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National Committees
Dates of forthcoming National Committee meetings to be announced as soon as they become available.
The All Party Parliamentary Group on Play (APPG)
The next meeting (and AGM) is due to take place on 25 November at House of Commons. We have invited ministers to speak on the upcoming play strategy but have not had confirmation yet. We have also invited the head of a primary school in London to talk about how they have used play to revitalise a failing school, attract funding and act as a focus for community building.
The Playwork Education & Training Council - UK (PETC)
Chris Martin writes..
This was an extremely busy meeting. We had updates on the National Skills Academy, Children’s Plan playwork initiatives and Playwork People 3. We discussed increasing employer input on PETC England, monitoring Quality Training , Quality Play, and had presentations from Julie Hathaway from Kids and Denise Blackwell from Ofsted. We had invited guests for the Ofsted presentations and I had previously collected a wide range of issues which I had sent to Denise prior to the meeting. The meeting was very encouraging in terms of the role playwork settings were expected to play in the Early Years Foundation Stage. There does seem to be a gulf however in what is being said at a national level and the experiences of playwork settings on the ground.
About PETC
SkillsActive is committed to improving the quality and range of play opportunities for children and young people through the support and development of education, training and qualifications for the Playwork workforce. To achieve this, SkillsActive consults and works in partnership with a wide range of relevant organisations and agencies throughout the UK.
The Playwork Education and Training Council for the UK, PETC.UK, is a forum for the sector to discuss issues of strategic importance on all aspects of playwork education, training and qualifications in the UK. It makes recommendations to the Sector Council of SkillsActive and the SkillsActive Playwork Unit on decisions affecting Playwork across the four nations.
SkillsActive Playwork West Midlands is a member of this forum and disseminates information to the nine regions of England as appropriate.
Playwork Awarding Bodies Forum (PABF)
Playwork Higher Education Committee (PHEC)
Lesley Godfrey writes..
The Playwork Higher Education Committee met on 23 October 2008 and, while attendance was low, discussed a wide range of initiatives currently impacting on Playwork higher education. The committee has requested that a review of their function is undertaken as part of the graduate research programme in order that they might contribute in a more strategic way to the development of Playwork higher education.
The Playwork Graduate Research Steering Group, convened by CWDC, approved the desk-based research on 6 Oct. and the second phase of the research programme is now underway. I acted as scribe for the East and Y&H regional focus groups, and will do so for the last two events (NE and SE regions). Charlotte Pace is facilitating these events and Jonathan, who is leading on this work, has acted as scribe for the other 5 regions. The list of contacts with whom we will be conducting in-depth interviews has been drawn up, and we are awaiting feedback from CWDC on the interview schedule before these take place.
Playwork National Occupational Standards Committee (PNOSC)
Dawn Newton writes..
A very busy meeting with a full agenda. Further work done on the development of guidelines about appropriate qualifications for Ofsted Inspectors – Meynell is taking this work forward with input from the National team.
Level 4 Disability unit – although complete was too late to go forward for incremental change this year. The process of accreditation is time consuming and costly for Awarding Bodies – hopefully will go through next incremental change towards the end of 2009.
A new date has been set for Common Core mapping - 19th November in the Auditorium 10am-4pm.
Further discussions re EYFS took place – the committee was informed that Chris Martin is writing a briefing paper.
Centres are having problems accessing Train to Gain funding- the process is very complicated.
The Birmingham Playwork NVQ Conference will be held in Eastbourne on the 3rd and 4th March 2009.
Next meeting 11 December.
2 days at Diploma in Management training.
