Agenda item

(Report by Mrs R Turner Managing Director and Mrs S Hohler, Cabinet Member for Children Education and Families)

(Mrs P Harris, Head of Service – Advisory Service Kent, and Mrs J Whittle were present for this item)

(1)         The Chairman advised the Committee that he felt that the content of the report was the basis of the Committee’s function.  There were 2000 teachers in Kent and it was the Committee’s responsibility to measure the outcomes of their teaching. This meant having confidence to rely on Mrs Harris and her Team for data and for them to submit items for Members to celebrate achievements when appropriate and to scrutinise when necessary.

(2)         Mrs Harris explained that her role was to oversee that work had been undertaken to look at how best to share the headlines, vast validated data and national data on primary and secondary schools.  It was suggested that for the new cycle the new area would be the priorities of the Department.  Other suggested options were; identifying primary schools that were not achieving, Secondary schools in the National Challenge Programme and children receiving free school meals.  It was possible to look at the impact during the summer months, as well as sending the Committee regular summaries of OFSTED outcomes, this information could be sent to Members between meetings.

(3)         Mrs Whittle reminded the Committee that any request for confidential information would need to be held in closed session or instigate a Member Monitoring Group.

(4)         Mr Vye referred to a document sent to a Cabinet meeting that detailed trends and suggested that there needed to be data of at least 5 years to view trends, although he did find the information in the report valuable and asked that Members receive the data/information in the same format as in the Cabinet papers and requested that the number of schools on special measures be included in the report.  Mrs Harris explained that there were 3 Primary Schools that were on special measures, Bellwood Primary, Maidstone, Milton Court Primary, Sittingbourne and St Georges Primary, Wilmington Enterprise College.

(5)         Mr Vye referred the Directorate staff restructuring with the loss of 65 back office staff in the Learning Group.  He felt that in order for the front line staff to operate there was a need for back room staff.  He sought assurance that the same level of staff would remain in the schools.

(6)         Mr Vye declared an interest advising that he was the Chair of Governors at a Canterbury School that was not reaching the floor target even with very good leadership and teaching and asked what more could be done.  Mrs Harris advised that there would be an increase in targeting schools with one to one teaching.

(7)         Mrs Allen congratulated Mrs Harris and her team on the work already carried out in raising the attainment of looked after children (LAC) and Gypsy and Romany children.  She suggested that there was a common thread that some of the those children moved by choice and some not, and as a key target, discussions should be had with other local authorities on the effect of placing a child without making any provision for the child’s education, which meant that the child could be out of school for a long time and then possibly move on.  Mrs Allen suggested that there should be an education package made up for those children, where they can work from home if necessary but would more importantly would travel with them if they had to move on.  Mrs Allen also highlighted that it was the case that often many LAC entered a school in a particular area which had the effect of bring down the attainment and achievement of the school, which needed to be borne in mind.

(8)         In response to a question by Mrs Todd, Mrs Harris advised that the inspectors looked at the quality of the teaching and learning and look at trends of data.  She explained that the validated data for 2009 was not published until January 2010, which was very late, as it was normally published in October but for schools, particularly secondary, they were at a disadvantage. We could lobby OFSTED and nationally but unless they published the validated data earlier there would always be vulnerable schools.

(9)         Mr Burgess suggested that there was so much information it may be better, as local Members received local education briefings on the local schools in their electoral areas, for those schools to be left to the local Member to deal with and for the Committee to deal with a summary of the statistics.  He suggested that data for East Kent needed to be considered as there was a lot of movement within the schools with the large intake of children from; Service personnel, Eastern European families and LAC. Mr Burgess felt that money should be spent to allow each individual pupil to reach their full potential/ability and suggested that Members should be pushing for all Kent schools to be signed up to the Gifted and Talented Programme.

(10)    In response to concerns raised by Mr Wedgbury, the Chairman advised that there would be a progress report on ‘Gifted and Talented’ later in the year.

(11)    Mrs Harris explained that in schools where there was strong leadership and the quality of teaching and learning is outstanding, all abilities of children do well, although there was funding to develop those who were under achieving with that context the challenge at every level and the differentiation being made was exceptional.  Mrs Harris gave the example of King Ethelbert’s, Thanet where the school’s ethos had changed because of the new Leadership and the focus on the National Challenge, which had raised the performance across all ability age groups. There was a need for underachieving, vulnerable groups and borderline children to achieve but the aim was to have those expectations across the board. Our School Improvement Partners were tracking with the Leaders and the Governors the target setting and the targets for 2011 had been set.

(12)    In response to a question by Mr Homewood, Mrs Harris explained that from September 2009, there were 3 Primary schools and 1 Secondary school that were judged inadequate.  Those schools had been already identified for significant improvement.  More schools were now judged satisfactory as the goal post had changed. This meant that as a lot of the Kent schools had been moved from being good to being judged as satisfactory.  The good schools now needed to be consistently good and the schools at the far end of the continuum that were inadequate were very few but the key area was that there were now too many in the band of satisfactory.

(13)    RESOLVED that the responses to Members question and their comments and the report be noted.