Agenda item

(Report by Mr R Gough, Cabinet Member for Education and Health Reform and Mr P Leeson, Corporate Director, Education, Learning and Skills)

(Mrs S Rogers, Director of Education, Quality and Standards was present for this item)

1.            The Cabinet Member, Mr Gough, introduced a report that summarised the performance of Kent schools in Ofsted inspections during the 2012-2013 school year following the full report that was presented to this Cabinet Committee in September 2013 and a review of the Ofsted inspections for the period 4 September to 25 October 2013.

2.            Mr Gough highlighted that Kent’s percentage improvement in the number of good and outstanding schools in the academic year 2012-2013 was 11% which was better than the national rate of improvement of 9% and that this was very encouraging.  However too many schools were in category (23 schools having failed an inspection) which the School Improvement Team were tracking closely. 

3.            Mr Gough referred to paragraph 2.1 stating that 50% (17 schools) of those schools inspected between September and October 2013 achieved good or outstanding judgements.  There was concern about the number of schools that received a requiring improvement judgement: 12 of the 13 schools that were previously satisfactory schools and one school which was outstanding which was disappointing, it was essential that those schools had effective Improvement Plans.

4.            Mr Leeson and Mrs Rogers responded to comments and questions by Members which included the following:

a)           Mr Leeson advised that paragraph 2.5 bullet point 2 needed to be reworded to read that there was a need for good leadership, good teachers and robust assessment processes.   Mrs Rogers explained that there were still too many teachers who, when observed were judged “requiring improvement”. The Schools Improvement Team had developed  a six week development programme for teachers called “Every Lesson Counts” to raise their practice to a good level.  This programme had made a significant difference to the percentage of good teaching in Kent schools.  There were now a suite of programmes rolled out across the county that not only raised teachers’ performance in the classroom from requiring improvement to good but from good to outstanding, as well as programmes for teaching assistants and teachers in secondary schools.

b)           A comment was made that the quality of standard of improvement that had been made from a few years ago was a significant achievement.

c)            Mr Leeson stated that very few governors would defend the indefensible. However, there had been a small number of cases when governors and the leadership of the school had not accepted an Ofsted result because they had not assessed carefully enough their school’s current performance and in a few cases they have not responded well enough to advice and support from the local authority.  Mr Leeson advised that it was the governors responsibility to bring in an external view on how well their school was doing.  The governance in Kent schools was in most cases good but governors need to not only support the school but challenge too.  Support available to governors included a self review programme and collaboration with other governing bodies to gain best practise.

5.            RESOLVED that the responses to comments and questions detailed in paragraph 4 above by Members and the information contained in the report be noted.