Learning Plus UK’s 2013 Annual Summit was a tremendous success with people from around the South East descending on the NCVO headquarters in London to find out where the 16-19 sector is heading to next.

More than 40 delegates took part in the day’s workshops and heard from leading experts in the field, covering a multitude of subjects – including funding formulas and the role of transition workers to support the raising of the participation age.

That particular workshop was led by Peter Devereux and Dr Steve Lambert, who both work for local authorities in Berkshire. As we all know, the raising of the participation age (RPA) to 18 by 2015 is a key part of the Government’s education reforms and will affect everyone in the sector.

The local authorities in Berkshire have been through the Department for Education’s RPA trials, and have looked at the all the models of transition support, which are available for young people. Their workshop looked at all the various models and the impact they could have on participation.

ALIS project manager, Dr Robert Clark, led a workshop on how to interpret and use the ALIS information in a fair and reliable manager. Dr Clark also raised the pertinent question of whether the average GCSE score is always a reliable baseline, which I’m sure some of you have very strong feelings about!

One of our associates, Camilla Antrobus, along with Catherine Egleton led a workshop on how to survive the new Ofsted framework. This was based on the experiences of both a school with a sixth form attached and a separate sixth college, both of which have been recently inspected under the new framework. Both were judged as outstanding and had plenty to say about the new system.

There were also plenty of opportunities for networking and everyone enjoyed the chance to quiz leading policy makers, such as Linda Rose, from the Department for Education’s 16-19 accountability team and Alan Parnum, from the Education Funding Agency.

Among the feedback from the people who attended were comments like “fantastic, reflective and food for thought” and that it was “well worth attending”.

Everyone certainly enjoyed the event and you will be pleased to know that preparations are already underway for the 2014 annual summit, which will again be held in London.

There was also a workshop on our new online Post-16 LPUK Datadsahboard, which gave an overview of its new features. The workshop also prompted a lively discussion about how our Datadashboard can be developed even further.

The newly updated Datadashboard brings together all the performance information from the Ofsted-recognised national datasets, including L3 VA, so colleges and education establishments can compare themselves to local and national levels.

To identify strengths and weaknesses, data can be broken down by gender, value added and retention.

It allows users to create “curriculum heatmaps”, so subject performance can be analysed for the appropriate year or can cover a three-year trend.

We will be holding webinars and regional professional developments on the new Datadashboard over the coming weeks. To find out more, look at the demo on the website, http://www.learningplusuk.org/products/lpuk-datadashboard or email: datadashboard@learningplusuk.org