Welcome to your first lead inclusion newsletter for this academic year. We hope you all enjoyed a restful summer break and are ready for another busy academic year. It was great to see some of you during our face-to-face networking event in London last week.

In this newsletter you will find actions, updates, and resources.

ACTIONS

School Recruitment Window

The programme recruitment window is already open.

In order to re-sign up as a lead inclusion school and apply for inclusion innovation project, you will need to complete this process.

Please follow this links to register:

• Lead Inclusion School - all inclusion schools will need to complete this
• Engagement Model in PE
• Inclusive Sports programme
• Inclusive Youth Leadership (Option 1- Full offer) - all schools will need to apply for either option 1 or 2
• Inclusive Youth Leadership (Option 2 – Reduced Offer) - all schools will need to apply for either option 1 or 2
• LTA Open Court - NEW THIS YEAR
• Mainstream Secondary inclusive CPD - NEW THIS YEAR
• My PB for Alternative Provision (PRU)
• School Swimming and Water Safety

Please remember you will need to be signed into the website to apply. If you do have any issues, please contact Theo.

Networking Day

Thank you to those who attended our lead Inclusion School networking day last week; it was great to see you some of you face-to-face and have an excellent opportunity to connect.

Please follow this link to the slides from the day. The inclusive youth leadership resources will shortly be added onto the teams channel for all schools to access. Athlete allocation and training is happening over the next couple of weeks, so please look out for athlete introduction emails in October.

For those who were unable to attend the face-to-face event, we are holding a Zoom session as a follow up. Please save Wednesday 12 October, 3:30-4:30pm. To register for the session, please follow this booking link; we will send a Zoom link for the session closer to the event via email.

CMO Physical Activity Guidelines for Disabled Children and Young People

Thank you for your contribution during the CMO session at our networking meeting last Thursday. We have attempted to capture all of your feedback and recommendations here. For any schools who didn’t attend last week, or for others who have reflected and have further thoughts, could we encourage you to add your recommendations to the Padlet. We will then share this feedback with the DfE.

For the schools who didn’t attend last week, the DfE have asked if the Lead Inclusion School network can support them with wording and messaging to schools to increase uptake of the new guidelines. They acknowledge there has been difficulty communicating the 30/60-minute message with the new recommendation around 20 minutes for disabled young people. As part of our session last week, we re-watched Professor Brett Smith’s session from Inclusion 2024 Live. In this session, Professor Smith was joined by young people, schools, and parents who were involved in the co-creation of the guidelines. The Inclusion 2024 Live session can be found here. Please find the CMO guidelines infographic here.

UPDATES

Microsoft Teams

The Inclusion OneDrive has now been shut down which has meant we have moved onto using Microsoft Teams. All relevant files from OneDrive have been moved onto our Lead Inclusion Schools Network Teams channel. The opportunity to move to Teams is going to be a great way for all of us to keep connected, as it will allow us to share all the amazing work we are doing as a network with everyone regularly.

To join the Teams channel, please follow this link. If you have any issues, please contact Theo.

Evaluation of the Inclusion 2024 Programme – Year 1

Ask Research’s evaluation of year 1 of Inclusion 2024 can be found here. Thank you for all your contributions to this, whether through the partner survey you shared with the schools you have supported, in-depth telephone interviews with Ask Research, or completing your termly reporting (which they have further analysed and included in their findings).

The report highlights the incredible impact you as a network are having in helping the school workforce feel more supported, more confident, and more creative when delivering PE and School Sport for Young People with SEND. Amy from Ask Research joined us on Thursday 22 September at our networking day to assess some of the findings and look forward to the coming year.

OPPORTUNITIES

National Knowledge Platform

As part of the Berks/South Berks Autumn Inclusive CPD Series for schools, we are being joined by Nicola File, Strategic Partnerships Advisor from Activity Alliance. She will run through with us the new Inclusion Education hub and how the new tool and resources can support school staff to review and improve their inclusive physical education and school sport delivery, as part of the DfE Inclusion 2024 project.

The session is being organised by Berks and South Bucks Lead Inclusion schools and is primarily for local school staff. However, if any Lead Inclusion school leads would like to attend to hear more about it, we can open up some extra places. The session will take place on Monday 10 October from 4-5pm via Zoom; if you would like to book a place, please email Laura Brookstein ([email protected]).

RESOURCES

New Leisure Resources to Assist in Tackling Inequalities

Activity Alliance is pleased to add to their resource bank with ten new leisure factsheets. They cover a range of top topics from developing inclusive strategies to workforce development and measuring impact.

They support leaders in the leisure sector to strengthen their inclusion work and engage more disabled people.

The ten factsheets provide clear and simple guidance, useful resources, and top tips on how the leisure workforce can embed better inclusive practices within facilities and programmes. This includes leisure centre and gym managers, facility management teams, marketing specialists, and many others.

Activity Alliance’s recent Annual Disability and Activity Survey showed that less than 3 in 10 disabled people feel encouraged to return to physical activity after the pandemic. This is despite 8 in 10 wanting to be more active.

Implementing ideas from the factsheets will help more disabled people know their local leisure facilities are accessible, inclusive, and a welcoming place to be active in.

The factsheets cover ten areas for inclusion improvements and are free to download:

1. Strategy
2. Leadership
3. Workforce development
4. Accessible venues
5. Policies and procedures
6. Equipment
7. Insight and marketing
8. Partnerships and engagement
9. Programming and participation
10. Impact and outcomes.

To access the new factsheets, visit this resource page on their website.

Wheelchair Tennis Talent Spot

The LTA are holding Talent Sport days to offer players the opportunity to  enter the Wheelchair Performance Pathway. Find out more and get involved here.

RESOURCE SPACE

During the lead school networking event, you as a network requested a reoccurring resource area as a reminder of the CPD platforms you can share with your counties.

• National Knowledge Platform
• Top Sportsability
• All About Autism E-Learning

If there is anything else you would like to see within the newsletter regularly, please let Roshni know.