021

City of Wolverhampton
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Bulletin Summary


  1. Message from Phil Leivers - Head of Education Excellence
  2. Early Years 
  3. Public Health
  4. Information
  5. Training and Consultation

Message from Phil Leivers - Head of Education Excellence


Dear Colleagues,

I know that you are trying to get to the end of term and ensure that children and young people experience the festive period. However, its challenging with the regularly changing national guidance.

Last night DfE guidance issued for daily testing: all adults who are fully vaccinated and children aged 5 to 18 years and 6 months, identified as a contact of someone with COVID-19 – whether Omicron or not – should take a lateral flow device (LFD) test every day for 7 days instead of self-isolating. Daily testing by close contacts will help to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Daily testing for contacts of COVID-19 will help protect education settings by reducing transmission and will also help keep pupils in face-to-face education.

In preparation for next term and making sense of any further guidance we are planning a briefing session for Wednesday 5 January 2-3pm. Click here to access the link for the meeting. 

In the meantime, stay safe,

Best wishes,

Phil

Phil Leivers
Head of Education Excellence
Phil.Leivers@wolverhampton.gov.uk


Early Years


Actions for early years and childcare providers during the  COVID-19 pandemic December 2021

Following the Prime Ministers announcement on 8 December 2021, the guidance has been updated to add guidance on working from home, the NHS COVID pass and parent and child groups.  As well as guidance on vaccination, vulnerable children and when to contact the NHS self-isolation hub, face coverings in communal areas, new and expectant mothers and individuals previously considered clinically vulnerable.

Actions for early years and childcare providers during the COVID-19 pandemic (publishing.service.gov.uk)

Lead person to contact in the LA:

Stacey Henderson
Senior Early Years Advisor
Stacey.Henderson@wolverhampton.gov.uk


Children attending multiple settings (including schools) for their universal and extended nursery offer

Can we please refer you to section 2.27 in the terms and conditions for funding that as a setting it is your responsibility to check if a child attending your setting is also attending another setting and for how long.   This is really important for many reasons, but from a funding perspective it is important that a child does not extend the number of hours that they are entitled to as this then has funding implications as a child will not be funded when hours are exceeded.

2.27. The local authority’s process for children receiving free entitlement at multiple providers:

  • Children eligible to the Extended Entitlement, provider/s must establish with the parents which provider is offering the 15 hours statutory Universal Entitlement and which is offering the extended entitlement.
  • Early Education Funding can only be claimed by a maximum of two sites, per day, per child.
  • Each provider is responsible for checking with the parent/carers if another setting is being accessed and for what length of attendance.
  • The providers should work in partnership with any other settings offering early education to an individual child.
  • Each provider is responsible for entering the correct start date and attendance onto the Provider Portal and submitting Estimate and Actual head counts.

Lead person to contact in the LA:

Stacey Henderson
Senior Early Years Advisor
Stacey.Henderson@wolverhampton.gov.uk


Public Health


Sign up for Health Related Behaviour Survey (HRBS) 2022

Your school is warmly invited to participate in the Health Related Behaviour Survey (HRBS 2022).

Your school can register to participate in HRBS 2022 with our survey provider, SHEU, by using the following link:  http://sheu.org.uk/registerw

The survey provider, SHEU, will also be contacting your school with more information about the survey and provide you with a further opportunity to sign up to participate. The survey will open to registered schools during January 2022.

Pupils in years 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 have always taken part in the survey. Additionally, for 2022, students in Key Stage 5 (particularly Year 12) are invited to participate.

Instructions and support will be provided to help schools to administer the anonymous online survey. Participating schools will receive a detailed report of their school’s results.

Please see attached letter for further information.

Lead person to contact in the LA:

Howard Jobber
Senior Public Health Specialist
howard.jobber@wolverhampton.gov.uk
01902 555928


Information


Tree inspections in schools – important survey

To help us understand whether we have adequate arrangements in place for the inspection and management of trees in educational settings, the rationale for which is here, colleagues are asked to make an initial brief return regarding their tree management arrangements. To make this as easy as possible for you an online form has been created which can be accessed here, or through The Stat Shelf website and should take around 2-3 minutes to complete.

Lead person to contact in the LA:

Natalie Barrow
Service Manager - Health and Safety
07773 187103
Natalie.barrow@wolverhampton.gov.uk


Reminder - School Net Capacity Assessments

School Net Capacity Assessment are currently being refreshed for all maintained schools across the City.  Schools who have not undergone recent building works were emailed on 29 November 2021 with a current plan of the school and asked to identify any changes to either the building’s layout or room designations.  If you have not already done so could you ensure either changes or a nil return are emailed to the School Organisation Team at school.organisation@wolverhampton.gov.uk by Friday 17 December 2021.  Thank you to all those schools who have already responded.

Lead person to contact in the LA:

Lisa Johnson
School Organisation Officer
lisa.johnson@wolverhampton.gov.uk 
01902555667


Black History Month Competition

The CLL team received entries from 46 children across 10 schools for this year’s Black History Month Biography competition.  This is the second year of the competition which began last year with the CLL team producing units of work for Early Years and years 1 to 6.  These were aimed at supporting and encouraging schools to celebrate Black History Month through researching inspirational black people and writing biographies about them.

The inspirational people this year range from Mary Seacole, Rosa Parkes, and George Washington Carver to political figures such as Nelson Mandela and Barak and Michelle Obama.  Some schools chose more modern figures such as Usain Bolt, Malala Yousafzai, Kadeena Cox, Beverley Knight, Beyonce and Alicia Keys .  The standard of writing this year was extremely high and we are very proud to award prizes to all the schools who entered.

We have uploaded some of the entries to our Google drive and these can be enjoyed using the link below

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1cTfNKOSpvWFy--wNTVyPCxjJo-skByyK?usp=sharing

A big thank you to everyone who entered!

Lead person to contact in the LA:

Claire Fereday
Literacy & Language Teacher Advisor
Claire.fereday@wolverhampton.gov.uk


Training and consultation


Autumn Training Brochure  

Please see the attached Education Excellence Autumn Training Brochure.


Training and Consultation - Governance

Upcoming City of Wolverhampton Governor Training

We offer a wide range of training designed specifically for governors, along with delivering bespoke training on many topics. Please share the training opportunities we offer with your Governing Body.

Click here for Governance training for the Spring and Summer Terms 2022.

Bespoke Governing Board Training can be designed to meet the needs of your Governing Board. If you would like to have a topic delivered at your school or across a cluster of schools, please let us know.   As with all LA training, this is free to maintained schools and part of the SLA package for Academies and delivered at a time suitable to you.  Please contact kay.mason@wolverhampton.gov.uk

Lead person to contact in the LA:

Sarah Mcelduff
School Governance Coordinator
Sarah.McElduff@wolverhampton.gov.uk


DfE update


13/12/21 – Coronavirus – Daily update to all early years, children’s social care, schools and further education providers.



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