A Learning Ambition for Norfolk
Updates
A Learning Ambition for Norfolk, through the Norfolk Learning Collaborative: Update, May 2024
The Learning Ambition for Norfolk works to support and deliver the aims of the Norfolk Learning Collaborative, where education leaders from across the county have agreed to work together to address key issues. At the first Collaborative meeting, members identified the Norfolk Challenge of improving the KS2 outcomes across the county as one of the main priorities, and this will be a core focus of the group moving forward, alongside the core themes in the Learning Ambition. The next meeting takes place on Tuesday, 11th June at 2pm at County Hall; if you would like to join please let us know. Six task groups within the Learning Ambition continue to work within these core themes, and we would like to share some of the collective work of these groups with the following highlights:
The School, Colleges & Settings Communication and Engagement task group has been working to improve communications with schools, colleges and settings. The new Norfolk Schools website now hosts all news items, categorised and tagged so that they are easier to find, share and revisit. The eCourier bulletin has now been redesigned for ease of access and readability, highlighting items which require action and foregrounding content to share with staff, parents, children & young people and the wider community.
Their next actions are to further develop the website so that information is easier to access. This will include the creation of 'one-minute guides' for a range of topics, including clear signposts to local and national guidance and ensuring that routes into teams within the Local Authority are clear. This, combined with a longer-term ambition to reduce the number of different platforms which are needed by education providers, aims to help education providers to access and use information effectively.
The Capacity and Expertise of the Education Workforce task group has launched a short-term, local recruitment campaign via EducationHR to grow the teacher and teaching assistant talent pools. This campaign is live and runs until the end of the summer term. They have also continued their work to improve retention rates in leadership by beginning to create resources to support headteacher well-being. In collaboration with Educate Norfolk, systems leaders are creating a graduated wellbeing resource for heads and systems leaders to signpost to local and national support available, and featuring Norfolk leaders' anecdotal experiences, challenges, and solutions. If you would like to contribute to this resource, please do get in touch.
The Ensuring Effective Transitions task group, building on work from the Norwich Opportunity Area, and aligned with transition work in Local First Inclusion, has created a questionnaire for parents, designed to understand how the education system can better support transition between all phases. Starting with a pilot year 6 and 7 group, the intention is to make this available across the county. They have also created a template for a research report to support strong transition practice, which will also be shared. Potential aspects for research have been identified, linking a number of other themes of work (such as work to support Key Stage 2 outcomes across Norfolk, and school communications).
The task group focusing on Enhancing the self-improving system through a Norfolk Collaborative Standardhas arranged a number of school visits across the county, including primary, secondary and special schools, to highlight and share good practice. A case study proforma has also been developed, designed to be easy to share and compare school improvement and development experiences. This group has representation from both Local Authority maintained schools and Academy Schools, but is always keen to hear from those across the education sector; if you would like to participate, ask a question or provide input, please get in touch.
If you would like to find out more about the task groups, or if you (or someone on your staff) are interested in supporting the education system, please let us know.