(including views expressed by Simon Parr)
Minutes:
(1) Mr Vye circulated a paper outlining a proposed structure for the Admissions Forum’s annual report. He raised the question as to whether the report should be produced by the Forum and that as Mr Bagshaw was part of the Local Authority, shouldn’t the Forum commission its own staff member. Mr Vye suggested that he could ask the Local Authority to provide the Forum with an officer who would act for the Forum in producing the report. Dr Craig advised Mr Vye that he would have to request this through the Cabinet.
(2) Discussion on the process took place and the Members’ views were as follows:-
(a) Mr Wetherall felt the first annual report had been provided in draft and that it should be considered by Members. Mr Vye said that the ‘annual report’ referred to, had not been produced with the intention to publish, as these reports were required by law only from 2009. It had been produced as a template, with a view to stimulating discussion of the way future reports should be structured. He added that Mr Parr had been the only member to respond to the request for comments and suggested that there should be a time limited debate on what the Forum should ask Mr Bagshaw to provide.
(b) Mr Simmonds didn’t see the relevance of asking someone else to produce the report when Mr Bagshaw had already put in the work. He was confident that there were people on the Forum who would be able to consider the issues arising from the report. This was a view shared by Mrs Cottam.
(c) Ms Matthews took a different view. She felt that someone independent should produce the report.
(d) Mr Parr thought that the Members of the Forum had the expertise to produce the report if they had the base information but that in all probability they would not have the time.
(e) Mr Vye emphasised his independence as Chairman and advised the Forum that he would try to see that the report was produced independently. He urged the members to look at the advisory guidance available and discuss this at the next meeting. It was clear to Mr Vye that Mr Bagshaw did not have the resources to provide all of the information referred to in (a) to (h) of his circulated paper. Mr Bagshaw agreed but suggested that other parts of the organisation might be able to provide what he couldn’t. He acknowledged the need to try to be objective.
(f) Dr Craig confirmed this view and agreed that Mr Bagshaw would look at what he could and couldn’t provide. Once this was established, other ways of obtaining the information could be looked at possibly through Management Information or the clusters. Mr Bagshaw warned Members that whilst this sort of information required was often captured from the annual pupil census, it was likely to be a year behind. He added that he didn’t know how easy or cheap it would be to retrieve the information and whether there was justification in doing so. Mrs Cottham agreed that the information ought to be available and that a lot of time had been spent collating it for the annual school census.
(g) Mr Carroll thought that the information provided had been very helpful but that it did not provide information about entry through the appeal process. Mr Vye was sure that this could be added if the Forum wanted it.
(h) Mr Parr referred to the items that he had asked to be included in the report. There were: the percentage of children who started grammar schools in September; the number of pupils entering grammar schools who had not passed the PESE test and where there was comment in the report about the distribution of children from ethnic minorities, these should also be provided by type of school. Mr Bagshaw agreed that these issues could be included, if the data was captured by Management Information and that this would need to be confirmed
(i) Dr Craig suggested that as the report was in the draft stage any revisions should come back as a draft for comments.
(j) Mr Vye concluded the discussion by stating that work was in progress and that it should be revisited at the next meeting.