24 March 2023 weekly update

Dear Colleagues,

This is the last bulletin of the term and so there is a lot of content.

This week Full Council agreed to the reorganisation of Children’s Services Directorates which means that SEND is formally under my leadership, from today and PIAS will be moving over to Education and Skills in September. The DfE has now published the Safety Valve agreement, so this ,together with the agreed monitoring of the inspection improvement plan about which we are still awaiting the final Ministerial decision, means Kent will be under a very high level of external scrutiny. Challenge and scrutiny are needed to help us make sustainable changes and so I am delighted to let you know that former HMI, Hilary McDonald will be working with us on the SEND Improvement journey.

Clearly these are significant changes and so I thank you in advance for your patience over my restricted availability for the next few months. There are more changes underway, one of which is that sadly Mike Walters and Ashley Crittenden have both decided to step down from their part time secondments to KCC due to other work commitments. I want to take this opportunity to thank them both for their invaluable contributions, both to progressing specific projects but also for bringing a reality check to Children’ Services and particularly SEND. You will know that I am particularly keen on having education leaders working with us as we need that insight to ensure our approach is correctly aligned and so I hope you will welcome our intention to recruit four small teams of education leaders, one per area, to work with us on a part-time basis as Inclusion Champions from September. More information and an invitation to submit expressions of interest will be circulated early next term.

Yesterday we welcomed the inspirational David Bartram OBE as key note speaker for our SENCO and Inclusion Leaders conference at the Detling Showground. You will know that SEND is consuming my professional life and much of my life outside of work too at the moment, but I have to say arriving in a queue of cars and seeing the five hundred delegates, the vast majority of whom stayed right to the end of the day, was a very emotional moment for me. We have mountains to move, but with the talent and commitment represented in that space yesterday, I know we are going to do it. The day was opened by Sarah Hammond, Director of Children’s Services and Rory Love, Cabinet Member for Education, Skills and SEND who both spoke powerfully about the corporate commitment to improvement. Cllr Love’s speech can be read in full here (PDF, 88.9 KB). There followed a fantastic programme including Rob Webster, author of the Inclusion Illusion, speakers from nascen and Ofsted as well as some of our own Kent experts - Dr Alison Ekins of Valley Invicta Academy Trust, Kristian Lasslett and Scott McFarnell of Royal Harbour Secondary Academy and Hester Mackay and Elizabeth Pole of the Speech and Language Therapy Service. It was inspiring, challenging and energising - a huge thank you to you for releasing staff to attend and to the many staff that organised the event, particularly Siobhan Price of KCC and Lisa McDonald, Rory Abbott and Stuart Thompson of The Education People - a day to be proud of.

Thanks to the many of you that attended the recent Headteacher Briefing events. We are developing these briefings to make better use of the time and would really welcome feedback, which can be submitted by completing a short questionnaire

The dates for the Summer Term briefings are as follows, Monday 19 June (afternoon), Thursday 22 June (morning), Friday 23 June (morning) and Thursday 29 June (afternoon) with more information next term. I am keen to end the year with a celebration of some of the great work going on in schools under the theme of Stronger Together, showcasing work being taken forward through collaborations of schools, so if you are interested in contributing to the briefings please do get in touch.

This week you will have received the alert about cyber security. Please make your staff aware and ensure that all key staff are following the advice included in pages 61 to 66 in the Emergency Planning for Kent Schools 2022 guidance. This publication is available as a PDF only as it contains sensitive information, if you need it to be re-issued then please contact your AEO.

Many of you will be aware of the deaths in a number of school communities in Maidstone district over a very short period of time. Our thoughts are with the leaders, staff, pupils and families as they grieve the bereavements and support each other through this very difficult time. A number of KCC staff are working with the schools to support. In terms of wider support to the Maidstone community, Tim Woodhouse, the suicide prevention programme manager launched a Maidstone specific boost to the Release the Pressure campaign earlier this week with a mobile phone advertising company meaning that over 600,000 release the pressure adverts will be seen in the local area and the company will keep displaying ads until over 5,500 people have clicked through to the Release the Pressure website

I hope the last week of term goes well and may I take this opportunity to wish you a peaceful Easter break.

Best wishes

Christine McInnes
Director of Education