Inclusion Lead School Newsletter

May 2021

Introduction

Welcome to our May newsletter. I hope you’re all enjoying the warmer weather and longer evenings. It feels like we’re building up to a busy summer term, where hopefully there will be more opportunities for our young people to connect through sport.

National School Sport Week is coming up in June and below you’ll find details about how to get involved. The theme this year is ‘Together Again’ and this gives us an opportunity to put sport and physical activity at the heart of the recovery for young people.

Just a few actions and updates this month, but please be aware of an important one around confirming your involvement as a YST Lead Inclusion School for next year.  

ACTIONS

Remaining a YST Lead School

Please note the window for you to confirm your involvement as a YST Lead Inclusion School will be open from 24 May 2021 and will remain open until 23 June 2021. This is an opportunity for you to commit to remaining a Lead Inclusion School (and we very much hope you do) along with expressing an interest in other additional projects. Please note that this will be a draft document and will only include Sport England and the FA funded aspects of your offer. We continue to await further funding announcements from the DfE. Please keep a look out in your inbox for more information on how to sign up on 24 May.

Inclusion 2020

Thank you so much for your commitment to completing the termly data collection. It is incredibly appreciated and funders, stakeholders and all our wider partners continue to be amazed at the incredible impact you as a national network of schools have. In your next monthly update we will share with you the full Inclusion 2020 report but in the interim please do take a look at this summary document and take a moment to celebrate the impact that you each have on the lives of young people with SEND.

UPDATES

TOP Sportsablity

As you know we have had to recently take down the Top Sportsability website for maintenance. It is currently being migrated over to the new YST website which will go live on 19 May. Thank you for your patience with this and we appreciate the inconvenience this may have caused. We will share the link to this once live.

National School Sport Week

Youth Sport Trust National School Sport Week 2021: Together Again, will take place from Saturday 19 to Friday 25 June 2021. You can register here to take part now! National School Sport Week 2021 will celebrate the return of youth sport and its power to bring people back together with a week of school sports days held up and down the country. The theme of this year’s campaign is Together Again, and we want you to join in by organising or supporting an event during the week. 

Updated County Reports

Rob Belbin has updated the county reports based on up-to-date data and you can access them here. These reports are great resources for our network to advocate for greater inclusion across the counties. Again, Rob has compiled the reports based on research from various partners, detailing the following:

  • Schools, SGOs and County Alliances in your county who have completed the Inclusive Health Check
  • DfE and their School Census Survey, providing you with information about 'who' is in your county
  • Schools who have registered in your county for TOP Sportsability
  • Schools who have registered in your county for All About Autism.

PUBLICATIONS

All-Party Parliamentary group for SEND

The All-Party Parliamentary group for SEND have issued their report on the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on educational transitions for young people with SEND. The group collated input from oral evidence meetings and written evidence around young people’s mental health and wellbeing and learning. It is quite challenging reading and has shone a spotlight on some of the inequalities within the education system and how COVID-19 amplified these and left young people with SEND feeling like an ‘afterthought’, read here.

Sensory Walks

Sense Active has partnered with Great Britain's national mapping agency, Ordnance Survey, to ensure Sensory Walks are easily discoverable via their OS Maps App, as part of its Sport England funded project ‘Sense, Active Together’. Find out more here.

SHARING GOOD PRACTICE

Abbey School’s Step into Sport virtual leadership Conference 

As we highlighted last month, the Lead Inclusion School network is leading the way when it comes to finding new and innovative ways to engage with young people across their county. Click here for an example from Abbey School in South Yorkshire, illustrating an innovative way of using their Athlete Mentor Rachel Mackenzie to extend the reach of Step into Sport and engaging more young role models through their Step into Sport Ambassadors scheme.

London Lead Inclusion Schools growing football opportunities for Girls with SEND

Mark Needham and Nick Miller from the Lead Inclusion Schools in West and Central London have been working with Panathlon to further develop girls' SEND Football opportunities. They have just made a promotional video here highlighting this great partnership.

All Newsletters

Catch up on the other Inclusion Lead School Newsletters.

Inclusion Newsletters