13 September 2024 weekly update

Dear Colleagues,

I hope you had a restful and relaxing summer break, though it already feels like a very long time ago and I am sure that will be the case for you too.

I was really pleased to visit Queen Elizabeth Grammar school for the A-level and post 16 results day, together with DCS Sarah Hammond, Cllr Rory Love OBE and Cllr Sarah Hamilton. I had the opportunity to thank David Anderson, the outgoing headteacher, for his many contributions to the Kent education system over the years and to wish him all the best in his retirement, as well as to meet new headteacher Mrs Amelia McIlroy.

On GCSE results day we were welcomed by Mr Steven Gallears, headteacher of Northfleet Technology College and his school community and we also got to see their bee hive and sample their own honey! A very big thank you to both schools for their warm welcome and their time.

I have been on two additional visit this term, to Bromstone Primary School in Margate and to Grow 19 in East Malling. Thank you to Executive Headteacher James Williams and his team at Bromstone and Kirsty Hemmingway and Matt Jones of Grow 19.

You may be aware that over the summer the Minister for Children and Families in the Department for Education, Janet Dabey MP, wrote to Kent to remove the Improvement Notice for SEND. We are of course delighted and thank the many of you that have played an important role in this transformation. And just to reassure you, we won’t be taking out foot off the pedal any time soon. In August too from having 2.3% of EHCPs completed within the 20 week deadline the previous year, we exceeded the national average by 1.3%. September figures so far are showing a significant increase on that, so looking forward to the end of the month when I can share that data with you.

The term has got off to a busy start with a number of items to bring to your attention

• The County LADO Service and Education Safeguarding Service has now relaunched as a combined service and there is more detail further on in this bulletin
• The Children’s Commissioner has launched a data gathering exercise which we have been asked to disseminate to schools. Your Assistant Director for Education will be writing to you about this but the correspondence and link is also included in this bulletin
• The consultation on the Specialist Teaching and Learning Service has now launched to help us make future decisions about the service and the £5.9m of High Needs Funding being invested in it
• The Communities of Schools (Localities) have started being rolled out across the county
• 20 schools in Maidstone are participating in the integrated early intervention service for neurodiversity in schools, known as ‘This is Me’. This project builds on the small pilot that was initially successfully run in a group of Tonbridge Well primary schools and is being rigorously evaluated to inform future roll out across the county. A successful bid was made to DfE for additional funding to establish this work.

With all best wishes

Christine McInnes
Director of Education and SEN