The Optimus blog

The blog that inspires leaders in the UK education sector

The Optimus blog

The blog that inspires leaders in the UK education sector

Alex Masters

The DfE round-up – week ending 3/7/15

From the pupil premium and ‘coasting schools’ to academy conversions and governor responsibilities, content lead Alex Masters sums up this week’s reports from the DfE

Leadership and governance

Academies: This offers a detailed overview of academies’ performance in the 2013-14 academic year and explains the academies programme. Academy timeline: Are you converting to an academy? Here is a list of key dates for sending documents. Note: July 6th, 13th and 15th are ones to watch! ‘Coasting’ schools: Hundreds of ‘coasting’ schools which are failing to push every pupil to reach their potential will be required to improve or they will be turned into academies. Governors: The governor’s role will continue to grow and they will play a key role in financial management and connecting with the wider community. This has prompted demands for more detail, especially regarding financial management. Departmental advice: An extensive list of departmental advice, from assessment and behaviour to data protection and SEN, to help schools and LAs comply with the law. School workforce census: A guide to submitting data and completing and submitting the autumn 2015 to summer 2016 school census data. Also: Statistics on size and characteristics of the schools workforce in state schools, information on rationale, business and technical specification and past collections of the school workforce census. Software: This offers detailed information for suppliers developing software that will allow LAs and schools to submit data in the correct format for the school workforce census 2015. Pride: The government has launched a new website to tackle online abuse of women and LGB&T people.

Teaching and learning

GCSE reform: Find here newly-published design and technology GCSE content. Up-skill childcare: The DfE has introduced an ‘exit standard’ of grade C or above for English and maths to ensure ‘high quality childcare for all’.

School business management

Local authorities: This is a great interactive tool to compare data about children and young people across all local authorities in England. Pupil premium: Nicky Morgan’s speech covers the importance of encouraging pupils to realise their full potential and the Education Endowment Fund’s role in helping schools spend the pupil premium. Free school funding: This reveals how much revenue funding free schools will receive in the 2014-15 academic year and special free schools will receive in the 2015-2016 academic year. Budgets: A helpful financial template to help free schools and special free schools with budget-planning. There’s also a great tool for alternative provision (AP) free schools. ITT: Detailed statistics on initial teacher training (ITT) provisional recruitment, recruitment, allocations and performance data to help schools monitor performance and inform benchmarking. CBDS: This includes completed requests for change (RFC) that the DfE will make to common basic data set (CBDS) in 2015 as well as details of the change, reasons for the request and version control log.

SEN and safeguarding

Privacy notices: A helpful list of suggested wording (to use and amend) for privacy notices to issue to staff, parents and pupils about data collection. Childcare bill: The DfE suggests that its plans to extend childcare to 30 hours will have a positive impact on family relationships and work opportunities. Fostering: This offers a list of notifications and new statistics on private fostering arrangements in England, with London and the south west continuing to have the highest numbers. Safeguarding: New safeguarding advice for schools and childcare providers to clarify their role under the new ‘prevent duty’ and to help protect children from radicalisation. This complements statutory guidance. Radicalisation: Departmental advice on preventing young people from being drawn into terrorism and information on how terrorist groups use social media to encourage travel to Syria and Iraq.

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