Agenda and draft minutes

1.            Mrs Game welcomed Select Committee Members and invited guests to the one year on reconvened meeting of the Pupil Premium Select Committee.  She invited Mr Gough to introduce his report.

2.            Mr Gough (Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Education) explained that this issue continued to be very topical.  Validated data would be available in January 2020 which would demonstrate the impact of the work done so far.  There were a number of overlaps between the work done following the publication of the Select Committee recommendations and work done across the Education Directorate.  

Recommendation 1

3.            James Roberts (Chief Executive, The Education People) explained that the key point in relation to Recommendation 1 was work with external communications groups.  Officers would provide information on the take up of the focus groups held with schools to better understand techniques and incentives that work best with families to promote registration. 

4.            In response to a question Mr Roberts would provide clarification on whether children with SEND had to register for Pupil Premium Funding (and Free School Meals).  A Member commented that some schools informed Members that they could register for Free School Meals and Pupil Premium Funding and Members discussed the cycle in deprived areas with little parental support at home and low adult literacy levels.  This should be considered by schools when communicating with families.  

Recommendation 2

5.            Following a discussion Officers would provide further information on the percentage of Kent schools that had identified a school governor to act as champion for all children in receipt of any type of Pupil Premium. 

Recommendation 3

6.            This was work in progress with the pilot project originally located in five Swale schools.  Officers were considering ways in which the project could be scaled up to have the biggest impact and how it could be best targeted.  Officers would provide further information on the pilot project in the five Swale schools including cost and experience of those schools. 

Recommendation 4

7.            The Directorate were reviewing the Transition Matters Framework and Toolkit, it was considered that the way in which the transition from primary to secondary school was handled was essential.

Recommendation 5

8.             Mr Gough commented on the comprehensive approach taken with the Clinical Commissioning Groups, he referred to work undertaken on the use of a nationally recognised framework supported by Marie Gascoigne.  This was part of Workstream 4 and was within the written statement of action. 

9.            Members discussed the difference in cost of prevention versus speech and language therapy once children are at school.  There were concerns that there was too much focus on the end product, it was important to tackle the issues but also important to look at ways of preventing the issues.  Keith Abbot explained that it was possible to access government grants for parenting courses and the option to adapt courses through adult education centres and family learning, however there were concerns about the engagement of hard to reach families, the ways in which the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 1.