Agenda item

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 with schools to manage and contain this decrease in funding to provide the support needed in 2022/23.

-       Grateful to the Scrutiny Panel for inviting people to speak and provide evidence on this subject of schools. It was important for the Council to maintain relationships with the Church diocese as it continues to consider school numbers and planning places together with the support needed to a variety of schools.

-       The Cabinet Member added that she had attended the learning event on exclusions, referred to by the AD for Schools and Learning , and she commented on the good progress made in support , positively impacting on the most vulnerable students as exclusion numbers had reduced. It was noted that the Haringey Education Department [HEP] was working well on early intervention programmes and offering alternative placements for a while and then allowing children& young people to go back into their mainstream school. This successful approach was being developed further, in the next couple of the months.

In response to questions from Cllr Gordon, Cllr Chandwani, and the Leader of the Council, the following information was provided.

-       With regards to the action, being taken on absenteeism and where children/young people were frightened to come back because of issues from the pandemic, attendance was recorded, monitored and discussed each week. During the pandemic schools were contacting families that they were most concerned about on a daily basis to assess how they were doing.

-       The AD for Schools and Learning provided information on the Council’s statutory requirement, through the Schools Welfare team, to pursue non-attendance. This team dealt with intransigence issues and was making sure children and young people were enrolled and getting to school. However, there was work done with schools, well before, Welfare services became involved to support schools to improve attendance of some pupils.

-       The Council could identify attendance issues through their daily monitoring activities which included considering data to understand if was a pattern of absences developing or where they identified that the absences were going above a certain level. The AD for Schools and Learning was happy to provide more detail outside of the meeting.

-       Responding to the question on the support for BAME children who were under achieving but not at risk of exclusion, there was work being completed by the BAME achievement group and it was noted that Black Afro Caribbean student’s attainment at Commerce House had significantly improved.

-       The Cabinet Member noted that there was good improvements across the borough on attainment and it was important to celebrate all successes in attainment and not just in GCSE and A level exams. There was an online Saturday academy, which had over 80registered pupils. This was a supplementary school for year 7 and year 4 to help improve attainment.

-       The Director for Children’s Services outlined that there was a high focus by teachers and schools on a framework and contained strategies for narrowing the attainment gap for BAME students.

-       It was noted that , the curriculum was reviewed and updated to be culturally appropriate. Examinations would be likely reinstated nationally and would help further measure progress in attainment. There was focus on all BAME group and this included support for parents to help their children with attainment.

-       There was a question on how the Council focus on support to different ethnicity groups given the way the data was collated. A big minority of BAME groups such as Turkish and Kurdish pupils could be hidden under ‘white other’ in schools data. It was noted that the Council did have data on the BAME ethnic groups; it was collected locally, and provided a focus for the Schools service. It was noted that this data could be collected at every level. The Council could analyse and extrapolate this data to gain a constant understanding of how different BAME cohorts were performing. This data was also used with school improvement partners to challenge schools around outcomes and underpinned part of the BAME pledge programme. This helped ensure outcomes for BAME children and young people as good as can be.

RESOLVED

1. To consider the report and recommendations of the Scrutiny Committee attached at Appendix 1 and Appendix 3.

2. To agree the response to these recommendations attached at Appendix 2 to the report.

Reasons for decision

On 29 November 2021, the Overview and Scrutiny Committee met to approve the recommendations of the scrutiny review of the Haringey Family of Schools.

In its work, which contributed to the report, the Children and Young People’s Scrutiny Panel held several evidence gathering sessions and took evidence from Council officers and key stakeholders. The CYP Scrutiny Panel then made several recommendations, which were adopted by the Overview and Scrutiny Committee at its meeting on 29 November 2021.

Alternative options considered

None.