Agenda item

Mr S Collins (Director of Integrated Children's Services (West Kent and Early Help and Preventative Services Lead)) and Mr D Adams (Director of Education) were in attendance for this item

 

(1)        Mr Long (Cabinet Member for Education and Skills) gave a verbal update on the following issues:

 

a)    GCSE and A-Level Results

Mr Long expressed his sympathy to the students and parents of Kent and thanked them for their patience and perseverance during the pandemic and the initial A-Level and GCSE situation where many students did not see the grades anticipated and faced losing their university places. Whilst the government had made the decision to revert to centre-assessed grades, Kent County Council had prepared to gather the necessary data from secondary schools and to make strong evidenced-based representations to government that the policy should change. Mr Long added that guidance which related to the appeals process had recently been published and Kent County Council’s Skills and Employability service continued to provide support and advice where required. Pupils who did not feel that their calculated grade reflected their ability would have the opportunity to sit an exam in the Autumn term.

 

b)   The school return and issues relating to school transport

Whilst general guidance for the return to schools had been issued before the beginning of the summer holiday, detailed government guidance on key subjects such as transport and the administration of tests and examinations did not reach local authorities until late in August, after much planning had already been undertaken based on best assumptions. Fortunately, much of the government guidance aligned with Kent County Council’s planning to the credit of officers. All schools were asked by the DfE to provide data on attendance through daily online submission which Kent County Council’s officers within the Children, Young People and Education (CYPE) directorate had access to, meaning that officers would be able to track attendance at the schools that had replied to the DfE as requested. Kent County Council’s transport team had assisted in ensuring a smooth return to school and the return to school by most children had been achieved. Although government guidance on appropriate transport was not released until 11^th August, careful preparation meant that all identified on-time applications for transport were in place for 7^th September. A record number of late applications for free transport had been received this year (1,100+), exceeding historic totals, this meant that transport teams remained incredibly busy, but were working as quickly as possible to clear the backlog. Mr Long reminded Members of the Committee that residents within their divisions should contact the relevant transport team in relation to transport applications as cases were mainly being managed in date order.

 

c)    Kent Test

Mr Long referred to the key decision which had been taken in July (decision number: 20/00060) to delay the Kent Test to October and stated that guidance had been sent to schools to which there were to be detailed contingencies in the event of local-level isolations, this included advice on safe testing arrangements and appropriate variations to the process in the light of restrictions. Whilst the guidance would only be made available where necessary, Kent County Council would continue to work with schools to prepare contingencies for more significant Covid-19 events.

 

(2)        Mrs Chandler (Cabinet Member for Integrated Children’s Services) gave a verbal update on the following issues:

 

a)             National Adoption Week

Mrs Chandler stated that the national ‘You Can Adopt’ campaign was launched on 16^th September and Kent, as part of the Regional Adoption Agency (RAA) workstream, had been involved in the planning leading up to the event and had sent a media release to raise awareness of the campaign. The campaign encouraged people to consider adopting a child including increasing applications from single people, BAME and LGBT communities. The campaign would consist of a new emotive film featuring adoptive families and a podcast series featuring a number of famous voices speaking about adoption and the Kent Adoption Service was ready to respond to any increase of adoption enquires made as a result of the campaign. The campaign would lead into national adoption week which would run from 12^th to 18^th October. The Kent Adoption Service had already linked with the Press Office and planned to use a number of media outlets, including social media to publicise the adoption service and a number of information events would take place where possible. The Kent Adoption Service had been able to adapt its work including information and training events, adoption panels and virtual/online visits to adopters to avoid any delays in the adoption process during the pandemic. Mrs Chandler added that a touching story had been shared at a recent Corporate Parenting Panel meeting from new adoptive parents in relation to the overwhelming sense of joy that their new child that had joined their family during the pandemic had brought.

 

b)   The Virtual Youth Offer

Since the beginning of lockdown as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, Kent County Council’s youth services and commissioned youth service providers and partners had been developing a virtual youth offer delivering a range of innovative services to young people in ways that had not been used before and the online youth services offer page collated all of the work together in one place and lists a range of activities and sessions available for young people, this included Facebook and Instagram feeds with themed interactive posts, interactive live sessions and quizzes, 1-1 support using WhatsApp or Facetime with known young people or young people that make contact with the service, group support sessions via Microsoft Teams and Google Hangout, virtual sessions including boxing classes, baking tutorials and karaoke, focus content on anger management, emotional wellbeing, self-esteem and links to other resources including activities to keep young people fit and active. Engagement with the virtual offer had been very successful, particularly in the earlier months of lockdown and youth services were awaiting feedback to see how the return to school had impacted on the number of attendees at the virtual sessions and would perhaps operate in the evening or during weekends. Kent County Council’s youth services had also developed ‘Lockdown Legends’ which was a way of recognising young people’s positive contributions and achievements during Covid-19 and sharing their talents, this would be launched in the coming weeks with promotion to schools and partners to nominate young people to receive recognition of their achievement and may be selected to feature on Kent County Council’s YouTube channel which showcased young people’s talents.

 

c)    HeadStart Kent Resilience Hub

As part of the ongoing work in relation to HeadStart Kent, Kent County Council has been encouraging and promoting parents, carers, and young people to access resources which were available via the HeadStart Resilience Hub to keep them emotionally healthy. ‘Mood Spark’ had also been developed as part of the HeadStart which was a virtual setting for people aged 10-16 to learn how to look after their emotional, physical and mental health which helped them to find ways to build resilience during troubling times.

 

d)   Youth Services funding

Mrs Chandler stated that the new funding which had been identified for youth services had not yet been spent due to Covid-19 restrictions. Furthermore, under current government guidelines, it had still not been possible for youth services to return to operating as normal before the pandemic, this was continuously under review. In relation to how the Covid-19 pandemic had impacted on referral rates and the resources of referrals to Kent’s front door, Mrs Chandler provided a set of comparative data from March to September 2019 and March to September 2020 which revealed that in terms of the overall percentage, the highest source of request for support had been consistently from police referrals, whereas education had been the second highest source of referrals.

 

e)    Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children (UASC) Update

Mrs Chandler referred to a report that had recently been submitted to full Council following the decision taken on 17^th August not to receive any further UASC from Dover port and stated that since the decision was taken, there had been transfers to other local authorities which had been very welcome. She referred to the ongoing conversations between Kent County Council, the DfE and Home Office which had been constructive and said that the government had been consulting on the national transfer scheme. She added that she had attended a meeting with Members from the south east and Directors of Children’s Services who all supported the notion that the national transfer scheme should become mandatory.

 

(3)        Mr Dunkley (Corporate Director of Children, Young People and Education) gave a verbal update on the following issues:

 

a)    Youth Services funding

Mr Dunkley reiterated the comments which had been made by Mrs Chandler in relation to the additional funding that had been agreed at full Council for universal youth services at the beginning of the financial year where it agreed an additional £400k for universal and outreach youth work and £100k for other activity around youth. Mr Dunkley confirmed that none of the additional funding had been spent due to the fact that the Council had not been able to physically employ the relevant staff because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Mr Dunkley stated that Kent County Council were considering using part of the additional monies in 2020-21 to close the shortfall in funding for six community youth services, part-funded between schools and Kent County Council, where the schools had ceased the funding to approximately £15k each. Otherwise, the funding would go closing the budget gap and trying to compensate for overspends in other areas related to Covid-19.

 

b)   Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children (UASC) Update

Mr Dunkley reiterated the comments which had been made by Mrs Chandler in relation to UASC and the pressure on the service and staff. He confirmed that the situation had improved slightly since the decision had been taken on 17^th August not to receive any further UASC from Dover port and conversations with the DfE and Home Office continued.

 

The Cabinet Members, Corporate Director, and officers present then responded to a number of comments and questions from Members, including the following: -

 

(4)        Mr Long stated that whilst government guidance in relation to the return to school had been received later than expected, the guidance from government on the principles had been received much earlier. He sympathised with civil servants who were trying to produce new and detailed plans to cope in every eventuality in the middle of the unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic and in an evolving situation.

 

(5)        Mr Long referred to the tracking of daily attendance and stated that whilst schools had been asked by the DfE to post information about attendance daily, not all schools were doing so, but the majority were. He said that whilst attendance information was not received directly from schools, CYPE officers could access the data from the DfE.

 

(6)        Mr Long emphasised the importance of children receiving education and only self-isolating if they were suffering from Covid-19 symptoms. Mr Dunkley highlighted the challenges faced in relation to the way in which schools and parents interpreted government guidance in terms of Covid-19 symptoms. He also referred to the current situation of unavailability of tests and said that schools continued to work hard to get more tests to use for children but the numbers at the moment exceeded the number of tests available. Mr Adams added that Kent County Council’s education department had written to schools to remind them of the three Covid-19 symptoms and provided the advice from Public Health England. He stated that one of the challenges that schools faced in the current climate is that there was conflicting news in relation to Covid-19 symptoms in children which had caused a significant amount of confusion.

 

(7)        Mr Collins emphasised the importance of ensuring that all of Kent County Council’s venues were Covid-19 safe in relation to targeted youth work and outreach.

 

(8)        Mr Long referred to school exam results and explained the inconsistencies between schools in relation to centre-assessed grades and the applied algorithm.

 

(9)        Mr Long referred to the use of face coverings in school and emphasised the importance of ensuring that children experienced education in the most normal, yet safest way possible. Mr Adams explained the challenges faced in relation to schools and parents that wished to exceed the mandatory face covering requirements.

 

(10)        In relation to reach of the virtual youth offer, Mr Collins said that contact continued through both Kent’s in-house and virtual offer. He confirmed that he would provide additional information to Committee Members outside of the meeting in relation to virtual offer.

 

(11)        In relation to use of public transport and buses, Mr Long said that Kent County Council’s public transport team had worked on a plan to ensure that public transport continued to operate and that children could get to school by public transport where necessary. In doing so, the team spent several weeks over the summer negotiating new arrangements with bus companies and a lot of buses that normally carried almost entirely school children were re-designated as school buses, this enabled buses to accommodate more children than had otherwise been the case. Mr Long added that the team had used £1.5m which had been promised by government to contract for over 100 additional buses which could be flexibly deployed across Kent where need arose.

 

(12)       Mr Long referred to future government guidance in relation to schools and school transport and said that Kent County Council would use all possible powers and resources to overcome challenges and to ensure that as few problems occurred as possible. Mr Dunkley added that local government would be at the heart of the response in the event of a second wave of Covid-19. He referred to a number of priorities which included ensuring that children continued to be educated in a safe and effective way, schools had a good supply of PPE and that appropriate testing regimes were in place.

 

(13)       Mr Adams confirmed that 240 public service buses had been re-designated as school buses, and an additional 117 buses had been commissioned to provide shadow bus services, targeting the routes where there were already existing pressures. He talked about the travel pass take up and said that whilst the number of travel passes being purchased was increasing, it would be kept under close review during these unprecedented times.

 

(14)       Mr Adams confirmed that since 17^th September 2020, 423 schools had made a return to the DFE, over 160,000 children and young people had returned back to school which equated to approximately 90% attendance.

 

(15)       Mr Adams confirmed that since 21^st September 2020, 34 schools had reported some related COVID incident.

 

(16)       Mr Adams referred to the early years sector and the concerns that had been raised in relation to the health of the sector. He said that 640 of the pre-school settings had re-opened and there were only 12 that remained closed. There were just over 28,000 children attending early years settings at present which included childminding settings.

 

(17)       Mr Long encouraged schools to engage with and respond to the DfE. Mr Adams added that in terms of the DfE return, officers within CYPE had written to schools to remind them that they should be filling out the return.

 

(18)       Mr Long referred to the problems of shortage of testing and purchasing additional testing capacity and said that the issue was not related to the availability of testing kits, but the capacity of laboratories to process the tests. Mr Dunkley added that the issue was also the requirement for laboratories to test samples within 24 hours. He said that Public Health England had confirmed that it would take until October to resolve the issue of testing fully.

 

(19)       Mr Long talked about the mixed effects of Covid-19 on the mental health of children and said that whilst some children had responded well to being at home, others had not. Mr Dunkley added that CYPE would work with schools in the coming weeks and months to retrieve information which related to staff and pupils’ experiences in September. He said that whilst many children benefited from online learning at home and had felt that it had helped reduce levels of anxiety, children with complex needs such as autism and other disabilities struggled with being in a home environment for a long period of time. He referred to mental health-related issues and said that Kent County Council’s Corporate Parenting Panel had recently been in touch with some of Kent’s looked-after young people to discuss issues such as loneliness, mental health struggles and the troubles that they had experienced throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and the period of lockdown.

 

(20)       In relation to loss of learning during the lockdown period of the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr Dunkley said that whilst all children and young people had experienced some learning loss, those from disadvantaged backgrounds had suffered the most.

 

(21)       In relation to the laptop schemes, Mr Dunkley reminded Members that there were two different laptop schemes, one which operated through the social work workforce and one which was a national scheme run through schools. Mr Dunkley confirmed that he could provide further information to Mrs Dean in relation to the schemes and the relevant figures/data.

 

(22)        The Chairman, the Cabinet Members and the Corporate Director expressed their sincere thanks to all officers within both the CYPE directorate and the GET directorate for their commitment, hard work and dedication to services during these unprecedented times. In addition, they thanked all school staff and parents for getting children and young people back to school and ensuring that pupils were equipped with the correct measures and facilities to aid the safe return. Members of the Committee whole-heartedly supported this.

 

(23)        RESOLVED that the verbal updates be noted.