The Central Line
Forthcoming events and news
Autumn Term 2024
Welcome to The Central Line, our DET Professional Services Team update.
This is our second termly document providing updates, reminders, advance notice of activities where we will be requesting responses from schools and any other useful news. We have added key contact details under each section but if you would like to discuss any aspect of the items included or have feedback please get in touch at drane.s@det.org.uk
Admissions
The autumn term begins with a hive of activity, with new starters settling into Reception, Year 7 and Year 12 and all schools holding open sessions and tours for prospective families. Full details (including Sixth Form application deadlines) are on the school websites. Dates for primary school tours will be published early in Autumn term. Open Sessions and tours will be arranged within the schools and staff will be provided with information through your usual staff calendars/ briefings as appropriate.
Secondary transfer talks have been provided at the primary schools with advice to families applying for secondary school for September 2025 entry. Advice to all staff who are parents of children currently in Year 6 or due to start primary school in September 2025 is to get as much information as possible about schools you are interested in (including how previous offers were made), attend open sessions and find out whether a Supplementary Information Form (SIF) is needed.
The application (Common Application Form (CAF) is available from your home Local Authority and the deadline to apply for September 2025 entry for Year 7 is 31 October 2024 and for Reception is 15 January 2025. If you have any questions or would like advice about the process, please do not hesitate to contact Jason White or one of the Admissions Leads in our schools.
The Trust’s Admissions Working Group will meet in the first half of the Autumn term to discuss admissions and plan any consultations to the school’s admissions policies where necessary. The Dunraven School Admission Banding test for Y7 entry will take place on Saturday 16 November 2024. Further information will be shared with staff at the school nearer the time. Later in the term, the true business of Admissions begins with the processing of thousands of applications in
collaboration with the Local Authority.
A reminder that all of our school’s admissions policies include Children of staff in School Policy as one of the priority admissions criteria. For your application to be eligible for admission under this priority criteria you will need:
• to be employed by Dunraven Educational Trust for a minimum of 0.6fte (21 hours support staff / 16.5 hours teaching staff); and
• to be employed at the school to which you are applying for your child for at least 3 years at the time of submitting your application; or
• have been recruited to fill a vacant post at the school for which there is a demonstrable skill shortage
Please read your school’s admissions policy for the full details.
If you have any questions regarding Admissions please contact Jason White at white.j@det.org.uk
Facilities
Reminder - Head Teachers and Premises Managers to look at their Judicium Portals and update the H&S Audit action plans,due to the upcoming H&S Audits happening towards the end of term.
If you are planning any activities in schools particularly during half term please let your facilities site lead know as early as possible to avoid any clashes with planned works much of which are undertaken when pupils, students and staff are off site.
If you have any questions regarding Facilities including Health & Safety please contact: gray.g@det.org.uk
Media
The Trust Summer term newsletter was published during the last week of the summer term. Any contributions to the Autumn newsletter are welcome early, otherwise the deadline for submission will be issued after the Oct half term.
Please do check the recently updated DET website for Trust updates and future newsletters.
All school websites are currently being standardised across the trust where possible, with the current priority being Policies. We ask the schools to ensure the required School Based Policies are displayed in the correct locations on the websites (where required) and that all live policies are kept up to date. This is especially relevant this time of year when prospective families will be looking at the website in detail in preparation for upcoming Open Sessions.
The next CMS Teams meeting will be Wednesday 2nd October. Going forward this will be primarily for Administrators but all Team Users are welcome if they would like to attend.
If you have any questions regarding Media contact: lovell.h@det.org.uk
Infrastructure upgrades
We are continuing to work with RM to update the wireless infrastructure across the school sites. The expectation is that this upgrade will improve wireless capability. We will be liaising with Head Teachers regarding associated works and timescales in individual schools.
As part of our Electronic Communications approach, we will be rolling out laptops to staff as confirmed by Head Teachers in September 2024. Those staff in receipt of a laptop will be required to complete a loan agreement confirming the return of the laptop when colleagues eventually leave their roles. The signed loan agreements will be held on the HR system.
Updates from RM
Data Cleanup - can all colleagues please review their home and shared drives to remove any data that is no longer required. This will help us to maintain the network and reduce the load on the backups
Email Tidy - Please can colleagues review emails and consider if they are still required. Please delete all emails which are not required, in addition to managing storage requirements.
Please be aware that if new accounts for staff and students are required before their start dateearly provisioning will be required. Please contact RM for this to be actioned, otherwise users will be created 24 hours after their start date based upon the user provisioning system implemented at each school.
Rapid Response will shortly be deployed across the Trust. This is a proactive method of raising a case with RM and contacting an engineer directly to help resolve issues at the first contact point. More details will be shared on usage when the system is implemented.
If you have any questions about the ICT please speak to your on site RM technician or contact Shirley Drane: drane.s@det.org.uk
Payroll and Finance
Payroll
Teaching Colleagues may be aware that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced the Government’s intention to accept the 5.5% uplift in pay and allowances for 2024-25. This decision is subject to Parliamentary approval in the Autumn and locally this will also require approval by the Trust Board. It is therefore anticipated that this uplift will be paid in either the November or December payroll, backdated to 1 September 2024. We will notify Headteachers of the timing of payments for each school when this is confirmed for them to update colleagues in staff briefing meetings.
For colleagues who are on NJC terms and conditions (Green Book) agreement has not been reached nationally at the time of writing. When agreement is reached the same Trust Board approval will be required. The uplift will be backdated to 1 April 2024 and again Headteachers will be briefed on the timing of payments.
Please address any payroll related queries to payrollandpensions@det.org.uk
This is different to the email address payslips are sent from - please do not reply to the payslip address
A reminder that colleagues who contribute to a pension scheme can registered for an online account to access the pension statement and other details relevant to your pension benefits. Please find below links to your respective pension providers, and If you require any assistance with this, please don’t hesitate to contact us on payrollandpensions@det.org.uk
Teachers Pensions https://www.teacherspensions.co.uk/forms/ registration.aspx
Support Staff at Elmgreen & Rosendale https://pensions.lambeth.gov.uk/home/
Support Staff at Dunraven & Van Gogh https://pensionssharedservice.org.uk/
Support Staff at Goldfinch https://mss.pensionssharedservice.org.uk/ home/non-member/thinking-of-joining.html
Overtime claims
Please submit your approved overtime claims to payroll within the first week of the following month. Any unreasonable delay in submitting your approved claims could lead to payments being delayed or non-payment in some cases.
Finance
In line with the Trust financial procedures, all orders for goods and services should be raised and processed through the PSF purchasing Portal. If you would like to raise an order, please liaise with your Head of department and they will direct you to your department requisitioner.
The Trust currently operates with multiple payment options i.e., direct bank, credit card and prepaid cash cards. This means that staff need not use their own money to pay for goods or services which is subsequently claimed as an expense claim; this is a practice which we discourage because it is expensive to administer and can result in an inability to reclaim VAT thus increasing costs. If you require any assistance with placing an order for goods or services or a payment to a supplier, please enquire with the finance team.
With a latest upgrade to the PSF purchasing portal, the budget holders will soon be able to access their Budget reports detailing any spend to date. We will be sharing further information with you on this in the coming weeks.
Local income Management & School Trips Financial Planning
We will soon be sharing some detailed notes to assist the schools with the management of the local Income collection leading to us being able to demonstrate robust internal controls, the guidance will also include a section on the financial planning of the school trips and events.
If you require any further information regarding the above or you have a finance related query, please contact us at finance@det.org.uk and we will be happy to assist you further.
Operations
General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR)
GDPR Annual Audits scheduled for Nov 2024 with Judicium. Please support your school GDPR Lead in preparation for this audit.
Please continue to report any data breaches immediately to your GDPR Lead and also remember to consider any new systems that hold personal data must have a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) completed on file for compliance.
Procurement news:
New VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) telephone systems will be introduced following the completion of the RM infrastructure upgrades. Installation update to follow via Headteacher briefings.
DET Mobile Phones:
Please remember to only use school mobiles for ALL school related business (unless using the school landline) eg phoning parents, school trips, sports days, theatre productions, taking and sharing images via send the image to G -Drive. For school trips abroad roaming is automatically set.
Future Contracts and Tenders:
We will be conducting tender processes through 2024-25 in the following:Uniform Catering Cleaning Reprographics
If you have any questions regarding Operations contact: fisher.a@det.org.uk
Every
A reminder to all staff that the Trust Board and Local Governing Boards are continuing to review and approve policies. Please can you ensure that all policies which are shared via the Every portal are read.
From time to time policies are loaded to Every as a reference document, staff are not required to read these documents and confirm but can access them if required.
E-learning training modules are allocated to staff either because they have been mandated by the Trust Board or identified locally by your Headteacher as being relevant for individual responsibilities.
If you have any questions regarding Every contact: greenwood.s@det.org.uk
Governance
The Governance Meeting Schedule for 2024-25 academic year has been approved and details for each school’s Local Governing Board (LGB) meetings should be available through your school’s calendar/schedule.
The revised and approved Scheme of Delegation and Financial Scheme of Delegation are now available for all staff to view via EVERY. These documents set out the responsibility and accountability within the Trust and where decisions are made.
We said farewell to some of our governors at the end of term and look forward to welcoming a number of new governors this term. Mark Riddaway takes over as Chair of the LGB at Dunraven School and Wil Thursfield joins as Chair of the LGB at The Elmgreen School. The Governance section on each of the school’s websites have been updated over the summer holidays and you can see the members of your school’s LGB on the website and details of the Trust Board on the DET website. We will also share any changes to your governing board through the school’s staff briefings at the start of term.
A reminder that the staff governor’s role is not that of a representative for their Local Governing Board or staff. If staff have any requests for information from the Trust or from your school’s Local Governing Board (including requests for meeting minutes) these should come through the Clerk who can be reached via governance@det. org.uk.
The Safeguarding & Child Protection Policies for the school’s for 2024-25 are currently being approved by each school’s LGB and will be distributed to staff to read via EVERY as soon as they are approved in the Autumn term.
If you have any questions regarding Governance contact: governance@det.org.uk
Phoenix Lettings
Phoenix had a great 2023-24 year in terms of the steady growth in lettings across all our schools. The Phoenix Lettings purpose is to make charitable donations to each of the schools by utilising school buildings when they are not used for teaching and learning. We can all help to continue this growth by spreading the Phoenix word as most of our business comes from ‘word of mouth’.
As we enter the 2024-25 academic year a reminder to staff to please share dates of all school events that might impact an existing hirer with Phoenix. This includes evenings, weekends and during the school holidays.
We are creating further pages on the Phoenix website to entice the world of film production in our fabulous school settings. Also we are creating a page for our students’ parents to see who hires our venues and their contact details in case you are interested.
If you have any questions regarding Phoenix contact: phoenix@det.org.uk
Website: www.phoenixfxs.org.uk
Human Resources
DET Self-Service Portal
The DET Self-Service Portal is now live and accessible for all colleagues. The portal enables colleagues to access information such as their payslips, P60s, personal information and emergency contact details at any point during the day.
Please contact the HR team if there are any queries about the contractual details held on the portal (HR@DET.org.uk). Alternatively, please contact the payroll team at payrollandpensions@ det.org.uk if there are any questions about pay or P60s. We are in the process of discussing the next areas we can add to the portal over the next few months and will provide further information via Headteachers for staff briefings.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Data Capture
All colleagues across the Trust should have received an email asking them to complete an EDI form at the end of last term. The EDI form captures information about religion, disability, ethnicity and sexual orientation. It’s important that the Trust captures this information to monitor trends but to also drive fairness and equity across all of the school and central team.
The information captured within the form will be kept strictly confidential. However, colleagues will have the option to state ‘prefer not to say’ if they would not like to share their data.
If you haven’t already, please complete a copy of this form as soon as possible. Alternatively, please contact the HR team at HR@det.org.uk if you are having any difficulties completing this form.
Family Friendly Policy Consultation
Last term we wrote to all employees to advise them of a consultation around the proposed changes to maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental leave across the Trust. The consultation ran from 8 July - 22 July 2024 All comments have been shared with Trustees
who have approved the final version of the policy. This policy is for all employees across the organisation, and can be found on the Every platform. Please ensure you have read and familiarise yourself with this new policy.
DSE Assessments
The Trust ran DSE training at the end of last term for key members of staff within each school and the central office. DSE stands for Display, Screen Equipment, and the training is focused on how to assess colleagues who may need their work station set up or readjusted.
All employees will have access to the DSE training online which can be accessed via Every. The DSE training is designed for more niche situations where an assessment may be needed. This includes colleagues who may be pregnant or employees who have severe back issues.
Please contact your school admin office or the HR team if you feel you may need an assessment.
Appraisals
Appraisals will take place during the Autumn term. All employees (teaching and non teaching) should receive an appraisal this term unless this have been otherwise communicated. This is with the exception of a few colleagues who are due to increment in April.
Feedback from appraisals should be shared with the HR team as soon as possible to ensure this can be processed without delay. Please contact your HR Business Partner if you have any questions about the process.
If you have any questions regarding HR contact: HR@det.org.uk