Issue - meetings

Report of the Director of Children’s Services. To be introduced by the Cabinet Member for Early Years, Children, and Families.

Cabinet to respond to the recommendations of the scrutiny review.

Cllr Gunes, Chair of the Children and Young People’s Scrutiny Panel introduced the Scrutiny Review on Haringey Family of Schools, thanking fellow Panel members and Co-opted members for their support and participation in the review.

She outlined that there were now a far greater variety of schools than previously, with a number of new types being established in recent years. The resulting fragmentation presented challenges for local authorities, which included ensuring that all schools were providing a good standard of education and planning and co-ordinating the provision of school places. Schools were also now subject to varying degrees of local democratic control and the capacity of local authorities to influence them had been diminished.

The Chair of the Children and Young People’s Scrutiny Panel referred to the demand for primary school places, which had reduced, and there was currently a significant surplus of reception places in Haringey. This had serious budgetary implications for many primary schools due to the way in which schools were funded. The drop in demand for places would feed through to secondary schools in due course. Demand for school places was subject to fluctuation though and there would be a need for sufficient places to be available to accommodate any future increases in demand for places.

The review report had looked at how the Council could respond most effectively and strategically to these issues and made a number of recommendations.

The Chair of the Children and Young People’s Scrutiny Panel continued to present the recommendations as set out in pages 4 to 7 of Appendix 3.

The Leader invited questions on the Scrutiny Review report.

There were questions from Cllr Bevan on the lessons learnt from the school learning event on exclusions, and when the follow up event would take place. It was noted that there was a learning event, last night, on exclusions with a further event planned for the summer considering inclusion in the borough.

It was noted a framework of support had been put in place to help schools at a much earlier stage when the pupil’s needs become apparent. There was particular focus in the framework on primary schools and the boundaries that are put in place during a school day. The AD for Schools and Learning offered to provide more details to the Cabinet Member for Housing, Licensing and Planning outside of the meeting.

Councillor Brabazon, Cabinet Member for Children, Families and Early Years welcomed the report and the discussion on school structures. She set out the Cabinet response to the scrutiny recommendations, highlighting the following:

-       That all of the recommendations were agreed or partially agreed.

-       The areas explored in the review concerning: admissions, finance, school numbers, SEND and academisation were significant issues in their own right for schools.

-       Paragraph 6.11 highlighted that the Department of Education had carried out a consultation on the school improvement and brokering gran. This was resulting in £250k being removed from the budget for supporting school improvement. The Council would be working  ...  view the full minutes text for item 731