Winter With Ease FINAL

WINTER
Implementing Effective Assessment
Oxford - Cheltenham - Maidstone
Charity Trustee Training
Cheltenham - Bristol - Birmingham
Stoke - London
Staff Wellbeing
Consultancy
Happy New Year
2017!
Seasonal news and updates from the team at Ease Training HQ

HAPPY NEW
_
YEAR!
Happy New Year from Ease Training! Welcome to our first newsletter
for 2017, ‘Winter with Ease’.
A New Year is always an exciting time. Within Education, there is a
fresh term to look forward to. Here at Ease Training, we are continuing
to address Primary Assessment and are keen to develop our
conferences over the following months. We are increasing our focus on
online safety within schools (both staff and pupils) - don’t miss a great
event on March 8th. Further exciting news is that we are running a
Staff Wellbeing event in May 2017. More information coming soon.
2017 is also going to be an exciting year for our Charity Trustee
Training. As the Charity Commission are becoming more regulatory
and less supportive, we are in the process of refining our course to
include data protection and to reflect the latest changes. Keep a look
out on our website for updates.
Thank you for your support of Ease Training, we hope to see you at
our 2017 events! Good luck with those New Years’ resolutions.
The Ease Team
www.easetraining.co.uk

CONSULTANCY
Implementing Effective Assessent, Oxford - 25th January
NEWS AND UPDATES ON OUR
TAILORED, CLIENT-SPECIFIC
CONSULTANCY
2016 has seen several major projects for
the Ease Training Team that have been fun,
challenging, and received excellent feedback. A
variety of projects has included a confidential
governance review for a large Multiple Academy
Trust (16 schools and growing), a flying school,
and a number of Academies, independent and
maintained schools. Our charities team has
delivered bespoke training to the Trustees of a
London based Education Research Charity and
to the Malvern Hill Conservators who have
kindly give us the testimonial below.
Please do contact us if you have any specific
project needs. Our ‘consultancy’ page outlines
the variety of projects we can undertake with
our team of experienced consultants. In the
first instance please contact Richard Levinge on
01242 698809 to discuss any need. We are very
adaptable and focus on delivering value to our
organisations based on their own culture and
needs, not simply offering general templates.
SECRETARY TO THE BOARD
Malvern Hills Conservators
“We were really pleased with the presentation that you did last night! I’d be very
pleased to recommend you to anyone else making enquiries about bespoke training
and would certainly use you again.”

EDUCATION NEWS
NEWS AND UPDATES FOR
SCHOOL HEADS, GOVERNORS
AND STAFF.
Our event programme in the first half of 2017 focusses on
three key areas, covering issues that reflect the common
themes from the feedback received in 2016.
Staff Wellbeing - There will be no teaching profession in
a few years time if retention figures remain so shocking.
So many talented people move away - Why? Our first Staff
Wellbeing event on May 19th is designed to start tackling
the reasons for this and to offer practical ways to help
staff.
Assessment - So much change has happened in this area.
There has been a lot of debate and not so much ‘How?’. In
our series, ‘Implementing Effective Assessment’, we focus
on ‘How’, with tips from a variety of experienced Heads
and Educationalists.
Digital Health - The toxic environment of the internet is
bringing challenges for teachers and pupils alike. How do
we help our pupils when they are more technically savvy
than we are? Our Digital Health event on Wednesday 8th
March 2017 will examine these issues.
Please do see our website for further details. We will be
announcing further topics soon.

CHARITY NEWS
THE LATEST ON CHARITY
TRUSTEE TRAINING - JOIN US
IN 2017!
The eye of the press has been all over charities
in 2016 following the issue of the Kids Company
report. The Charity Commission are very
concerned about the behaviours within charities
at both the strategic and tactical levels and have
moved their emphasis from advisory to regulatory
in a very short period of time. The training of
charity Trustees and Senior Managers has become
a very important part of this sector and we are
delighted to announce an expansion of our charity
trustee training events with opportunities to receive
training in Cheltenham, Bristol, Stoke (Newcastleunder-Lyme),
Birmingham and London in the first
six months of 2017. We will also be adding data
protection and cyber security to the training
modules from May as there are significant legal
changes in these approaching and the digital threat
is ever increasing.
Please come along as appropriate and spread the
word. You can find more details on our website and
it is easy to book online.

EASE LINKS: CYBER SECURITY
SKYLIGHT9 LIMITED
We are Skylight9 – digital marketing consultants who
work with Ease Training. Our clients’ cyber safety is
key to us, so we’ve put this article together to share
some tips and information on cyber security with
some practical actions to stay secure.
In 2016 there has been an exponential increase in
the reporting of cyber crime, data breaches and
ransomware attacks.
For your clients to be safe, your computer systems
should be fully protected. Protecting your network
and systems is similar to protecting one computer,
only on a larger scale. Your machine should be clean
at all times. The best defence against viruses, malware
and other online threats is installing the latest
security software, web browser and operating system.
Most software programs will automatically connect
and update to defend against known risks. Ensure that
automatic updates are turned on. Be sure to scan
any USB and new devices before they are attached to
the network.
A functional firewall blocks suspect sites and keeps
sensitive data in. Spam can carry malicious software
and phishing scams, some aimed directly at businesses.
A good spam filter blocks spam and makes your email
system safer. For the marketers of this world, some of
the spammy referral traffic you might see on Google
Analytics may just be ghost-spam – designed to skew
your figures rather than harm your site or collect
data. These can be filtered to give clean statistics
going forward.
LastPass is good protection for passwords. It
gives you tools to generate secure, non-guessable
passwords. It can be used to replace old passwords
with unique, randomly generated ones. The Beta
version will change a site’s password with one singleclick
and is currently available for Safari and Chrome.
LastPass cannot access your data because the new
password is encrypted locally.
A significant number of businesses and organisations
have been the victims of online crime or fraud. Most
online security problems were through hacking and
virus infections. Businesses are advised to execute
a ‘resilient’’ password policy and to train staff on
good security measures. They should implement and
test backup plans, information disposal and disaster
recovery procedures.
Have a cyber safe 2017.
Skylight9 can be contacted on email
info@skylight9.co.uk, Twitter @Skylight9ltd
or Facebook, Skylight9 Limited.

EASE LINKS: WELLBEING CONSULTANT
JANE ATTWOOD
Towards the end of the Autumn term, I noticed
a common theme in all the schools I visited:
“Christmas!” I hear you exclaim… Unfortunately
not. The commonality was a kind of mania – getting
through to the Christmas holiday. December in
Primary schools meant glitter, tinsel, nativities and
carols but these are now elements which have
to be squeezed in: assessment week has taken
over. The reds and greens of Christmas have been
outshone by the reds and greens of the online
tracker! Evenings are filled with analysing the data
and updating the online tracker whilst having one
eye fixed on next term’s topic planning...because ,
as we all know, the Christmas holiday is taken up
with family ( heaven forbid) and before we know it,
it is the January INSET day and back on the hamster
wheel.
But that’s okay, Christmas is always the full on, busy
time of year isn’t it? Next term will be calmer and
back to ‘normal’. Again, maybe in the ‘good old days’
but in the current education climate, there is no
calm term: each and every one of them is equally
manic. More and more colleagues from the teaching
profession are finding the job all consuming; they
struggle on; their personal lives taking a back seat to
the ever increasing demands of their role.
Is that what we really want for our children? Staff
who struggle on? Exhausted staff surely cannot
inspire the children as much as a fresh, fulfilled one. I
have always strongly believed that teachers need to
be so much more than just a teacher: they are role
models.
We need to take a step back and assess the
current situation ( without entering the outcomes
into the tracking system!) Our school staff need
looking after: they need to be persuaded that it is
okay to ask for support; okay to take a step back;
okay to enjoy the learning experience with the
pupils in their care. We need to indulge personal
development and focus on staff’s resilience and selfcare.
Nearly one in ten teachers left the profession last
year – the highest proportion for a decade – and
almost a quarter of teachers now leave within three
years.
A point to note is that ‘stressed’ is ‘desserts’ spelled
backwards, and maybe, just maybe, stressed out staff
is our ‘ just desserts’ for the educational pressures
our schools are under…
Jane will be speaking on 19th May 2017 at
Ease Training’s Staff Wellbeing Event.

FORTHCOMING EVENTS
CHARITY TRUSTEE TRAINING - BRISTOL
Wenesday 11th January 2016, Veale Wasbrough Vizards, Bristol
IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE ASSESSMENT - OXFORD
Wednesday 25th January 2017, Kings Centre, Oxford
CHARITY TRUSTEE TRAINING - LONDON
Tuesday 31st January 2017, Charles Russell Speechlys, 5 Fleet Place, London
CHARITY TRUSTEE TRAINING - CHELTENHAM
Tuesday 7th February 2017, Charles Russell Speechlys, Cheltenham
IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE ASSESSMENT - GLOUCESTERSHIRE
Friday 24th February 2017, Hatherley Manor Hotel, Gloucestershire
IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE ASSESSMENT - MAIDSTONE
Friday 3rd March 2017, The Village Hotel, Maidstone
A HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO DIGITAL HEALTH IN SCHOOLS
Wednesday 8th March 2017, Cheltenham College, Bath Road, Cheltenham
CHARITY TRUSTEE TRAINING - STOKE
Thursday 9th March 2017, Knights Professional Services, Newcastle-under-Lyme
A BAD DAY AT SCHOOL
Wednesday 15th March 2017, Bolton School, Chorley New Road, Bolton
CHARITY TRUSTEE TRAINING - BIRMINGHAM
Wednesday 29th March 2017, Brewin Dolphin Ltd, Birmingham
STAFF WELLBEING EVENT
Friday 19th May 2017, venue to be confirmed

A HAPPY
_
NEW YEAR
We would like to leave you with some positivity for 2017, so here is our
New Year’s Resolution and our best ‘Christmas Cracker’ joke!
New Year’s Resolution:
To keep in touch with previous delegates, continue to meet lots of new
faces, build on previous feedback and facilitate many relevant, practical,
value-for-money events in 2017.
Best Christmas Cracker Joke:
Why did Rudolph cross the road?
Because he was tied to the chicken!
#TrainWithEase
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