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The staff at Northern Saints Catholic Education Trust have moved their work to Microsoft Teams after initiating a business continuity plan to ensure effective communication amongst staff.

Sandhill View Academy are introducing new measures to their normal way of working in order to make their working day easier, after the announcement that schools will be closing .

Students from Chillingham Road Primary School were filmed singing on school grounds the day before school closures as a way of showing their support for NHS workers.

The coronavirus outbreak is an unprecedented event which is having an enormous impact upon the North East’s schools, school leaders, and teachers; as well as their students, parents and local communities. Schools North East has always worked to provide the greatest support for all of the schools in the region. During this challenging time we aim to increase this support as much as possible to enable our schools to deal with this crisis to the very best of their considerable abilities.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson announced earlier this week that all schools in England would close with effect from Friday 20 March. As the country battles coronavirus, the Government clarified that this was the next step in protecting those most at risk. Schools are expected to play a major role in doing this while ensuring children of key workers are supported.

The message from Boris Johnston clearly states that the overriding principle of this measure is to reduce social contact and that we must all play our part in supporting this. In the North East we are slightly behind London in terms of the rate of infections and deaths and if we all work to this guidance we can help protect those living in this region.

All Schools North East events are to go ahead as planned, including the upcoming Patron’s Dinner on Thursday 19th March.

Following advice from the UK government on Thursday 12th March, we are continuing as normal. We will update the advice and inform schools and attendees as necessary.

You can see current guidance for educational settings on the Department for Education website

Please keep an eye on our website and social media channels for further updates.

No major new spending was announced for schools in Rishi Sunak’s budget earlier this week. Gavin Williamson’s promise to provide every region in the country with specialist 16-to-19 maths schools, was reiterated, as was the Conservative manifesto promise of £25,000 per year on average for every secondary school to invest in arts activities, and £30 million a year to improve PE teaching.

Speaking in Birmingham at the weekend, Amanda Spielman said it was a “small and vocal minority” who were criticising the new inspection framework.

In data released today, it shows that 88.6 per cent of 1,336 responses strongly agreed or agree with the statement that they were satisfied with the way the inspection was carried out.

Geoff Barton, once a maverick headteacher who railed against Ofsted and said he would have to be dragged “kicking and screaming” into running an academy, has been criticised recently by leaders who believe he has grown too close to the establishment.

Five-year-olds in England who shun digital devices have lower literacy scores than children who use technology more regularly, a global study has found. 

Some screen time can have a positive effect on children’s working memory and literacy, according to a Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report.

However, children who used electronic devices all the time did not see a significant boost to skills.

FIFTY North East schools have the opportunity to place cutting-edge technology at the heart of classroom learning thanks to a new partnership.
Education charity SHINE is investing more than £150,000 into the schools, in a bid to significantly boost pupil attainment and give teachers more time to teach.