25 February 2022 weekly update

Dear Colleagues,

Welcome back, I hope you had a well-deserved and enjoyable break over half term. I am certainly enjoying the sunshine and the budding blossom, in between the rain, hail and high winds.

I am really pleased that this bulletin includes a letter to you from our two Children’s Services Cabinet members (PDF, 192.4 KB), Sue Chandler and Shellina Prendergast, thanking you and your staff teams for all your hard work on SEND. SEND continues to be a key area of work for the LA, but your work is also critical to successfully reforming the system and we know that despite all the other challenges, school colleagues are fully engaged, so a big thank you to you all.

As we consider potentially the final COVID guidance from government and the implications for our practice (we have made additional guidance for schools (PDF, 139.8 KB) available), whilst managing the general fatigue that many are feeling following two extraordinary years, I thought this article which examines stress from a different perspective may be of interest.

Within Children’s Services, we have been spending time over the last few weeks on self-evaluation. The SE Region has a very well-established Children’s Services improvement programme and it was through this mechanism that the Leadership team had the opportunity to work with teams from two other LAs on a peer challenge. It was a fantastic opportunity not just to be grilled on our own self-assessment but to also hear about different approaches taken by colleagues and the impact they are having on our shared challenges. There were lots of great ideas which I know we will be following up on over the coming months, particularly as we consider the implications of the Levelling Up White Paper, post 16 reform and the forthcoming Schools White Paper and national SEND Review.

Every year we, as all local authorities do, hold an annual conversation with Ofsted about how well our Integrated Children’s Services are working to make sure that children and young people are protected from harm and how the most vulnerable children and young people are able to thrive in Kent. This week we met with a team from Ofsted for our annual conversation which was a good opportunity to showcase great work which is going on across the directorate do every day as well as giving Ofsted confidence that we know where we are working well and that we know where we need to do more to improve outcomes for children and young people.

Thank you to those who attended the Headteacher briefing meetings before half term which focused at your request on an SEND update. All the materials are included in this bulletin and the PowerPoint Presentation (PPTX, 4.4 MB) provides an up to date summary of all the key current activity across SEND and can be used for reference. Thank you to all colleagues for your contributions to the breakout rooms, the feedback (DOCX, 16.8 KB) is now available. The discussions were largely positive. The comments which need addressing have been summarised and action will be taken accordingly. A huge thank you to Simon Pullen, Headteacher and Kris Lasslet, SENCO for sharing the work being done at Royal Harbour Academy, which has also been shared nationally through NASEN. Inevitably, the Who’s Who in KCC SEND has a couple of amendments which need to be made bust the vast majority of the contents is sound. One amendment to highlight here though is the entry for the KAH SEND sub group which is led by Dean Jones CEO of Inspira Academy Trust, whose email address if you want to contact him is DJones@inspiraacademy.co.uk.

You will be aware from the local media and possibly through your own experiences of the current difficulties in home to school transport. An increase in demand for home to school transport of 20% led to a retendering of contracts to create more capacity in a sector which has experienced a significant reduction in the workforce. The time taken to complete this complex task was underestimated and the Transport Team are still working on procuring transport for a small cohort of children and young people. We are encouraging families that can to make their own transport arrangements and they will be reimbursed. If children and young people are not able to access education through attending school, then schools need to implement on-line learning for those pupils where-ever possible.

I hope the first week back has gone well. I am aware that a couple of school leadership teams have had to manage the added challenge of long-lasting power cuts. Whilst officers can resolve a whole gamut of issues, unfortunately re-establishing power supplies isn’t one of them and I know, despite schools having robust business continuity plans in place ready to implement in these circumstances, it has been particularly difficult to ‘Keep calm and carry on’, so an extra very well done to those of you in this position.

With best wishes

Christine McInnes
Director of Education