10.03.22 - Message from Director of Education
FAO: All Schools / All Phases
Dear Headteacher/Principal,
I really hope you are well and enjoying the spring sunshine. I hope you found the headteacher briefing useful last Friday. The slides from the briefing are now on the Hub (they are too large to send out by email). As was said in the meeting, COVID is still alive and well and several schools have had outbreaks and we are continuing to offer support and advice as needed despite other services stepping down. Please don’t hesitate to call if you need to.
i) Risk Assessments COVID - Please find updated risk assessments as provided by the Health and Safety team which I hope are useful.
ii) Local Elections 5th May - Please also find attached the pre-election or Purdah guidance which comes into effect on 23rd March. Please take specific note of the section for schools.
iii) COVID funds for schools - Enfield Council agreed last night to provide £518K to support schools from their COVID support funds. This will mean that 30 primary schools (based on levels of deprivation – FSM proportion) will receive funding to provide for additional support assistant time in the early years/Reception classes. This will work out at about £10K per school but this will be impacted on by school size. Secondary comprehensive schools will each receive additional funds to provide after school supervised study provision which will amount to approximately £12K to each school. Schools will be written to individually with further details and a funding agreement which will need to be signed by the school in order to receive the funding. It is recognised of course that each school is different so there will be some flexibility in the funding use.
iv) July 5th – Pursuing Excellence Event - this event which had to be postponed at Christmas will take place at 5pm at Enfield County School – please diarise this. Further information will be provided next term but this will be a great opportunity to meet with colleagues face to face and listen to and debate with excellent key note speakers.
v) Headteacher briefing dates summer term (provisional) – you will shortly be sent diary events for these briefings in the summer term – Friday May 6th (1:30pm to 3pm) and Friday 1st July (10am to 11:30am) . We will continue to hold these briefings online for the foreseeable future as we realise that this is much more convenient for headteachers. We may hold a further briefing in the last week of this term if needed (COVID related) in discussion with headteacher representatives.
vi) March 25th – SEND morning (9:15am to 12:30pm) – Enfield Primary Headteachers Association have asked for a longer briefing on SEND to answer a range of questions and queries on SEND legislation and how the SEND team works, School transport, SEND financing and also the work of EPS service. This will be attended by Barbara Thurogood, Suzy Francis, Sangeeta Brown and Julian Minta. An invite will be sent out shortly to all primary headteachers but if secondary and special school colleagues wish to attend to, please let my PA Sharon Thurbon know on Sharon.Thurbon@enfield.gov.uk so we can forward the diary invite.
vii) Professional Learning 2022/23 - With Anna Vaughan leaving the service shortly, we are reorganising the PL offer for the next academic year focusing on a core offer. This will cover safeguarding, special needs, teaching assistant training, governor training and EYFS. There will also be some focused school improvement support work such as the current programme on improving outcomes for disadvantaged pupils with Marc Rowland. There will be no paper brochure this year as more and more schools and staff are used to working online. If you have any questions concerning, please contact Lucy Nutt or myself. Further information on this will be circulated in the summer term.
viii) Day for Ukraine – 16th March - This day is being supported by the Disasters Emergency Committee and the link here https://schools.firstnews.co.uk/ukraine/ provides a considerable amount of information on the conflict.
I very much hope you have a good weekend when it comes and like you very much hope that the terrible war in Ukraine is able to end soon. The plight of the refugees means a lot to many of us – my mother and her family were refugees in the second world war coming to the UK from Holland in 1940 – her memories of the war are still very vivid.
Best wishes
Peter Nathan
Director of Education
People Department
Enfield Council