How would you like new classroom chairs with a warranty which lasts until 2036?

How much could your organisation save? With a TWENTY year warranty there’ll be no maintenance or replacement costs for twenty years… Think how much that will improve your furniture budget!

The Postura Plus range of chairs has been designed not only to be good looking and extremely durable (hence the 20 year warranty) but also to encourage good posture for your students, as well as being easy to stack and move from room to room if necessary.

Postura Plus chairs are used successfully in thousands of UK schools, often just as a trial in one classroom and then being “rolled out” throughout the school as funds allow.

Postura Plus chairs are available in a range of 15 attractive colours and six sizes for ages four years upwards. The TWENTY year warranty (and its associated benefits) means that these chairs are likely to be one of the best investments that a school or college could ever make.

Further information about Postura Plus chairs including very competitive pricing may be found at:

www.centraleducational.co.uk/classroom-postura%20plus.html

 Central Educational Supplies Ltd.,   PO Box 999, London E14 6SH 

You can contact them by email: info@centraleducational.co.uk or phone on: 020 7515 1797
Ask for Martin Evans who will be pleased to assist.

The Arab-Israeli Conflict and Recent Upheavals in the Middle East

!cid_part1_06FC4325_0EE1931B@hamilton-house

Both Sides of the Story

by  Muslim and  Jewish speakers

Much is happening in the Middle East which raises many questions. Our talks endeavour to address these issues. For example: would the upheaval and violence in so many countries be eliminated by an Israel-Palestinian peace?  What can halt the Syrian civil war? Is Israel to blame? What is ‘occupied territory’?  What are ‘settlements’? What is being done to help the Palestinian refugees  in their camps? Are we (the West) supporting the moderate Palestinians enough? When will the Palestinians have the opportunity for democratic elections?

In addition, talks can be requested which give a historical, political or religious perspective of the current situation and show the varying opinions of the two sides, and between fifty years ago and today.

Talks can be requested on any relevant alternative subject, for example: the Balfour Declaration, the British Mandate, Walls/Security barriers around the world, Refugees, Habitation of Palestine.

The talks are given by two speakers together, a Muslim and a Jew, who explore all issues with honesty and give both sides of the story.

Where distance makes visits to schools difficult, we would be happy to work with you to give a talk via video conferencing.

Cost: Travel costs (train or car mileage) plus a voluntary donation towards other expenses.

Please contact us with any queries, for further details, or to book a talk.

Looking forward to hearing from you

Ruth Camay

Preventing hate crime: free equality workshops for teachers and senior school managers

Learning to respect one another is a significant aspect of children’s education, and the government has recently acknowledged, in the hate crime action plan 2016, that schools have a vital role to play in reducing hate crime in society.

But there is a problem.  Although schools have statutory obligations under the Equality Act 2010, information from the Department for Education and from the Equality and Human Rights Commission is not readily accessible and may appear conflicting.

As a result it is fair to say that many schools are unclear about the Protected Characteristics covered by the Equality Act and about the requirements of the Public Sector Equality Duty.

With this in mind, CSIE is offering a series of FREE equality workshops throughout the country in autumn 2016, supported by Barclays Bank and The Ben Cohen StandUp Foundation.

Over and above helping schools fulfil their legal duties, these are practical, “hands on” workshops designed to be engaging and constructive.

The workshops are framed around CSIE’s award-winning guide Equality: Making It Happen, a succinct and user-friendly set of reference cards to help schools reduce bullying, address prejudice and promote equality holistically.

The guide offers simple and practical advice, as well as links to sources of further information and support. We know of no other initiative addressing all aspects of equality in schools in such an effective and user-friendly way. It will take a long time for our new guide to make an impact on the lives of all pupils in all schools, but for those that it reaches the effect can be decisive.

Each workshop will address what more schools can do to ensure that: a) all pupils are safe, included and learning; and b) the school is fully compliant with the requirements of the Equality Act 2010.

The free workshops will address equality in the context of current challenges in education and provide an overview of the Equality Act 2010 in order to help schools ensure they are fully compliant with the Public Sector Equality Duty.

Within the free workshop we will discuss ways of welcoming pupils, staff and visitors in all their diversity, present a range of strategies for addressing prejudice and promoting equality, and help participants develop confidence and language for addressing sensitive equality issues.

This event will provide simple and practical advice for reducing all forms of prejudice-based bullying; it will consider real-life examples (participants are encouraged to bring their own examples of equality challenges in school) and assist in developing a context-specific framework for change.

Who should attend:

The workshops have been designed for primary and secondary school teachers, inclusion managers, pastoral support leaders, senior leaders and governors who care about equality and want to reduce all forms of prejudice-based bulling and discrimination in school. Workshops will also be of interest to equality champions outside schools, for example academy chain or local authority officers and voluntary sector organisations working to promote equality in education.

Cost:

All workshops are free to attend but places are limited and must be booked in advance. These events have been subsidised by Barclays Bank and The Ben Cohen StandUp Foundation, to both of whom CSIE remains grateful.

Feedback from previous CSIE equality workshops:

“Great!”

“Inspiring.”

“Eloquent and informative.”

“A lot of very practical and very useful information.”

“Excellent content and awareness of legal framework.”

Free workshops have been scheduled to take place in Bristol, Norfolk, Leicester and Reading.  More workshops will be announced in other locations soon.  For more information, or to book your place, please visit www.csie.org.uk/about/training.shtml.

If you want to find out more about these free workshops or about Equality: Making It Happen, or if you have any questions or queries at all, please call 0117 353 3150 or email admin@csie.org.uk.  We look forward to hearing from you and meeting you at one of our workshops.

Artemi Sakellariadis
Director, CSIE

How can schools create a manageable computing journey at Key Stage 2 when there are so many free tools to use?

In the run up to the launch of the new computing curriculum, as well as after it was phased in, there was a collective intake of breath from teachers up and down the country as they absorbed what it all meant.

For many teachers the notion of writing and debugging programs or explaining simple algorithms was well beyond their every-day experience and certainly not in their training.

Fortunately at the time there was already a string of free web based tools out there to use and a couple of these have proved really successful like Scratch from MIT & Daisy the Dinosaur.

Thankfully, it also seems sometimes that many children tend to be a little more fearless with technology – a strength when it comes to Computing!

With all the free tools that some school enthusiasts started to champion it soon became apparent that while they were free there was little if any support or influence on how products developed – how could there be if the tool was free?

The result for some schools has been a bird’s nest of logins for different tools, varying user interfaces, unreliable work saving and patchy levels of school service. Factors like these undermine teacher confidence who just want it to work. Schools love saving money but when the cost is not having a reliable learning environment then its surely too high.

The mission at Blippit has been to get key elements of the computing curriculum under one roof and to help develop curious learners through authentic learning – even to the point of publishing apps (with the teacher’s approval) on our free app store, Planet Blippit.

Blippit IO, through its powerfully simple tools, opens the door to computational thinking, logical reasoning and unexpectedly – writing.  You can use our templates or just create your own.

To try Blippit IO for your school just visit us here and if you decide that Blippit IO would serve your schools needs you can upgrade here.

If you have any questions or queries about Blippit IO please do call 01772 657 100 or email support@blippit.co.uk  John Bidder