NCSC and LGfL invite all UK schools to participate in online audit

Educational not-for-profit LGfL is proud to be working with the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), part of GCHQ, to launch an audit of the state of cybersecurity in UK schools that will generate a snapshot of the protections in place across the sector. Open until the 30th April, the results of the audit will be announced nationwide in early summer 2019.
Following the threat posed by increasingly sophisticated online attacks, often conducted via the spread of malware or phishing, LGfL is working with NCSC to help meet this challenge through gaining an accurate overview of the current level of cybersecurity protections and training present in schools. The information gained through the audit will be used to shape national policy and inform both training and technological provision, allowing multi-agency solutions to be developed in responding to this increasingly prominent issue. This latest initiative is launched under LGfL CyberCloud, the mission of which is to take a long-term holistic approach to keeping schools secure.
Commenting on this latest initiative Mark Bentley, Safeguarding & Cybersecurity Manager at LGfL said, “It is clear that as technology continues to strengthen teaching and learning in schools, the threats which come from being increasingly online are also growing. This audit presents us with an unprecedented opportunity to gain insight into the current state of cybersecurity in UK schools, which in turn will help us to develop solutions and practices that enable schools to better protect their online assets. We are proud to be working with experts in the field of cybersecurity, the National Cyber Security Centre, to launch this audit. I would encourage all schools to visit our website and spend five minutes completing the questionnaire to help schools across the UK benefit from the findings, which will be announced nationwide later this year.”
To learn more and take part in the CyberSecurity Schools Audit 2019 please visit securityaudit.lgfl.net

Our role as teachers is to make learning science and mathematics engaging. Cue ‘video’, the learning tool and gateway to quality content and the real world.
To help students to draw connections in their learning of science and mathematics with the real-world, teachers across the UK have expressed their excitement for the ClickView TV Guide to access and capture the best free-to-air educational programmes that air every fortnight.
If anything, be sure to tap into the STEAM-specific curriculum mapped resources available via ClickView, with programmes such as ‘Atom Bond’ for secondary students, or the ‘Bitesize Coding and Computing’ series for primary school students.

If your school has ClickView, you can access hundreds of video titles in science, mathematics and technology in our online Video Content Catalogue.
Furthermore, teachers are using video as a tool to facilitate project-based and inquiry learning, to task students with the challenge of exploring and solving real-world problems. Students can use video to document and reflect on their learning, easily done via the ClickView mobile apps. Students also share their video work samples and presentations with peers to share ideas, spark discussion and to orchestrate peer-to-peer feedback. ClickView aims to give students a quick and easy way of doing this.

ClickView STEAM Trailblazer Top Tip

Utilising ClickView Interactive Videos as a tool for peer-to-peer feedback, students can engage with each other’s content and provide feedback in the form of comments or questions, to provoke deeper learning across STEAM subject areas. Some ways that students may choose to add interactive feedback to videos include short answer questions, true or false questions, annotations and images. Once students have added a layer of interactive questions to a video using ClickView, sending it back to their peers and teachers unlocks an opportunity for feedback. This approach is sure to pull students from a surface level engagement with any science and maths lesson, to a level of deeper thinking and engagement with whichever STEAM-related topic you are teaching.

ClickView STEAM Trailblazer Top Tip #2

When recording student learning and final presentations:
• Allocate the role of ‘video recorder’ to your most energetic student. Ensure you include the video recorder when critiquing and questioning teams following their presentations.
• Have a spare camera battery fully charged at all times.
• When necessary, use a tripod to record better quality videos.
Increasing teacher capacity and STEAM teaching quality
Become a STEAM specialist with the help of video by accessing rich educational content. Start with the readily available ClickView Science lesson plans, and be sure to tap into the resources that UK teachers have created along with ‘teachable moment content’ from the ClickView Exchange, in the form of news reports, relevant advertising content and current debates and films for literary study. On the ClickView Exchange, there are Feature Channels that are hosted by teachers in STEAM-related subject areas, especially science and maths.
Many schools are starting by creating a community of STEAM learning. Cue, ClickView’s online video platform to easily help in facilitating this process:
1. Using your own teacher Workspace, you can create, find and organise content that are other classes in your school are using relating to STEAM.
2. Using Playlists within ClickView, bundle up and share that content quickly and easily. What are your top picks? Email it, share it, embed it in your VLE or via Google Apps for Education.
Unveil the world around you with curated video content, record and capture learning experiences and be captivated by the wonders of STEAM. Become STEAM Trailblazers with your students this year.

A brand-new initiative aimed at increasing children’s access to vital school resources has been launched.

Support your school is a fundraising platform for schools managed by Peters, the UK’s leading specialist children’s book and furniture supplier to schools and academies.

Support your school uses five easy to follow steps to help schools to raise funds to support children’s literacy. The funds raised by the school can be used to create a magical new library, supply a selection of titles to support a topic or the latest collection of fiction.

100% of the funds raised are available to the school to buy resources to aid literacy and help children develop a passion for reading for pleasure.

Claire Bowles, Head of Sales and Marketing said:

“These are difficult times for the education sector and many schools tell us that they would love to buy more books, but often struggle to allocate enough budget. Support your school allows the schools to identify specific campaigns or projects and then engage with parents, local business and their community to make the plans become a reality.”

She added:

“We know that reading for pleasure is one of the single biggest indicators of a child’s future success. We want to work with schools and parents to give children the best opportunities we can.”

The first school to sign up was The Ridge Primary School in Stourbridge. Rebecca Beddoes, Assistant Head Teacher, said:

“In just four short weeks we exceeded our target of £1,000. We were overwhelmed by the support the campaign has had. We knew that we had supportive families but some of the donations made have been so generous that we have regularly been lost for words.”

She added:

“I knew that Support your school would be invaluable in helping us raise funds to enable our children to love reading. What I did not realise is how it would get children excited about reading before those books had even arrived.”

For further information on Support your school, please visit:
https://supportyourschool.org.uk/

Famous names from the worlds of TV, film, radio and politics will join teachers and mental health campaigners to raise funds for Mindfulness in Schools Project’s ‘A Million Minds Matter’ Appeal at their conference in London on 26th April 2019.
The charity is hosting a star-studded day for teachers, school leaders, educators and parents to broaden their knowledge of mindfulness and inspire them to bring evidence-based mindfulness curricula into school communities. Proceeds from the event will go to the charity’s ‘A Million Minds Matter’ Appeal which aims provide high quality mindfulness training to a million young people in the next five years.

London, UK, April 2019 – With stories emerging almost daily about the crisis in mental health faced by children and young people, and the increasing pressures on schools and their staff, Mindfulness in Schools Project (MiSP) aims to highlight the life changing benefits of the programmes they supply to children and to those who care for them, and raise funds to reach more schools.

Established by teachers for teachers, the charity aims to improve the lives of children by providing them with high-quality classroom-based mindfulness training. MiSP trains teachers in how to introduce young people to secular mindfulness and provides a life skill that both teachers and children can come back to time after time.

The conference brings together a panel of expert speakers, headlined by Ruby Wax, sharing inspirational testimonies and performances which demonstrate the power of mindfulness as an effective tool for 21st century living. Speakers include:

• Ruby Wax – comedian, author and presenter,
• Jonny Benjamin – award-winning mental health campaigner, film producer, public speaker, writer and vlogger
• Caroline Lucas – MP, Green Party
• Jerome Flynn – Soldier Soldier and Game of Thrones actor
• Sir Steve Lancashire, founder and CEO of REAch2
• Cel Spellman – actor and radio presenter
• Vidyamala Burch – co-founder of Breathworks, a mindfulness charity
• Jason Steele – founder and CEO of non-profit Raise the Youth
• Parham Vasaiely – UN-advisor, engineer and mindfulness pioneer in the STEM industry
• Voices of experience – first hand accounts from teachers and children

MiSP believes that schools that are unable to designate a budget for their gold-standard mindfulness training should still have access. The ‘A Million Minds Matter’ Appeal seeks to raise the funding required so that no children are excluded from this life-changing approach and can benefit from the practice of mindfulness through MiSP’s evidence-based programmes.

Chivonne Preston, CEO of MiSP, said: “Mindfulness practice provides a toolkit which builds resilience and enables individuals to flourish. MiSP is dedicated to making a genuine, positive difference to the mental health and wellbeing of a generation of children now and in the future. We are thrilled to have such a fantastic array of speakers coming to support us at our conference and are delighted to welcome our audience to come and learn more about mindfulness and the role it can play in our schools”.

For more information on how to buy tickets to the “A Million Minds Matter” conference, please visit our website – https://mindfulnessinschools.org/misp-conference-2019/.
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• England will see more than 385,000 additional pupils enter the primary and secondary school system by 2021/2022, filling the equivalent of 12,835 extra classrooms
• London, the South East and the South West will see the largest increase in school-aged pupils in the next two years
• Birmingham will experience the largest increase in pupil numbers and will require 330 new school classrooms, or 25 new schools

An additional 385,000 pupils will join England’s school system by 2021/2022 reveals the latest research by Scape Group, the public sector procurement specialist. To meet this demand, England requires 12,835 additional school classrooms across the country or 640 new schools.

Scape’s report, The School Places Challenge 2019, examines the challenge facing the UK’s school system using Department of Education and devolved authority data. This is the fourth edition of this analysis from Scape Group. The report reveals that England’s school-aged population is set to increase by 5.5 per cent over the next two years.

England’s regional school places challenge Number of extra school places required by 2021/22 All pupil growth % New primary school classrooms required by 2021/22 New secondary school classrooms required by 2021/22 New primary and secondary schools required by 2021/22

Over the next two years, every region in England will experience at least a three per cent increase on the current number of pupils, but London, the South East and the South West can all expect to see the largest increases. Local authorities in the South East will have to build the most primary school classrooms (568), while local authorities in London will have to build the most secondary school classrooms (1,872). Overall, the South East is under pressure to build the equivalent of 131 schools.

Birmingham is the region which faces the most substantial projected increase in the next two years, with Manchester coming in a close second. Both cities can expect more than 12,000 extra secondary pupils by 2021/2022. Between them, they will need to provide the equivalent of 53 new schools in the next two years.
However, it is not just densely populated cities that are feeling the strain. London’s commuter belt is also experiencing significant pressure to provide school places. Essex, Kent, Surrey and Hertfordshire all rank within the top ten areas that experience the most significant school-aged population growth.
But despite councils being legally responsible for ensuring that the demand for school places is met, the process for establishing and funding schools is often outside their control. Local authorities have no direct control of free schools, grammar schools or academy places, despite the fact these types of schools make up the bulk of the current government’s school places strategy.

Mark Robinson, Scape Group Chief Executive, comments: “As with many critical issues that desperately need political attention, education has dropped down the agenda as government bodies focus on Brexit and our future position with the rest of the world.
“Every region in England needs to build more schools, and local authorities nationwide will be feeling the strain. We must collectively focus on delivering a strategy and solutions which not only provide high-quality, modern spaces for teaching and learning but also offer our colleagues in local authorities cost certainty, value for money and timely delivery.

“In March, record numbers of children missed out on their first choice of secondary school[1], and appeals against secondary school offers have doubled in six years. This issue is likely to be exacerbated in the coming years if we do not think and act more creatively now. Good schools are the bedrock of our society, and there can be no room for error.”

Scape Group’s recommendations on how to tackle the School Places Challenge

1. The adoption of offsite construction as the main method of building for all new schools and extensions would ensure that they are built faster than traditional methods. If modular can grow in scale, building schools will become more efficient and cost-effective.
2. A fairer education funding model for local authorities, which ensures that they can work with central government to set budgets that reflect local need. In particular, local authorities should play a part in judging and approving free school proposals to make sure that new schools are established where they are most needed.
3. Greater collaboration between councils and developers to ensure that secondary schools are built in major urban extensions and developments first, through agreements between developers seeking planning permission and the local planning authority (Section 106 agreements).
Mark Robinson, Scape Group Chief Executive, continues: “The current government believes free schools are the answer, but I would argue that this standpoint has been born out of ideological stubbornness, rather than a genuine effort to tackle the school places crisis. Deploying government resources to existing school structures instead would enable local authorities to refurbish and extend current schools to provide additional school places. This would be a much more efficient way of spending taxpayers’ money.

“England will have 385,031 more pupils by 2021/2022, and with demand continuing to grow, it is vital that we focus on solutions that will allow us to create additional school places quickly and resourcefully, without compromising on quality. Offsite technology is one answer.
“While the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) started its push for modular four years ago, only 70 schools have been built using offsite construction so far. Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) not only enable quick construction but can also cost local authorities significantly less. Until the government takes more pragmatic action, they cannot claim to be safeguarding the futures of young people.”
The full Scape Group report, The School Places Challenge 2019, can be downloaded from www.scapegroup.co.uk/research.