Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from Mr Jeffrey and Mr Beaney.

Dr Sullivan declared a non-pecuniary interest in agenda item 11.

RESOLVED that the minutes of the meeting held on 12 October 2022 were correctly recorded and that they be signed by the Chairman.

1) Mr Love said that the full validated results had not yet been published but around 17,000 children sat the Kent Test in 2022, compared with around 16,000 in 2021. Of that, 5,517 were children living in other local authority areas. There were 5,566 grammar school places available across the county and in most cases, priority over places was to be given to those who were Kent residents.

Mr Love congratulated children who had passed, whilst assuring those who were unsuccessful that Kent had a wide range of excellent non-selective schools to choose from.

The deadline for secondary school admission applications closed on Monday 31 October. Parents and guardians could expect to find out what school their child had been offered on Wednesday, 1 March.

For primary school places, applications opened on Friday, 4 November and were to remain open until Monday, 16 January. This was to apply to any child due to start primary or infant school (reception year) in September 2023, or a child moving from year 2 of an infant school to year 3 of a junior school in September 2023. Primary offers were to be confirmed on Monday, 17 April.

There had been coverage of the shortage of school places in some year groups within the districts of Ashford and Canterbury due to the housing of asylum seekers and other migrants in hotels within the area, which included school aged children which KCC as the local authority needed to accommodate.  

The extent of this pressure was not something which had been foreseen in previous commissioning plans, but it was something being factored in with forward planning for school places across both districts as part of the Commissioning Plan for Education 2023-27.

The current Ofsted inspection framework (following its review) had resulted in a number of formerly Outstanding schools being judged as Good following a significant number of years since their previous inspection.

Since September 2021, 21 secondary schools had graded Ofsted inspections and 71% (15 schools) had retained their good judgement or improved their judgement to Good. Six schools had a decline in their outcome - three formerly Outstanding academy schools were judged Good (Dane Court, Cranbrook, The Skinners) and one was judged as Requiring Improvement (High Weald). Two academy schools were judged Inadequate (the Oasis Academy and The Abbey).

Whilst this was a concern, it was noted that in some cases a lower grade had been given due to a school failing in just 1 of 5 assessed categories. Schools took all feedback received from Ofsted very seriously and KCC remained on hand to support them.

CYPE continued to chair a cross-directorate Home to School Transport Board to ensure clear, formal communications and planning capacity was in place to meet the growing challenges facing the Council. Members had been advised of the crisis facing the UK transport sector and these pressures were set to increase as a result of growing financial challenges on both providers and KCC.

KCC was shortly to exceed 6,000 eligible SEN  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

Katherine Atkinson, Assistant Director of Management Information and Intelligence; Dan Bride, Assistant Director – Adolescent and Open Access; Stuart Collins, Director of Integrated Children’s Services; Stephen Fitzgerald, Assistant Director – Integrated Children’s Services, East Kent and Sarah Hammond, Corporate Director of SEND

1) Ms Atkinson introduced the report. The scorecard contained some of the updated attainment data for the summer of 2022 which was available at the time it was put together. There was provisional data for the primary key stages and for key stage 4. Since the publication of the scorecard, some early provisional data had been made available for post-16. The final data was due to published later in the year for primary key stages and key stage 4 data was due to be published in February 2023.

2) Further to comments and questions from Members, it was noted:

·       Further data was requested where there was great variation in areas across the county, including more detail about the backlog of EHCPs. It was reported that a lack of educational psychology resource and staffing within SEND services had impacted on the production of EHCPs. The challenges were being felt nationwide in addition to their being challenges specific to Kent, including a SEND restructure within KCC.

·       Qualified Social Workers (permanent and agency staff) had specific social care caseloads and they were not the staff producing EHCPs. These staff were not involved beyond contributing to the one element of the EHCPs, social care advice. It was recognised social work was challenging and in some areas of Kent such as Thanet, qualified social workers were actively being head-hunted and were moving into private fostering agency work.

·       Information was requested about Pupil Referral Units.

·       Work was being undertaken with Kent Police around the quality of data relating to youth justice. There was also due to be a new suite of key performance indicators for youth justice, which would be using the national framework to inform the data reported to Members.

·       Key Performance Indicators and targets were being reviewed and updated. These were to be reported to Members.

3) RESOLVED to note the report.

Katherine Atkinson, Assistant Director of Management Information and Intelligence was in attendance for this item

1) Ms Atkinson introduced the report.

2) Further to questions from Members, it was noted:

·       Many schools had not been inspected for many years. However, the rate of inspections had increased and a number of schools had been inspected since September 2022. There had not been a formal announcement from Ofsted about this.

3) RESOLVED to note the report.

(Inspection Update)

Sarah Hammond, Corporate Director of CYPE and Ben Watts, General Counsel were in attendance for this item.

1) Mr Love introduced the report regarding the Ofsted and CQC revisit of the Local Area Services for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities.

2) Ms Hammond presented the slides (attached).

3) Further to questions from Members, it was noted:

·       The children’s health workforce had been redeployed during 2020 and 2021 to assist with the Covid-19 pandemic and this had an impact on areas of work with children.

·       The Improvement Board meetings took place during the pandemic but less often and there were frequent changes of health personnel for those meetings. PACT was part of the Improvement Board.

·       Some children with SEND, particularly those with high level or complex health needs had remained at home during the early period of the pandemic.

·       It was recognised where things had not gone well, and the inspector’s findings were accepted. It was accepted that there were cases where KCC was too slow in resolving individual cases. It had been very challenging for frontline staff and at times, the level of work was overwhelming, so it was important moving forward that there was the right system in place.

·       The Accelerated Progress Plan was to re-frame the failings identified by the revisit in a meaningful and measurable way. The Department for Education and NHS England were to have oversight over the Accelerated Progress Plan. The SEND Partnership Assurance Board was to be established – KCC awaited further information from government about whether the Secretary of State was to use his powers of intervention.

·       More engagement with and listening to families was suggested as a way of moving forward following the revisit.

·       Statutory guidance was being consulted to ensure that this was applied to the EHCP assessment process. Some Members had expressed concerns that it was difficult to progress while there was a backlog of assessments for EHCPs.

·       In situations where it was felt that particular requirements of an EHCP were not being fulfilled by school placements, there was support for parents to approach schools with issues and to enable schools to meet the requirements. There was an annual review process in place for EHCPs.

·       Decisions about non-executive sub-committees of Scrutiny were a non-executive matter for the Scrutiny Committee, rather than a matter for Cabinet to consider.

·       Issues around SEND were at the top of KCC’s priorities corporately moving forward. It was felt that changes had been made since 2019 but the improvements had not been fully realised at the time of the revisit.

4) RESOLVED to note the update and contents of the report.

Dr Sullivan and Mr Brady asked for it to be recorded that they did not support the recommendations.

Nick Abrahams, Area Education Officer (West Kent) was in attendance for this item.

1) Mr Love introduced the report.

2) Mr Abrahams outlined the report.

3) Further to questions from Members, it was noted:

·       There was significant pressure on the Capital programme and the pressure had increased due to inflation. KCC was lobbying government on the basis that funding needed to reflect the challenges.

·       The commissioning intentions outlined in this year’s commissioning plan relating to specialist places likely reflected a proportion of what the future commissioning intentions would be for specialist places, as a whole. The DfE had only requested information about mainstream school capacity and demand but moving forward, it was seeking for local authorities to submit forecasts for specialist places and report on capacity. There were ongoing conversations with the DfE and more information would be submitted as part of the Safety Valve process, including data around specialist places.

·       Where children have a place in a specialist satellite provision in a mainstream school, they would be on roll at the special school. Therefore, these children would not be included in the inclusion data, however, they would benefit from the culture of inclusion in the setting.

4) RESOLVED to endorse the Commissioning Plan for Education Provision in Kent 2023-27.

Stuart Collins, Integrated Children’s Services (Early Help Lead) and Dan Bride, Assistant Director were in attendance for this item.

1) Mr Collins introduced and Ms Bride outlined the report.

2) Further to questions from Members, it was noted:

·       £586,000 had been agreed per year for 2 years for the Adolescent Response Team project. £101,000 had been drawn down in the first year, 2021-22. The underspend was around £485,000 which was nearly a year’s funding so it was considered that the project could be extended for another year.

3) RESOLVED to note the report.

Report to follow.

Christy Holden, Head of Strategic Commissioning (Children and Young People’s Services) was in attendance for this item

1) Ms Holden outlined the report.

2) Further to questions and comments from Members, it was noted:

·       There had been wider work on reviewing community services service development. A further decision would be made when KCC was in a position to re-evaluate Commissioned Youth Provision taking into consideration Family Hubs.

·       Comments, complaints and compliments from service users were sent by service providers to KCC for monitoring.

3) RESOLVED to agree the recommendations as outlined in the report.

Report to follow.

Christy Holden, Head of Strategic Commissioning (Children and Young People’s Services) was in attendance for this item

1) Ms Holden outlined the report.

2) Further to questions and comments from Members, it was noted:

·       It was recognised that consistency of quality of provision across the county was needed. However, needs across communities in Kent were different so it was consistency of quality based on need that was the focus.

3) RESOLVED to agree

Report to follow.

1) Mrs Chandler introduced the report.

2) Further to questions and comments, it was noted:

·       The timing of the proposed decision took into account that Local Children’s Partnership Groups were in the process of setting their priorities in allocating their funding. The proposal to withdraw funding was still to go through KCC’s budget setting process.

3) RESOLVED to endorse the recommendations as outlined in the report.

Sarah Hammond, Corporate Director of CYPE was in attendance for this item.

1) Ms Hammond outlined the report.

2) Further to questions and comments from Members, it was noted:

·       Concerns were raised about where there were allegations of physical or other abuse, 52% of these cases involved a children with SEND.

3) RESOLVED to note the report.

Sarah Hammond, Corporate Director of CYPE was in attendance for this item.

1) Ms Hammond outlined the report.

2) RESOLVED to note the report.

Christy Holden, Head of Strategic Commissioning (Children and Young People’s Services) and Steve Lusk, Senior Commissioner were in attendance for this item

1) Ms Holden outlined the report.

2) Further to questions from Members, it was noted:

·       The CYPE directorate did not have an in-house team. However, work was being undertaken with the Adults’ team on a self-directed support work group.

3) RESOLVED to agree the recommendations as outlined in the report.

Sarah Hammond, Corporate Director of CYPE was in attendance for this item.

1) Further to questions from Members, it was noted:

·       The Family Hub model was about making services more accessible and providing a digital offer. A distinction was made about the difference between a digital offer, access to information digitally and a virtual offer which referred to accessing services virtually. The need would also continue for a face-to-face offer and for outreach. Negotiations with Public Health partners were ongoing and there would also need to be negotiation with other partners moving forward.

·       Concerns were raised that Members had not had sight of the decision at the previous Cabinet Committee meeting.

2) RESOLVED to agree the recommendations as outlined in the report.

1) Members noted the work programme.