Agenda item

1.          The Cabinet Member, Mr Gough, and the Corporate Director, Mr Leeson,   gave their verbal updates and highlighted work undertaken since the last Cabinet Committee meeting which included the following:

·       Targeted Basic Need Fund – KCC submitted 26 bids for the Targeted Basic Need Fund and was successful with 19 of those gaining £31 million in additional capital grant. Members would have the opportunity to discuss this in a later part of the agenda.

·       The tentative GCSE examination results in English and Maths in the 5 A*-C grades looked to have improved, at a time when nationally they were in decline.  The Key Stage 1 and 2 results also looked positive.  Mr Gough thanked the schools, their pupils and KCC officers for their hard work to gain this improvement.

·       Private Finance Initiative – There were 11 schools which had rebuilds under PFI.  The cost of this would not change due to any school converting to an academy.  The money that was paid for the affordability gap was not paid from council tax or from KCC’s budget; it was to be paid from the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG), the overall school pot.  The two things that have changed over the past 2 years were that, firstly, the DSG was flat in cost terms at a time when the affordability gap was going up in line with inflation, which meant that a gap was opening up and secondly, there had been a significant number of Kent schools, over 110, converting to academy status over the last 3 years and it was that, rather than any particular school converting, that reduced the pot that was available for paying for the PFI charges and put more of a burden on those schools that remain maintained.

·       Sevenoaks Grammar School Annex – An agreement was reached with Valley Invicta Academy Trust, Maidstone, in March 2013, to work in partnership on their bid.  The Weald of Kent Grammar School, Tonbridge, brought in a later bid quite separately that was not discussed with KCC until it became public, since then KCC had worked with the Weald of Kent Grammar School.  KCC’s position is that these are two good Kent schools and KCC is delighted that they both wished to provide Sevenoaks Grammar School annex provision.

     Wildernesse site, Sevenoaks – An agreement was reached with the Department of Education (DfE) on the Wildernesse site.  The Wildernesse site was originally susceptible to being taken over for the purposes of the Free School by the DfE.  It had been agreed that part of the Wildernesse site would be used for the Trinity Free School in 2015 and the remainder of the site would be available for the Sevenoaks Grammar School Annex, subject to that being approved. This meant the site would no longer be a block on the annex happening.  Mr Gough stressed it was important to emphasise that as far as the DfE and KCC were concerned these were two separate issues. 

     The principle to endorse either proposal from the Weald of Kent Grammar School, Tonbridge, or from Valley Invicta Academy Trust, rests with the Secretary of State.

·            Mr Leeson advised on the headline attainment results available at this time. There had been changes to the way that early development at the end of the foundation stage, age 5, was being assessed.   Kent was well above the national average.  This year 64% of children at rising 5 were assessed to have achieved a good level of development in the early years against the national average of 54%.  The achievement gap of children from more deprived areas had decreased further this year compared to the national picture.

·            Key Stage 1 (KS1) – There were good levels of improvement in reading, writing and mathematics. KS1 continued to improve incrementally year on year.  Improvements of 2, 3 and 4% had been achieved in the ranges of outcomes for KS1. 

·            Key Stage 2 (KS2) – Previously this was a combined measure of level 4 with a reading, writing and maths level.  This year the government changed this to combine level 4 for reading and writing separately and mathematics.  Previously it was possible to get a level 4 in English before getting a level 4 in reading and writing.  The outcome for Kent was 74% of pupils reaching that level;  the national average was 76%.  The three year trend for Kent was continuing upwards.  The comparable figure for 2012 was 72%, which meant an uplift of 2%.  Mr Leeson considered that the schools that had not achieved enough were probably those that were not tracking pupils carefully enough in the 3 measures; reading, writing and mathematics at level 4.

·            A key measure at Key Stage 2 was whether schools were achieving above the “Floor Standard”. There were 65% of pupils reaching above the standard level.  In 2012 the number of schools achieving above the floor standard increased significantly.  In 2011 there were 72 primary schools that achieved below the floor standard.  In 2012 the number reduced to 22 schools.  There were now 50 schools considered to be below the floor level.  Those were schools that officers would work and talk with to improve their situation for 2014.

·            GCSEs results – 65% of 16 year olds were achieving good GCSEs, with English and mathematics included, which was above the national picture.  This had increased incrementally year on year nationally by 1%.  In 2012 Kent was above the national average with 61%.  In 2013 it was 65% with English and Mathematics.

Overall 61 secondary schools had improved or maintained their level of improvement and 14 secondary schools dropped their results of improvement by 1% or less.   75% of secondary schools maintained their performance at GCSE at a time when the standard was being pushed upwards and the grade boundary from examination boards had been altered to make GCSEs more challenging.  The number of schools that were below the secondary floor standard, which was 40% of youngsters in each school achieving 5 good GCSEs with English and mathematics A-C, had reduced from 19 secondary schools being below the floor in 2012 to 9 secondary schools in 2013.

·            Post 16 – There continued to be a small incremental improvement although A-level results overall in Kent were below the national average.  This year the pass level at A-level in A-E grades increased by nearly 1% to just above 93%.  The upward trend was welcomed but it was not a significant increase. There was a substantial shift in the percentage for 2013 to 13.5% from 5% in 2012 of young people achieving A*, A or B grades.

·            Attainment results had improved in every Key Stage in 2013.  There were very ambitious targets in the Bold Steps for Education which are intended to take Kent much further in the next few years.  To achieve these targets there is work being carried out in Kent schools to improve standards at each Key Stage and the results of that hard work on the part of the Headteachers and their staff is being seen across the County.  There are still wide gaps in the attainment of young people on Free School Meals and other pupils, and there are still targets to be met for GCSE and Key Stage 1 and 2.

·            Mr Leeson stated that the importance of reading and writing especially should not be underestimated for any child’s success in the education system.  The more that can be achieved at Key Stage 1 and in early years attainment the better the chances of succeeding in secondary education at GCSE level.  He reminded Members that the number of young people Not in Education, Employment and Training (NEET) were largely those young people who had not developed good standards of literacy.

·            Facing the Challenge: Transformation agenda – The Education, Learning and Skills Directorate would have three new functional groups, which all included further integration of services from across Kent and working with our partners; 1. 0-11 integrated services; 2. Kent Integrated Adolescent Services; and 3. 14-25 Skills and Employability.

·            The Number of Academy Conversions – This had slowed down in the past year.  There are now 117 academies in Kent out of a total of nearly 600 schools, 15 of which were from the old style of academy under the last government and 102 conversions since the Academies Act 2010.  13 schools were sponsored by an internal sponsor ie another school and 79 academies were stand alone.

2.               Mr Gough and Mr Leeson noted the comments and responded to questions regarding the information given in their verbal updates by Members which included the following:

a)         Further to Minute 112/2013, agreement was given to Mr Scobie receiving a detailed note in response to his questions regarding the decision to expand Newington Community Primary School and nursery which included: the future of the site;why the Infant school site was not included in the information to Members; an assurance that the playing field was not going to be sold to developers; and the full cost of the security on site.

b)         Mr Gough concurred that the attainment gap remained between children on Free School meals and other children.  He reflected that in 2012 there had been considerable progress in narrowing that gap against the national average however, the same improvement did not happen this year.  He confirmed that considerable effort was still being made by the School Improvement Team to deal with this issue. 

Mr Leeson advised that the attainment gap was a fundamental issue in this country.  The present government was putting in significant resources into schools through the Pupil Premium which had increased year on year. 

KCC had carried out an enormous amount of work to ensure that the quality of teaching in Kent schools improved as children would not make good progress unless they were taught well.  A 5% improvement for children on Free School Meals in Primary in 2012 was welcomed as a significant narrowing of the attainment gap.  Kent was investigating this issue at present.  The national figures were not available yet.

Mr Leeson advised that he would submit a detailed report on this issue to the next Cabinet meeting and this would include the results of his investigations about narrowing the attainment gap for pupils on Free School Meals and other children.  The Chairman confirmed that Members would have the opportunity to discuss this at the Members Monitoring Group.

c)          Congratulations were extended to all staff who worked on improving the achievements for GCSE results.

d)         A request was made for the numbers of schools to be stated in reports when percentages are given.

e)         Agreement was given to Mr Cowan receiving a written reply regarding the Sevenoaks Grammar School annex provision answering his questions on: the legal position  of annexes for grammar schools; the legality of the funds being issued by KCC supporting the Valley Invicta Academy Trust delivering a proposal to the Secretary of State for the Sevenoaks Grammar School annex; andwhether this financial support would to be extended to the Weald of Kent Grammar School’s proposal for the Sevenoaks Grammar School annex.

f)           Mr Leeson gave his assurance that the County Council would not have put forward proposals to the Secretary of State unless it had assured itself that it was a legal proposition.  Legal advice had been sought from legal council outside KCC.  The following legal definition of what was an annex and what was not an annex was given as follows “any proposed extension or expansion even at a distance from the host school can be an annex if there was single governance and management and accountability back to the host school, coherent admission arrangements and was clearly part of a wider host schools provision and not a stand alone school”.  There was no enabling legislation to do this but there was no legislation forbidding this.  Members were advised that this was a grey area in between where challenges could be made and this was not an easy decision to make.   He reiterated that Kent had not put forward a proposal that was in anyway illegal.

3.               RESOLVED that:-

a)         the responses to comments and questions by Members be noted;

b)         agreement was given to Mr Scobie receiving a detailed note in response to his questions regarding the decision to expand Newington Community Primary School and nursery;

c)          a detailed report be submitted to this Cabinet Committee on narrowing the attainment gap for pupils on Free School Meals;

d)         agreement was given to Mr Cowan receiving a written response to his questions regarding the Sevenoaks Grammar School annex provision; and

e)         the information given in the verbal update be noted with thanks.