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A Learning Ambition for Norfolk

What is the Learning Ambition?

We want Norfolk to be a county where all children and young people can flourish. Our ambition is that all children and young people are achieving their full potential and developing skills which prepare them for life. This is a key part of our Norfolk Flourish ambition.

Why do we need a Learning Ambition?

We know that there exist challenges within our education system, which affect outcomes for  children and young people across the county. Over the course of the last year, we have been engaging with a wide range of education settings and stakeholders, to discuss the best way that Norfolk County Council can support a self-improving system.

Some of the priority challenges were identified as:

  • Recruitment and retention of skilled staff
  • Demands on support for Early Years learning
  • The percentage of school pupils with SEND
  • Increasing levels of challenging behaviour in Norfolk's mainstream schools
  • Achievement at KS2
  • Participation at post 16

We feel that our role as a Local Authority is to create the conditions for success within the system, facilitating joint pieces of work which help education providers to collaborate, support, challenge and learn with each other.

What does the Learning Ambition look like?

We want to be clear about our role in the education system and the areas in which we feel we can be most supportive, so that everyone understands how the system can work together.

Childrens Services is now engaged with a range of complementary strategies to address wider needs, all of which align with our Flourish ambition and which are designed to bring the system together.

These strategies are:

  • The Learning Ambition
  • Attendance is Everyone's Business
  • Local First Inclusion
  •  Speech and Language Transformation
  • Prevention & Early Help Strategy
  • Mental Health Strategy

Within the Learning Ambition, we have worked with the education system to identify and agree some core themes. Each of these has work currently underway, and is based around collaboration with schools, colleges and settings to achieve its aims.

These themes are:

Capacity and Expertise of the Education workforce

This Task Group has been set up to explore ways that education providers can work together to maximise Teacher and Teaching Assistant recruitment and retention. Their initial aims are to create a 'Teacher Future-proofing Framework', which would cover:

  • Apprenticeships
  • Teacher talent Pools
  • Leadership
  • Training & CPD
  • ITT
  • Recruitment Campaigns

Additionally, the intention to create a 'Teaching Assistant Career Framework', covering:

  • Apprenticeship
  • TA Talent Pool
  • Job Descriptions
  • Training, CPD & Induction
  • Recruitment Campaigns

 

Ensuring Effective Transitions

This Task Group builds on learning achieved through the Norwich Opportunity Area transition group, including work on a Common Transfer Document. There is also a focus on Post-16 transition with the Education and Training Strategy group, and alignment with SEND transition.

 

Improving Data and Information Sharing

This Task Group  works in line with Education Data Authority workstreams within Norfolk County Council, with the ultimate aim of sharing more responsive, interactive data dashboards, which will enable leaders to benchmark their education setting against local & national data. This task group currently develops School and Community Team-level data, and provides a Universal 'data training' offer, with the ultimate aim of being better able to use data analysis to identify issues for system to address collaboratively.

 

Supporting Resilient Families and Communities

This Task Group is responsible for the introduction of and alignment with School and Community teams, Start For Life and Family Hubs. They also have a role in signposting parents to sources of support, alignment with Local First Inclusion and Attendance outcomes within the county. They aim to establish communities of practice, working with schools and settings to enable parents and families to understand and manage expectations and perceptions of schools and settings.

 

Enhancing the self-improving system through a Norfolk Collaborative Standard​

This groups primarily focuses on partnership projects, and aims to provide a platform to celebrate, capture and promote successes across the system. It will support the production and publication of case studies, and develop and publish materials to support effective, robust collaboration between education providers. It also has a role to support the Education Investment Area, by learning from, promoting and replicating impactful projects across the wider county. Their longer-term aim is the establishment of a Norfolk Collaborative Standard, to support education providers to work together.

 

School, Colleges & Settings Communication and Engagement​

To ensure that all of the above themes are as effective as possible, we are committed to redesigning the ways in which we communicate with schools, colleges and settings. This includes how, when and to whom we communicate key information and updates, support engagement and information sharing between providers, and how we make access to collaboration opportunities easier. This work is carried out with a reference group made up of representatives from across the education system in Norfolk, but we are always looking for more voices to contribute to making it as useful as possible; if you would like to join, or find out more, please get in touch.

Update, March 2024

Work is currently underway to redesign the current eCourier/Management Information system, to make information and updates easier to access and share.