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Millais School

Depot Road

Horsham

West Sussex

RH13 5HR

March 2013 update Dear Colleagues We are continuing to work on our areas of remit and wish to share the latest developments for our Teaching School Alli-ance in this issue. We are delighted to welcome new members to our group and enquiries about joining our growing alliance should be through Caroline Carroll, our Teaching School Administrator. Shirley Springer Teaching School Director

In this issue……………………… News and updates on all the areas of our

work…...

Aspiring SENCO and New-to-SENCO courses in Autumn Term 2013. See page 2

OTP (Outstanding Teacher Programme) - some places still left on this highly rated course. See page 5

Research and Development - report from the CfBT Project. See page 7

How Lead Practitioners can help to support your school. See page 8

New members!

Welcome to Collyer’s Sixth Form Col-lege and Southwater Junior Academy who are our newest members of The Millais Alliance.

Phone: 01403 254932

Fax: 01403 211729

E-mail:

caroline.carroll@millais.org.uk

New website Visit our new website for full details of all initiatives

http://www.millaisalliance.org.uk/

Congratulations…………... ...to St Paul’s Catholic College for their successful bid to be-come a Teaching School. Our thanks go to them for all their support as Strategic Partners. We wish them well.

Research & Development Don’t miss the opportunity to learn about Lesson Study. Go to ePD to see details of the two part course ‘Introducing the ‘Lesson Study’ approach to CPD’ which has been devised by the R&D alliance group. The sessions will be held at Oathall Commu-nity College and led by Nancy Barclay from Brighton University. This two part course is designed to de-velop teaching practice and focuses on collaborative and reflective practice. Where does the idea of lesson study come from? Lesson Study (or kenkyu jugyo) is a teaching im-provement process that has origins in Japanese ed-ucation, where it is a widespread professional de-velopment practice. Working in a small group, teachers collaborate with one another, meeting to discuss learning goals, to plan an actual classroom lesson (called a "research lesson"), to observe how it works in practice, and then to revise and report on the results so that other teachers can benefit from it.

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Aspiring SENCO and New-to-SENCO courses in Autumn

Term 2013: Could you be your school's next SENCO? Succession planning for the SENCO role is a major concern nationwide for headteachers - both primary and sec-ondary. Teaching recruitment firms reported that in 2012, the number of candidates for SENCO posts was at an all-time low. With the focus on vulnerable learner groups in the new Ofsted framework and far-reaching changes to the SEN Code of Practice due to come into force in 2014, now is an exciting time for dynamic and ambitious main scale teachers to consider a move into the SEN/D area of expertise. Schools have never been so in need of professionals with a passion for raising the attainment of vulnerable learner cohorts and removing barriers to learning. If that sounds like you - why not consider a SENCO post as the next stage in your career? As a rapid route to leadership, the SENCO role can be a great career move for anyone wishing to move into a middle-leader role, and few roles in a school are as interesting and rewarding. Research shows that many potential SENCO candidates are put off applying for posts because they feel they lack appropriate training in SEN/D. To address this need, an Aspiring SENCO course will be offered through ePD at Mil-lais School in the Autumn Term 2013. It will be delivered by experienced primary and secondary SENCOs and will include sessions on: types of SEN, differentiation for students with SEN, multi-agency work, meetings with parents and carers, provision-mapping, using data, planning and evaluating interventions. It is envisaged that participants on the course will then continue to meet regularly for Aspiring SENCO continuous professional development meetings, thus creating a network of Aspiring SENCOs in West Sussex, who would be ready to meet the demand for SENCOs locally. Every school should have an Aspiring SENCO! Further details of the Aspiring SENCO course will be publicised in the Summer Term, along with details of a New-to-SENCO course for newly-appointed SENCOs (which will cover the more practical aspects of the role not covered by the National Award for SENCOs). For advice and information, please contact Maggie Morgan, Director of Learning for Specialist Intervention at Mil-lais School: maggie.morgan@millais.org.uk

School Direct

Alliance news for School Direct placements Over 3,300 School Direct places have been allocated to teaching school alliances. The Millais Alliance has been allocated 16 School Direct ITT places and we are currently interviewing to fill the places. The potential recruits have a rigorous two day interview, one at the placement school and one with the university provider. Currently there are still places available at The Forest School, Tan-bridge House, Imberhorne, Millais and The Weald. We are only re-cruiting the best calibre candidates to maintain the highest stand-ards in teaching; the vacancies for placements will remain open until they have been filled at the discretion of the individual placement school. Go to the alliance website for more information and a list of FAQs. http://www.millaisalliance.org.uk/initial-teacher-training/school-direct.aspx

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ITT ITT Team News On February 6th 2013 two members of the team and a further colleague from QE2 School represented the Alliance at the University of Brighton School Direct evening recruitment event. We had a steady flow of prospective School Direct candidates visit our stall and each request posed a diverse and inter-esting pre-recruitment background. What became evident from each conversation was the fact that three years recent and relevant in school experience was something few candidates had achieved. It will be interesting to see how School Direct recruitment develops over the coming year. Our second event, on 7th March 2013, came in the form of a joint professional studies session based on the National Priority of Phon-ics. Holbrook Primary School very kindly organised and hosted this afternoon session for trainees currently on placement in strategic partnership schools. As part of the session trainees observed phon-ics being taught to Reception and KS1 pupils. The trainees then had an opportunity to learn some theory behind the teaching of phonics, and have a go themselves. We would like to thank the staff at Holbrook School for a wonderfully interesting and informative afternoon – it was fantastic! Quotes from trainees:–

We have planned a second joint professional studies session for 9th May 2013. This will focus on preparations for the NQT year. Invitations to this session will be sent to trainees in partnership schools via Professional Tutors or Headteachers in primary schools. Kay Taylor Team Leader for ITT Assistant Head (Davison School)

‘What a fantastic learning oppor-tunity, I had no idea how im-portant phonics are to learning to read!’

‘I cannot believe how the teach-ers manage to get so much from such young children – it was great.’

‘I am amazed, the chil-dren knew more than me!’

‘I cannot believe how the teach-ers manage to get so much from such young children – it was great.’

‘Amazing – stunning.’

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School to School

Support Do you have talented staff in your school able to support colleagues in other schools through men-toring and coaching? If you do, and you feel it would benefit their own professional development and help nurture them as future leaders then please contact us at The Millais Alliance. Contact caroline.carroll@millais.org.uk or go to the Alliance website for further details:

http://www.millaisalliance.org.uk/school-to-school-support/alliance-lead-practitioners.aspx

School Experience Placement One of our aims is to encourage all alliance schools to sign up to take pre-placement ITT students. The School Experience Programme (SEP) offers classroom experience in a secondary school and is run by the Teaching Agency. The duration is flexible (1 to 10 days); this will be agreed between you and your student. What are the benefits of having SEP students in your school? *A chance to help train future teachers and shape the teaching profession *Opportunities for staff development and a chance for teachers to reflect on their own practice *New ideas and perspectives *Extra funding *An opportunity to develop mentoring skills Funding comes directly to your school (£50 per day for the first 5 days followed by £25 per day—up to 10 days). The TA is currently offering funding for: primary phase and physics, maths, chemistry, MFL, history, English, geography, biology or computer science at secondary level. For further details go to the Teaching Agency infor-mation document:- http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/s/sep%20information%20for%20schools%20september%202012%20v280912.pdf

National College Leadership Curriculum The leadership curriculum is structured around five levels that reflect the different stages in a leader’s professional development and career. Level one NPQML: leading a team within an organ-isation – focusing mainly on middle leaders Level two NPQSL: leading beyond a team within an organisation – focusing mainly on senior lead-ers Level three NPQH: aspiring to lead an organisation Level four: leading an organisation Level five: leading beyond an organisation Organisations have been awarded licences to de-liver levels one, two and three of the leadership curriculum. Licensees will vary in their range of elective modules and method of delivery. As an alliance we will be working on the leadership pro-grammes in partnership with the Institute of Edu-cation in London. For further information about the three levels go to their website http://www.lcll.org.uk/national-college-leadership-development-programmes.html Please note that applications for National Profes-sional Qualification for Middle Leadership (NPQML) and National Professional Qualification for Senior Leadership (NPQSL) are made direct with the licensee. National Professional Qualifica-tion for Headship applications (NPQH) include a gateway assessment therefore registration is via the National College website. Information about the NPQH can be found on the DfE website.

Interested in joining our alliance of schools? If any school is interested in the work of the alliance and would like to formally become a member then the Head Teacher of the school should contact Shirley Springer at Millais School shirley.springer@millais.org.uk New mem-bers need to sign a Memorandum of Understanding before formally joining.

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OTP (Outstanding Teacher Programme) This highly-regarded programme will be repeated at Millais School next term. There are still a few places on the summer programme. For further information about the dates and cost of the course go to http://www.millaisalliance.org.uk/continuing-professional-development/otp-itp.aspx

Training to become OF (Outstanding Facilitators) If any school is interested in training their own Out-standing Facilitator(s) they should contact The Millais Alliance for further details. Olevi (external trainers) are running a three day course at Millais MITEX centre 12th—14th June.

Primary and Secondary English Network Meetings

Working with The Millais Alliance (TMA) and e-PD we have recently been able to organise a number of English events with the aim of setting up self-sustaining English Teachers’ networks. On February 7th a group of secondary English Subject Leaders met at the Mitex Centre. Those at the meeting agreed that they would like to be part of a Joint Practice Network for English and meet regularly to share best practice and catch up with the latest news and developments in the world of English. It was decided that a core group would take on the task of organising a summer con-ference and that the group would look to organise further meetings/events across the year. If you are interested in being part of this network and you are happy for your details to be shared with the wider group, can you please con-tact jo.robinson@westsussex.gov.uk and she will pass your details on to the committee and make sure you receive any relevant information. On February 11th and 12th two large groups of Primary English Subject Leaders and teachers met for an English Subject Leader briefing (one in Horsham and one in Worthing). The briefing included updates about the new writing test, a session on best practice in the teaching of grammar and sharing of new book recommendations. As with the secondary meeting, the aim is to set up self-sustaining network groups for English teachers. As a first step towards this, a number of teachers signed up to two groups which will be meeting to explore best practice in the teaching of spelling/grammar. If you were not at the meeting and you are interested in being part of such a group and receiving news on any further meetings can you please send your name and e-mail address to jo.robinson@westsussex.gov.uk and she will ensure you are added to the contact list.

Thank you to Millais Secondary School and Thomas a Becket Middle School for providing venues for the meetings

Jo Robinson—General Adviser Support and Intervention. West Sussex LA.

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News from the CPD team. The CPD Strategic team continues to forge ahead tailoring provision to the needs of the Teaching School alliance. Since September we are delighted to have offered over 50 high quality training and Subject Network Sessions ( the title Joint Practice meetings is set to change for ease of communication) for colleagues in our alliance schools. These sessions are delivered deploying the expertise across our partner schools as well as through external experts. Subject network meetings in PSHE, history, geography, mathematics, English and RE are becoming more established as networks in other subject areas continue to grow. We are currently in communication with ALPs (Alliance Lead Practitioners) to facilitate and sustain our subject network programme and as a point of contact between subject groups and the CPD team. We envisage that the network teams will audit CPD needs regularly as an on-going agenda item and that participants will collaborate to find creative ways to meet their own needs in imaginative ways. Provision for support staff is fundamental to our aims for an inclusive approach which encourages collaboration and sharing of ideas and practice beyond our own school. Please see e-PD for further details of all provision and encourage all col-leagues to sign up and take advantage of what is on offer. As a CPD group we aim to “practise what we preach” and continue to use our meetings to support our leadership of profes-sional development in our own schools. We have had external input on Lesson Study which is now being delivered through the alliance R&D team as well as Teacher Learning Communities and Measuring the Impact of CPD. Such sessions ensure that leadership across our strategic partner schools is of a high quality, increasingly consistent in practice and continues to grow and develop in innovative ways for the benefit of colleagues and of course our students. Quality Mark for CPD. Our aim is to ensure each of our partner schools goes through this process to audit leadership of CPD and suggest areas for development. If you are interested in finding out more – then please contact me, Sue Kelly, at sue.kelly@millais.org.uk .

Finally – we are in the process of reviewing and updating CPD needs across strategic partner and alliance schools in order to tailor our provision still further. It is envisaged that an audit of needs will go out to schools around the middle of the sum-mer term. Thanks in anticipation for completing this for us and helping to shape what we can offer in the future.

Sue Kelly—Assistant Head (Millais School)

Feedback about Primary Experience Placement (PEP) - Colgate Pri-mary School In the Autumn and Spring term Colgate Primary School were happy to take part in the Primary Experi-ence Programme (PEP) which was a scheme to encourage men to apply for teacher training. As part of the experience the school was to host the PEP students for 5 days during the Autumn term and 5 days in the Spring term. The PEP students were expected to spend time in a range of classes and to observe the normal working practice of teach-ing and learning by teachers and support staff. We were very lucky to have three men come to us who were very friendly, very keen and who had huge initiative which proved to be extremely advantageous when helping children in classes. Their feedback was that they had really enjoyed their time in school and had decided that teach-ing was for them. I am pleased to say that all three PEP students have been accepted on the PGCE course at Brighton University and I'm sure will make excellent teachers.

Kate Powell—Headteacher Colgate Primary School

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Research and Develop-ment - CfBT Project What is action research? Action research actively involves teachers in the process of research and reflective classroom practice. The CfBT Education Trust supports schools throughout England to develop excel-lence in language teaching and learning through Action Research projects.

BENEFITS OF PARTICIPATING IN THE PROJECT FOR OUR ALLIANCE This programme provided the opportunity for lead language teachers from The Millais Alliance

(TMA) to share best practice in languages education with others and to improve languages education wherever this might be needed. Support and additional funding was provided to schools wishing to develop leadership in languages education. It also provided participating schools with the focus, funding and professional support to develop projects and activities to meet the specific needs identified in alliance schools. Language teachers from three secondary school in the alliance were involved: Davison Girls School in Worthing (Lindsay Futcher), Imberhorne School in East Grinstead (Sue Trusler) and Millais School in Horsham (Elise Dupuy, Julia Johnson, Karen Hall). Primary Schools who participated in the storytelling project were Chesswood Primary (Worthing), Halsford Park (East Grinstead), Holbrook Primary, Kingslea Primary, Leechpool Primary, Northolmes Primary and St Marys Primary (Horsham). The teachers all worked with Bridget Smith who was the CfBT mentor throughout the projects. The Millais Alliance developed three projects which involved research into an aspect of language learning which were as fol-lows: Using storytelling to support KS2 to KS3 transition Using Film to enhance the KS4 curriculum and increase learn-

er motivation and achievement Improving assessment and information sharing KS2-KS3 A full report of the project will be posted on TMA (alliance web-site) and there is also a case study write up in CfBT . Karen Hall also wrote up her findings as a piece of Action Research. http://www.cfbt.com/support/languagessupportprogramme/tsacasestudies.aspx Many thanks to those staff who lead the project— as an alliance of schools we look forward to continuing the excellent languages work that they started. Shirley Springer—Teaching School Director

Left to right: Julia Johnson, Lindsay Futcher, Elise Dupuy, Karen Hall

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ALP and SLE School to School Support

On January 29th a group of Specialist Leaders in Education (SLEs) and Alliance Lead Practitioners (ALPs) met at Millais School to discuss the idea of forming ‘expert groups’ as a way to enhance the ‘School to School Support’ offer. Some models were shared to show how skills might be packaged up and offered out to schools in order to clarify the support on offer and to generate more interest in requesting ALP and SLE support. Those at the meeting discussed their individual areas of expertise and how these might be applied in a support role in school. We went on to consider the possibility of working collaboratively as an expert team. As a result of the meeting SLEs and ALPs are currently in the process of expanding their pen profiles to include information on the different types of support they could offer and creative ways in which this could be packaged for schools and tailored to meet their needs. Ideas shared included the possibility of several schools with a common need, sharing the cost of ALP or SLE support. The potential for support at the end of a school day, per-haps in the form of a series of staff meetings, was also put forward as a way of reducing any impact on teaching time. Once this information is collated we intend to cir-culate this to schools. Any school needing support for an aspect of their work can apply to the alliance for expert support by com-pleting this request form: http://www.millaisalliance.org.uk/Portals/0/Documents/S2S-Request-Form.pdf Jo Robinson General Adviser Support and Intervention. West Sussex LA. Helen Cobbin HELP (Horsham East Learning Partnership) group

Membership on Teams If any senior members of staff from Alliance Schools who are interested in joining work-ing groups leading on the key areas of the Teaching School agenda—ITT, CPD, Leader-ship, School to School Support and Research & Development—should contact Shirley Springer at Millais School. shirley.springer@millais.org.uk

Millais School

Depot Road

Horsham

West Sussex

RH13 5HR

Phone: 01403 254932

Fax: 01403 211729

E-mail:

caroline.carroll@millais.org.uk