Based at the University of Bristol Graduate School of Education, the Document Summary Service provides a much valued briefing service for headteachers, governors, inspectors, local education authority officers and many others involved in education and schooling.
Historically, it began as a response to the proliferating green papers, white papers, circulars, guidance and consultation documents which emerged from government departments as a result of the major changes in education flowing from the 1988 Education Reform Act.
Today the Service continues to provide regular mailings (either in hardcopy or electronic form) of high quality, technical summaries, covering key documents issued by such bodies as the Department for Children, Schools and Families, the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency, and Ofsted. The summaries contain details of where to obtain the full documents, as well as web page addresses to allow easy access to the electronic version.
Over 70 Local Authorities and hundreds of maintained and independent sector schools, as well as many national bodies, education libraries and independent consultants currently subscribe to the Service.
As well as being a very cost-effective aid to general staff development, subscribers have told us that they find the summaries invaluable in:
The selection of documents to be summarised is made on the basis of those which are of key importance and which will most support headteachers and their governing bodies in the daily tasks of running an effective school.
The average length of summaries is two sides of A4, or less, but this may be increased for exceptionally long or complicated documents.
Regular mail shots containing four or five summaries of recently issued documents are despatched to subscribers every three or four weeks. Subscription fees are related to the size of your organisation and the extent to which you intend to distribute the summaries.
You can have a FREE TRIAL of the Document Summary Service.
