Safer Internet Day

Safer Internet Day 2017 will be celebrated globally on Tuesday 7th February with the slogan ‘Be the change: Unite for a better internet’. The day offers the opportunity to highlight positive uses of technology and to explore the role we all play in helping to create a better and safer online community. It calls upon young people, parents, carers, teachers, social workers, law enforcement, companies, policymakers, and wider, to join together in helping to create a better internet. In school, we talk to our children about keeping themselves safe online as an important part of our curriculum. The day on 7th February hopes to encourage more and more of us to think about and promote the safe, responsible and positive use of digital technology for children and young people.

For more details head to this link.

2017 Primary Assessment

The STA (Standards and Testing Agency) have provided a statement about potential changes to Primary Assessment in 2017. A summary follows and for further information and a full briefing you can follow this link. 

"We won’t be introducing any significant changes to testing or assessment before the 2018 to 2019 academic year."

• Statutory mathematics and English reading resits for children arriving in Year 7 will not be introduced
• Instead, we will focus on the steps needed to ensure a child catches up any lost ground
• High quality resit papers will be made available for teachers to use, if they choose to, as part of their ongoing assessments
• It is still intended that a mathematics multiplication tables check will be introduced, but not before the 2018 to 2019 academic year, at the earliest

Marking: Ofsted issues new guidance following EEF report

In April, the EEF (Education Endowment Foundation) published A Marked Improvement?, a review commissioned of the evidence on written marking. Its central conclusion was that though marking plays a central role in teacher's work, there is very little evidence on which strategies are most effective.

Ofsted's latest 'School inspection update' (here) cites the EEF's report in its message to inspectors:

"As both the Workload Review group on marking (March 2016) and the Education Endowment Foundation (April 2016) reported, there is remarkably little high quality, relevant research evidence to suggest that detailed or extensive marking has any significant impact on pupils’ learning. So until such evidence is available, and regardless of any area for improvement identified at the previous inspection, please do not report on marking practice, or make judgements on it, other than whether it follows the school’s assessment policy. Also, please do not seek to attribute the degree of progress that pupils have made to marking that you consider to be either effective or ineffective. When reporting, please do not make recommendations for improvement that involve marking, other than when the school’s marking/assessment policy is not being followed by a substantial proportion of teachers; this will then be an issue for the leadership and management to resolve."

Southampton Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index (IDACI)

The local authority have created a set of maps plotting our school and pupils (year R-11) with an IDACI layer identifying areas of higher and lower deprivation. 

The maps are based on data from the Autumn census (2016) and the latest IDACI (2015) data. These maps might therefore enable anyone to observe the relationship between attainment and levels of deprivation.

What is IDACI?

IDACI is the ‘Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index’, a subset of the Index of Multiple Deprivation. The index itself represents the proportion of children under the age of 16 within an LSOA that live in low-income households. A higher raw score is therefore an indicator that an LSOA is more deprived.

You can look up IDACI values (by postcode) yourself here:  http://imd-by-postcode.opendatacommunities.org/     

IDACI may be used as a deprivation factor in the new national funding formula for 2017/2018.

What do the maps show?

IDACI provides a raw score and a national ranking (within England) of each Lower-layer Super Output Area (LSOA). We have divided this data into quintiles (5 groups of 20%) and used it as a source for thematic mapping of the deprivation index in five ‘bands’. These five bands are based on the highest and lowest IDACI scores for the whole country. Pupils in band 1 live in an LSOA which is in the top 20% of most deprived LSOAs in the country with pupils in band 5 belonging to the 20% least deprived in the country.  This overlays a base map of Southampton along with the relevant school, and a map object (‘point’) representing each postcode in which there is a pupil on roll at your school.

Junior Tax Facts

A simple introduction to tax for 8 to 11 year olds, which explains that taxes provide the money needed to pay for the things that are essential to them, their families, communities and society as a whole.

HMRC is the UK’s tax, payments and customs authority. They collect the money that pays for the UK’s public services and help families and individuals with targeted financial support.

A comprehensive teacher's pack, with ready-to-use lesson plans and exercises, is available to view or download, free of charge on the Times Educational Supplement (TES) website: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/junior-tax-facts-teachers-pack-11410987