Latest developments

Parenting contracts

Parenting contracts are now one of the statutory documents and policies that a governing body must hold, but what are they? You would be forgiven for thinking that the parenting contract is a redesigned home school agreement but it is not.

Parenting contracts are a supportive provision and will enable formal agreements between parent and school in which each side sets out the steps they will take to secure an improvement in the child’s attendance and behaviour. Parenting contracts have been introduced as a balanced package of support and sanctions to reinforce parental responsibility for school attendance and behaviour. A sample Parenting Contract can be found in the documents table below.

The school profile

The school profile caused a great deal of difficulty for some governing bodies and schools during the summer term 2006. When it was introduced, schools had difficulty accessing their profile, the data was not loaded by the promised dates and in some cases the information relating to schools was inaccurate. As a result the then Department for Education and Skills (DfES) agreed to revise the school profile and sent a letter to schools apologising for the problems and suspended the school profile site. Many changes have been made to the system and today it is much easier to update and upload. The main changes to the profile are:

• a new pictorial format for expressing pupil progress at key stages two to four. The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) believed that this would be more accurate than the previous ‘big arrow’ display.
• date last published - this now appears in the heading of the document. The previous version included a reference to the academic year which was felt to be confusing.
• an ability to update the Profile during the year.

Guidance on completing the school profile can be found on the teachernet website.

School Improvement Partners (SIP)

School Improvement Partners have now been allocated to all secondary and primary schools. Your Headteacher and Chair of Governors will be aware of the name of your SIP but if you do not have that information please ring us. A guide to the School Improvement Partner’s Brief is available on the teachernet website.

Financial Management Standard in Schools (FMSiS)

The Financial Management Standard in schools is a clear and consistent standard for financial management which schools must aim to achieve, providing a meaningful benchmark to encourage self-improvement. On 21 July 2005, the Government announced its expectation that all secondary schools should have met the standard by March 2007 and this was achieved in Plymouth. Primary schools are now being assessed on a phased basis over a three year period.

Further information can be found on the DCSF Financial Management Standard in Schools website.

Disability equality in schools

The new guidance materials explain how the Disability Equality Duty (DED) can be implemented by schools can be found on the teachernet website.

Documents

To view these documents you might need to download some software. Visit our downloads page for more information.

Sample parenting contract - an example of a parenting contract. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 33.9KB

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