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Bryan Slater Director of Education |
Distribution |
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All Headteachers of primary and secondary phase mainstream and special schools. |
This document needs your action as detailed below:
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ACTION |
Title |
Suitability Assessment Report |
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Summary of
contents |
Your school’s Suitability Assessment Report and associated guidance. |
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Associated
documents |
A floor plan of your school |
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Date |
As postmarked |
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Summary of
action required |
Check and amend as necessary your school’s floor plan in preparation for the visit by the surveyors. |
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To be completed |
Prior to the assessor’s visit |
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LEA Contact |
Rob Crawford-Condie |
( |
01603 222287 |
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E-mail address |
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Norfolk Self
Review reference |
1. How high are
standards? 2. How effective is the school in developing pupils’ attitudes, values and personal development? 3. How well are pupils taught? 4. How good are curricular and other opportunities? 5. How well does the school care for its pupils? 7. How well is the school led and managed? 8. How well does the school use its resources? |
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Document
reference |
MI 240/02 |
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Underlined text indicates a hyperlink to related documents. These hyperlinks are best accessed through the e-Courier and/or ESINET.”
This Management Information sheet may be found on ESINET at the following address:
http://www.esinet.norfolk.gov.uk/cadmin/misheet/
Asset Management Plans: Suitability Assessment
Please find enclosed a copy of the Suitability Assessment Report for your school together with the floor plan used to make the assessment. The report provides an assessment of each room and area in your school in relation to its suitability for teaching and delivering the curriculum. The report is being sent to you now so that you can use it with the surveyor who will be paying a moderating visit to your school shortly (please see the accompanying letter).
Please check the enclosed report carefully to:
a. Ensure all rooms are included in the report. This must include all mobiles, and all other buildings that may be separate from the main block. The details of any additional/new rooms should be added to the report together with all of the related data including a categorisation (see attached guidance).
b. Check the room numbers on the floor plan correctly correspond to the room numbering in the report. If the room numbering needs to be corrected please change the report not the floor plan. (NB some floor plans indicate ‘Sheet 1 of 2’ when there is only one sheet, this is a system problem that is being addressed - apologies).
c. Check for any changes to the buildings as a consequence of work you may have had done since the survey was completed. Where this has happened please make sure the changes are reflected in both the report and floor plan.
As you carry out your checks I would be grateful if you would ensure a unique name/number by which you know the room concerned is recorded. In doing this it would help if you used a long-term system of nomenclature e.g. please avoid names like ‘Mrs Brown’s classroom’. We will record this information to facilitate future reference to the rooms and so improve communications.
The updated/amended report should then be used with the surveyor to ensure you are both agreed that all rooms are assessed and properly recorded.
You should keep a copy of the report, as amended, to inform your own school’s Premises Development Plan.
Shortfall of accommodation
The enclosed suitability report assesses the rooms you have, it does not identify rooms you do not have, but should have. Clearly this is of high importance in the Asset Management Plan process so we must therefore identify any such shortfalls. This will be done as follows:
For primary phase schools the assessment has been
made by the Education Department Planning & Buildings team against the
guidance provided in Building
Bulletin 82 (draft revision)[1]. The surveyor will advise you of any room
shortfalls identified through this process. Such a shortfall will be recorded
by us as Category A.
For high schools
the assessment must be made against each school’s own curriculum model. We have
access to a spreadsheet based tool to carry out this assessment that has
already proved to be successful. More details are included on the enclosed
sheet (secondary schools only).
For special
schools we have no single methodology that would satisfactorily take into
account all of the varying demands placed on special schools. We therefore
recognise that the identification of any shortfall in accommodation must be
done on a school by school basis. This will be carried out through the
re-survey work that is to be undertaken by Rob Crawford-Condie (see below).
Medium term arrangements
The data reflected in these reports are vital to the LEA’s assessment of need across all schools and therefore will determine foreseeable prioritisation for funding purposes on suitability issues. Clearly this need will be addressed by priority and so rooms categorised as A or B are of most significance.
We are aware from the initial analysis of data that the DfES ‘B’ categorisation has proved to be is very broad, in fact, too broad if it is to be used effectively for prioritising work. As other LEAs have also recognised, there is a need to sub-divide the B categorisation e.g. a room may have received a B category because it does not have enough electrical sockets or because it is simply too small. Clearly these two issues impact on teaching and learning in significantly different ways and therefore generate very different priorities. We are also aware from moderation visits already undertaken that the A category has been interpreted too liberally and so must be rigorously moderated.
For these reasons a further survey of those schools with A and/or B category rooms is being carried out hence the forthcoming visit to your school.
Accessibility issues and the Disability & Discrimination Act
You will be receiving further guidance from us on accessibility, the Disability & Discrimination Act and the new legal requirements placed on schools. For the purposes of this exercise the surveyors will be checking each room for a number of access issues, but not all, but this will be explained to you during the course of the survey.
Longer term arrangements
Work is already underway to make the Asset Management Plan and related data held by the Education Department’s Planning & Buildings Section and NPS available to you electronically via ESINET.
As future LEA capital building programmes will be increasingly determined by the priorities arising from this and related data, we intend to use ESINET for you to see the funding criteria used, the outcome of each needs assessment and the consequent projects to receive support.
Questions?
If you have any questions or queries arising from this exercise, please contact Rob Crawford-Condie on (01603 222287 or preferably e-mail him at robert.crawford-condie.edu@norfolk.gov.uk