To receive verbal updates from the Cabinet Member for Education and Health Reform, Cabinet Member for Community Services and Cabinet Member for Children’s Services; and the Corporate Director for Education and Young People’s Services on topics including the following:
· National Funding Schemes
Minutes:
1. The Cabinet Members, Mr Gough and Mr Oakford; and the Corporate Director gave their verbal updates and highlighted the following:-
2. The Corporate Director, Mr Leeson, advised that Ofsted published its annual report on Schools and Early Provision in December and held good news for Kent on Early Years provision and outcomes for children at the Early Years Foundations Stage were mentioned as one of the examples of best practise in the country. The validated assessments for Key Stage 2 were available and Kent achieved 79% at level 4 in reading, writing, mathematics at the end of primary at the age of 11 years which was in line with the national average and a significant step forward for Primary education in Kent.
3. The Cabinet Member, Mr Gough, spoke on the National Funding Schemes advising that there were likely to be announcements on the range of future national funding schemes which include; (1) Basic Need – news was expected on the allocation for 2017/18, Kent had made representation on the particular demographic pressures in Kent including inward migration into the county following, what was considered, inadequate funding for 2015/17. Mr Gough explained that during the announcement of the 2015/17 funding the government held back £300 million for allocation of areas of particular pressure. (2)The Priority School Build II [A partial substitute for Building Schools for the Future] of £2 billion, Kent had submitted bids for 19 Kent maintained schools a total of £75.5 million, some schools, academies, had made their own bids. (3)There was a small additional pot of money available to local authorities of £20 million in relation to universal Free School Meals. Kent submitted 16 bids, totalling just over £3 million. The outcome of the all the bids was awaited.
4. The Cabinet Member, Mr Oakford, advised that a report would be submitted to the next meeting of the Children’s Social Care and Health Cabinet Committee on 20 January 2015 regarding the implementation of the work carried out by Newton Europe on the Service Design phase of the 0-25 Unified Programme.
5. Mr Oakford praised the Swattenden facility which he visited on 13 January.
6. Mr Oakford advised that he had been accompanying social workers once a week, attending their offices and making visits to clients. He had also freed up time to spend time every other week with an Early Prevention officer and planned to visit every Children Centre across Kent over the coming months.
7. Mr Gough. Mr Oakford and Mr Leeson noted comments and responded to questions as follows:
a) Mr Leeson advised that the school improvement services offered support to every school in Kent whether it was a local authority school or not. Time was allocated to every academy and the offer was made and largely the offer of support was accepted. There were a small number of cases where the offer was refused. Marlow Academy had been experiencing difficulties for some time and the local authority had been speaking with the DfE and the Regional Schools Commissioner for the South East of England about the declining standards in the school. There had been some progress in recent weeks in terms of the schools openness with the local authority’s School Improvement Service which was a break though. For the past year the local authority had brokered areas of support for the Marlow Academy from other schools in the area. The criticism by the Ofsted report was fact but it was difficult when the local authority was not permitted to have direct intervention power over an academy when it was under performing and they chose not to engage. He advised that there were now positive steps being made with Marlow Academy. Mr Leeson considered that the wording by Ofsted was not helpful as the inspectors were fully aware of the limits of the local authority regarding academies and he would be taking this up with Ofsted as the wording gave the wrong impression to those who did not have knowledge of the limitations the local authority had regarding its intervention with academies.
b) Mr Leeson advised that he had spoken with Mr De Haan about the two academies he sponsors. There had been every indication from Mr De Haan that he wanted regular conversations with the local authority but the decision to engage with the local authority had been made by the school’s governing body.
c) Mr Oakford advised that a grass roots review on fostering had been completed. He welcomed the opportunity to speak with Mr Cowan on his views.
d) Mr Gough agreed that the number of primary school places had been increasing and would continue to do so, although there had been a drop in the birth rate in 2013 but it was not known whether this was a blip. He considered that it would be interesting to note what happens in the secondary sector as this had been a dip for some time and those presently in primary school would be working their way through the system to secondary school. Seven new primary Kent schools would be opening in September 2015. Pressures for primary school places would remain. The local authority would have to wait to see what it received from Basic Schools allocations to see how best to respond to the pressures.
e) Mr Gough agreed to submit a report on the conditions of all Kent schools to a future meeting of the Capital Group and a decision to be made at that meeting on the need for any issues to be submitted to this Cabinet Committee.
f) Mr Gough advised that some of the seven new primary schools would not be fully opened but would open in a phased way.
g) Mr Leeson agreed to submit a report on how Kent interacts with Kent academies.
h) A Member said that the data from the Education and Young People’s Services Directorate on the attainment of children in care that was reported to the Corporate Parenting Panel needed to be co-ordinated. Mr Gough advised that the Management Information Unit used published data.
8. RESOLVED that the responses to questions by Members and the information in the verbal updates be noted.