This week’s news round up is deliberately brief as befits the end of Summer. It focuses on DfE, Ofsted, COP28 and EAUC developments.
Concrete Things – As if dealing with dodgy concrete weren’t enough for the DfE, after Claire Coutinho went on to higher things, a new education minister has had to be appointed. David Johnston OBE is the new minister for children, families and wellbeing.
He was previously Chief Executive of the Social Mobility Foundation, a charity which runs a range of programmes that incorporate mentoring, internships, university application support and skills development to help young people from low-income backgrounds enter universities and professions. He has served on the House of Commons education select committee and was parliamentary private secretary at the DfE. He is a governor at a London secondary school, and at a London sixth form college. Sounds a good fit.
His responsibilities include:
- special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), including high needs funding
- alternative provision
- children’s social care
- children in care, children in need and child protection
- adoption and care leavers
- early years and childcare
- family hubs and early childhood support
- disadvantaged and vulnerable children
- children and young people’s mental health
- policy to protect against serious violence
- freedom of speech in education
- online safety and preventing bullying in schools
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Ofsted –The schools inspectorate has updated its school inspection handbook. This was to reflect proposals to improve certain some areas of inspection practice in the light of recently-raised concerns. The handbook sets out definitions of terminology relating to school governance roles and school structures, and updates can be found in the summary of changes guidance. The NGA has a wide range of resources to support leadership teams with inspection and update their knowledge on how governance is inspected.
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COP28 – Session 4 in the UNESCO-UNFCCC webinar series ‘on the road to COP28’ will discuss how school facilities and operations, governance, and community engagement can be widened into teaching and learning on climate change to ensure holistic learning environments “where learners can live what they learn and learn what they live”. It takes place on September 12th and you can register for the webinar series here. Session 5 (October 31st) will focus on greening schools.
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Extreme Events – EAUC, in partnership with the UK University Climate Network (UUCN), AUDE and BUFDG, is hosting a series of webinars to better equip the HE/FE sector on physical risks, including extreme weather events that impact people, operations and facilities. The next is on September 5th, details here.
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We’ll be back next Monday with a full round up.