Bryan Slater Director of Education	Distribution
	To the Headteachers of all Norfolk LEA Schools

The attached document is provided for your information:

INFORMATION	Title	National Survey of Schools’ Views of their LEA, 2004
	Summary of contents	Letter from Bryan Slater informing schools that the LEA is working with the Audit Commission and Ofsted on the second national survey of schools during the Summer 2004. The survey will be open from 24^th May to 28^th June 2004. Further information will be sent to you nearer to the start of the survey including a paper version as suggested by Headteacher colleagues on the LEA Improvement Partnership Group.
	Associated documents	None
	Date	30^th April 2004
	Effective from	24^th May to 28^th June 2004
	LEA Contact	Janine Birt	(	01603 223905
	E-mail address	janine.birt@norfolk.gov.uk
	Document reference	MI 96/04

national survey of schools’ views of their LEA, 2004

This is to let you know that Norfolk LEA is working with the Audit Commission and Ofsted on the third national survey of schools of their LEA in summer 2004.

Why?

The aim is to collect information on your views of the services and support provided, or procured for schools, by Norfolk LEA, that is, the whole council, not just the Education Service. I believe this is an important opportunity to identify services which can be improved as well as those which are performing well. The information is intended to help the LEA’s process of self-evaluation, but it will also be used for future inspections by Ofsted and the Audit Commission of Norfolk and will allow us to compare our schools’ views of our services with those of schools in other LEAs. I hope that combining the needs of several stakeholders in this way will help to reduce the number of surveys schools are asked to fill in.

The information you provide will be confidential to the Audit Commission. Unless you give permission for your school to be identified to us, your responses will be kept anonymous and we will receive only aggregated information on our schools’ views from the Audit Commission. This information will be a key source of feedback about our support for schools and will be taken into account in reviewing our services this year.

When?

The survey will be open during the five weeks from: 24^th May to 28^th June 2004.

We will send you further information nearer the start of the survey including a paper version as suggested by Headteacher colleagues on the LEA Improvement Partnership Group. The results will be available in the Autumn term 2004, when we will report back to schools.

How?

The survey form will be made available on the internet at:

www.audit-commission.gov.uk/schoolsurvey

During this time, you will be able to access the survey from any computer using your LEA and school DfES numbers. The website will provide full instructions for completing and submitting the survey directly to the Audit Commission. If you have any problems gaining access to the internet, please contact Janine Birt or email schoolsurvey-help@audit-commission.gov.uk for advice.

I hope you will take this opportunity to contribute your views by completing the questionnaire; it is vital that as many schools as possible participate. Last year the response rate from Norfolk schools was disappointing at only 39%. The previous year it had been 66%. We hope even more of you will participate this year so that we get a really good and representative view of LEA services from as many of you as possible.

If you have any queries, please contact Janine Birt (tel: 01603 223905; email: janine.birt@norfolk.gov.uk ).

Yours sincerely,

Bryan Slater

Director of Education