Issue - meetings

(Verbal report by Mr G Cooke, Deputy Cabinet Member, Resources Capital Programme and Infrastructure, Mr K Abbott, Director, Resources and Planning Group and Mr G Ward, Director, Capital and Infrastructure Group)

(1)         The Chairman asked Mr Cooke to give his verbal update.  Mr Cooke advised the Committee of the visits he and the other Deputy Cabinet Members had made to various Kent primary and secondary schools, including schools that were part of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF), moving into special measures or struggling.  He stated that he had visited primary schools that had a great need but with a limited primary capital programme.  He felt that there was a missed opportunity as there seemed to be an unlimited resource in BSF.  The work of BSF was understood but the work with children began with early years and at primary school, through the quality of the teachers.  He took the opportunity to advise that Ms Andrea Chapman Headteacher of Lydd Primary School had been reinstated.   The Committee agreed that a letter being sent to Ms Chapman regarding her reinstatement.

(2)         Mr Cooke then spoke on school admissions and advised that 94% of primary and secondary school children had been offered a school of their choice and 80% were going to their first school of choice. 

(3)         Mr Abbott referred to the three Department of Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) publications that were published in March 2010 for consultation, in particular publication 1 - School Funding and publication 2 - The Distribution of School Funding, which he felt would be tricky to respond to as the closing date for comments was a month after the date of the general election and he felt that the outcome of the general election would effect what was in some of the proposals. He stated that there was more concern with the consultation on the Distribution of School Funding as the DCSF was looking to change the methodology and how it effectively distributed the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) between the English local authorities at the same time looking to no longer allocate specific grants and mainstreaming them by taking the grants and adding them into the DSG so that there was more flexibility in spending the money and less ring fencing.  This authority had always pushed for this but there was concern about the national redistribution of schools funding that happened at the same time as mainstream specific grants as Kent schools always lost out on both counts in terms of the national distribution as they tended to move away from the South and South East and if the specific grants were included they would be caught up in this process. This would be closely monitored.  Mr Abbott added that the papers set out the five key items that the DCSF wanted to base the distribution on, there was no indication in the proposals as to the proportion that those five elements made up the distribution, so it would be difficult to gauge a  ...  view the full minutes text for item 25