I have had the pleasure of meeting with most of you in person this week. It has been great to start to put names to faces and to hear more from you about current successes and challenges. Thank you for also making the time to step out of school at a busy time of year to come to our conference today. In the face of proposed changes, it is more important than ever that we work as a local group of schools to co-construct a future that serves the communities of Camden in a joined-up way. I hope that today will be a great starting point for more discussions to come.

One constant motivator for all of us is to create opportunity for all pupils regardless of race or background. The evidence of systemic disadvantage experienced by Black, Asian and other UK minority communities can be seen in school achievement, exclusions, access to health services, health outcomes, job roles, experiences of the youth and criminal justice system… the list goes on. I was excited to meet with colleagues from Fleet, Torriano and Brecknock schools earlier this week to hear more about their hub plans to engage an external expert to lead workshops in this area, also early plans to produce a toolkit to support schools to be actively anti racist. There are many things to be proud of in Camden, not least the partnership working. School engagement with the Hubs programme is integral to us sharing good practice and innovating. I hope that you have signed up to those most relevant to your school. We will be feeding back on their impact against aims during meetings through the year.

We await to see the impact (if any) of today’s financial announcements on school budgets, and I know that despite energy price caps this continues to be a challenge. We will continue to share updates as we receive them. Thanks as always for everything that you are doing. Enjoy the weekend, believe it or not we are close to the end of September already.

Best wishes

Stephen

Stephen Hall

Chief Executive Officer, Camden Learning