Welcome

Hello! And welcome to our final newsletter of the spring term - how time continues to fly! 

Next term we'll be kicking off our spring NPQs: the NPQ in senior leadership; the NPQ in leading teacher development; and the NPQ for SENCOs. This will be our first cohort delivered entirely in partnership with Ambition Institute, and we're excited to welcome our new participants to their courses. If you're one of the new cohort, keep an eye out for your welcome email next week.

Whenever your school or setting breaks up for the Easter holidays, we hope you have a relaxing break!

BREAKING NEWS!

The long-awaited update to the EEF guidance report Making Best Use of Teaching Assistants dropped this week. Not titled Deployment of Teaching Assistants, the updated report focuses on 5 key recommendations. Read more about this below.

And finally...

Together with the other teaching school hubs in the East of England, we are proud to support the MTPT Project, meaning that spaces on their Return to Work workshops and group coaching remain fully funded in Norfolk. Upcoming sessions are:

• May Return to Work workshop: Monday 12 May
• Parental Leave group coaching summer "coffee" cohort: Tuesday 13 May.

Keep in touch

You can follow us on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn, sign up to receive this newsletter - or just drop us an email.

Spotlight on... Deployment of Teaching Assistants

School leaders should make sure they’re utilising teaching assistants in ways to allow all pupils to access high-quality teaching. This means that pupils who struggle most should spend at least as much time with the teacher as other pupils, if not more.

This is according to a recommendation from the Education Endowment Foundation’s updated guidance on teaching assistants. Published today, the guide gives school leaders practical recommendations to effectively deploy teaching assistants (TAs) in schools across the country.

This update comes as the TA workforce continues to grow within the English education system. According to the most recent data, there are over 280,000 TAs across schools in England, a figure that has increased by 28% since 2011, when support staff data was first included in the school workforce census. Many TAs play a role in supporting the inclusion of pupils with SEND in mainstream schools. TAs are widely seen as vital in helping mainstream schools maintain inclusivity, as the number of pupils with SEND and complex needs continues to rise.

Read more here.

Focus on... DEIB in teaching and system leadership

In a webinar originally delivered as part of Derby Research School's Change Champions conference in autumn 2024, Susi Waters (Operations Manager at the Julian TSH and Norfolk Research School; and the Research Schools Network (RSN) Regional EDI Link (East of England and East Midlands)) discusses diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in the teaching workforce. 

How can we diversify the system? And why should we care about diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging anyway??

As part of Susi's ongoing work with the RSN and Norfolk Research School around EDI and developing diverse voices, she shares some ideas.

Watch it here; and access the session resources here.

Don't have 20 minutes to spare? The blog summarising the session can be found in the blog feed below.

Spotlight on... Post-16 Settings

CPD Case Studies 

The EEF are looking for examples of effective continuous professional development in practice in the 16-19 sector. If you or your post-16 colleagues have successful or promising approaches, it would be great if you could share them using this form. Our ideal deadline for brief submissions is 2nd April, but we will keep the form open until the end of April. 

Evidence Partnership for Further Education 

The EEF has just opened applications for the new 'Evidence Partnership for Further Education', established to support general FE and sixth form colleges to access, understand, and apply research evidence within their teaching and learning. They are looking for 5-6 general FE and sixth form colleges across a range of locations and contexts, as part of an initial 2-year funded partnership opportunity. Applications will close on the 25th April. 

Post-16 Newsletter

Finally, do sign up to the Post-16 newsletter if you haven't already, for monthly updates on the EEF's developing work, and highlighting opportunities to get involved.