To receive verbal updates from the relevant Cabinet Members and Corporate Director for Education and Young People’s Services portfolio.
Minutes:
1. Mr Gough, Cabinet Member for Education and Health Reform, gave the following update:
(a) There were three funding related issues, which were potentially coming to a head. The first of which related to overall Social Care funding and the National funding formula. KCC was part of the F40 group of relatively underfunded local authorities. There had been a campaign over a period, to address some rebalances nationally. This was something which was taken up by Government in a consultation paper earlier in the year. Emerging from this were a set of proposals, which were of some concern. Although from the point of view of Kent Schools, funding formula changes were likely to be helpful, at the same time, the degree of separation away from high needs funding was a cause for concern. The government did have a number of proposals as to how the risks associated with high needs funding might be dealt with, but it was not seen at this time to be substantial. There was a large scale consultation. The new Education secretary took the view that she needed time in her new role to digest the information, and therefore deferred the decision, which has caused concern for schools. It was hoped that information would be available before Christmas.
(b) Secondly, in relation to the Education Services Grant (ESG), the Government had sent out proposals in a consultation document on academisation, that local authorities should remove their duty on school improvement, and take a step back in the summer of 2017. With that, the ESG, which was set to be phased out anyway, would function for a few months in 17/18 then disappear completely. This would leave KCC with a £4million funding shortfall, growing in the following financial year. It seemed a strange way to rush things even if it took seriously the Governments proposals to have full academisation of the system by 2022. This proposal had now gone, the legislation was not at the moment being brought forward any time soon to remove the local authority statutory duty around school improvement, and yet the funding was set to go by the summer of 2017. The Leader of the Council had raised this at Ministerial level.
(c) The final financial element was the Early Years Funding consultation. KCC had responded a couple of months ago. Concerns were that the government has brought proposals which would in theory modulise funding across the country. In fact, the changes proposed had relatively little to do with modulisation and would not be favourable to Kent. There would be an effect on Kent providers. There were particular concerns about proposals for withdrawing quality premium, which would affect a number of provisions. It was not in the interests of Kent providers, and did not tackle government concerns.
All three of the above issues were a cause for concern.
2. Mr Oakford, Cabinet Member for Specialist Children’s Services, then gave the following update:
(a) He had recently attended a day out with the Social Work team in Maidstone, looking at the work they do.
(b) He had also met with Children in Care and Care Leavers Council which was a very interesting meeting, looking at the challenges they had been facing.
(c) He also attended a UASC summit on 13 November, which had been followed up earlier in the month with a meeting with the Immigration Minister, talking about some of the challenges faced in Kent around UASC, in particular, the dispersal scheme and financial support. From that meeting, KCC were invited to bid for some DCLG funds which had been made available, which would be instrumental in supporting the application for grants, in order to help off-set some of the money being spent on services around UASC. The government had committed to help with the dispersal programme. There were 245 young people through the arrival season last summer, who had been dispersed outside the borders of Kent. These young people were now in other local authority areas, with independent fostering agencies, and surely those local authorities should take on this responsibility for the young people. The Government had agreed to help Kent address this.
(d) He had also visited the team at Polton’s Family Centre at Dover, spent half a day there, listening to some of the challenges they faced.
(e) The following day was the Children’s Commissioner Take-over challenge day, where children would be coming in to take his job over for a day. He felt it would be an interesting day for them. It would be run as a day that Mr Oakford would have, and so the service had put together a paper on Accommodation for Care Leavers and the children could question and challenge officers. The same would be done for fostering, and they would then be spending time with the management of Early Help prevention, and going through a score card. He stated he was very much looking forward to the day.
(f) He advised that a letter had been sent to the Children’s Minister regarding outside placements, where other local authorities were placing in Kent. The joint letter had been signed by himself, plus the Chief Constable, the Police and Crime Commissioner, and the Leader of the council. Some weeks ago he had sent a letter on the same subject to the Children’s Commissioner. A response had now been received, and Mr Segurola and himself would be meeting with the Commissioner to discuss what could be done about other Local Authorities placing children in Kent. It had increased by about 60 in the last 12 months, and it was becoming a major problem in some areas in Kent. It was a particular problem for the Police as a lot of the vulnerable young people from other authorities didn’t have the support they needed.
(g) UASC – there had been 16 arrivals in the last six weeks, so numbers were dropping off substantially. Last October there had been 2012 arrivals, and only 20 this October. With regard to the dismantling of the Calais jungle, none of those young children had come into Kent, but had been dispersed around the country via the detention centre at Croydon. The only ones who had come back into Kent were those who already had families established in the county. There were four young people who had family members living here, and were reunited with their families. The Dubs amendment children had gone straight through Croydon and been dispersed. The UASC population had dipped and gone down to 1,311. The reason for this was that a lot of young people were reaching 18, and leaving the area of responsibility that KCC had for them. There were 710 under 18’s and 600 over 18’s. Around 140 would turn 18 on 1 January, meaning that care leavers would become the major cohort for UASC. The grant from government did not cover care leavers, and the shortfall this year was £2.5million. Further conversations were taking place with the minister regarding this.
3. Mr Hill, Cabinet Member for Community Services, then gave the following update:
(a) On 5 November, there had been a celebration for the Duke of Edinburgh awards 60th Anniversary. Kent is one of the largest and most successful license holders in the Country. A year ago, he had been lucky enough to go to St James’s Palace to see a room full of Kent award winners. The awards event had been held at the Detling Showground, attended by over 200 volunteers. The purpose of the event was to thank everyone for the effort that had been put in. The Lord Lieutenant had also been present.
(b) On 22 November, he had attended the annual Spirit of Try Angle Awards in its 22nd year. The awards were to celebrate the achievements of young people who had tackled adversity. There was one particularly moving story about a young carer. The overall winner was announced by the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.
4. Mr Leeson, Corporate Director for Education and Young People’s Services,then gave the following update:
(a) The Ofsted inspections for schools in Kent were approaching 91% for good and better outcomes, this included 91% in Primary schools, 85% in Secondary schools and nearly 100% in Special schools. This was a good foundation for further improvement.
(b) NEETS (Not Employed or in Education or Training)– enormous work had taken place over the last few months and the latest figures showed the NEET figure had reduced to only 2.5% which was a very good improvement from where Kent was previously, at around 5%. The destination figure was 94%, which was a high figure of young people going on to another destination such as college, sixth form or apprenticeships. In terms of the participation figure post 16, 88% participated at age 16 plus, which was 2% above national average. However, this was only at 80% for Year 13 (17 year olds), where the drop-out rate was an ongoing challenge. It was a good improvement from the previous year.
5. Mr Oakford then responded to questions by members and made points including the following:
(a) The dispersal programme should be made mandatory, but the government did not have any plans to do this at present. In the last four months, there had been 125 young people dispersed around the country through the programme since the voluntary scheme had been introduced. This had not eaten into legacy cases, and these children had established a life in the area, such as friendships, schools, accommodation making it difficult to move them at this point. This was why the focus was now on the 245 already outside of the county. It was important to get other local authorities to take financial responsibility and support for these young people. Next year, Kent would be expecting over 1,000 care leavers, which was a huge budgetary burden.
(b) There had been excellent support from Kent MPs, two of whom had raised questions in the House of Commons. They had also given lots of support in lobbying.
6. Mr Leeson also responded to questions by members and stated that there had been an improvement on NEET figures across the board. He stated that he would circulate the numbers by district to Members.
7. Mr Gough then responded to questions by members and made points including the following:
(a) In terms of the formula for Early Years funding, the government proposals did seek to address availability of school places. However, the deliverability of such a scheme was up for grabs.
(b) There had been lots of work into apprenticeships, such as the introduction of an apprenticeship levy, and there were quite significant developments.
(c) There had not been a brief from the Secretary of State, but it was hoped to see the results of the national funding consultation soon.
8. RESOLVED that the verbal updates be noted.