Issue - meetings

To provide the annual educational results for Children in Care and an update on performance issues relating to Personal Educational Plans.

The Committee were provided with the annual educational results for children in care. Nationally children in care have consistently underachieved in national examinations and were over represented in the prison and homeless populations.  It is the Authority’s responsibility to ensure that children in care did as well as possible to achieve positive outcomes. It was also a major Government priority to narrow the gap between Children in care and their peers.

The dedicated Children in care education team works in close collaboration with officers in children and families school improvement and collaboration and with schools in and out of the Authority to improve educational outcomes for these young people. The Committee were pleased that the outcomes for CiC at the end of KS1 were exceptionally good. Although in real terms in 2009 there had been an increase in the academic achievement of children in care at the end of KS2 the figures were not as good as at KS1. There were a number of possible reasons for this, such as because it was a different cohort, or some may have moved out of care. At key stage 4, as a result of specific interventions over the years progress had been made since 2005 and there had been an increase in the number of young people in care gaining GCSE’s. It was noted that across all age groups huge efforts had been made to get to know and be interested in the young people. Foster carers and social workers were in regular contact with schools and there was an expectation that CIC would attend school and do well.

The Committee were advised that from January 2010 Haringey schools and social workers were to adopt the Pan London personal education plan. This PEP was considered an easier document to work with and  would be more useful to a range of agencies.  Each young person’s PEP was to be reviewed twice during the Academic year, in October and again in March. There were four sections to each PEP which would enable different professionals to provide information most relevant to their professional expertise. The action to be taken to improve the current low completion rate was outlined. It was noted that the new PEP’s would be monitored by both the Authority and by OFSTED

RESOLVED:

That the Committee receive a report on the take up and success of the training to be provided to teachers in relation to CIC, including the implementation of PEPs.