Agenda item

Education update

To receive and consider the Education Update report.

Minutes:

Gillian Cole, Schools Service Manager presented the Education report.

 

Some of the main points made during her presentation are listed below:

 

·           During the summer term of 2021 schools continued to operate within the Department for Education (DfE) guidelines, with significant operational measures still in place;

·           Some off site school trips were re-instated towards the end of the summer term;

·           Some measures are still in place, such as the requirement that schools must continue to offer remote learning for those that cannot attend school because of Covid;

·           From 1 September 2021 there were changes to the mitigation restrictions, in line the government’s road map;

·           Schools have undertaken their own risk assessments and decided which measures they wished to continue with, depending on their context.  For example, some schools found that having staggered starts was helpful in terms of alleviating traffic around the school site, and decided to continue with this measure;

·           Lateral flow tests continue to be undertaken by secondary school pupils twice a week.  Lateral flow tests were also undertaken at schools before the term started;

·           School leaders continue to attend the weekly leadership team drop in sessions, with a high number of attendance.  Best practice is discussed in these sessions, with a public health consultant having attended the last session to give advice and guidance to schools;

·           A-Levels and GCSE’s moved to teacher assessed grades in 2021, this being a different method to the one used in 2020.  This incurred a significant increase in teachers’ workload and was a complex operation;

·           All performance tables remain suspended, with no national or local data available for analysis for the second year running;

·           Ofsted has undertaken some remote visits during 2020/21.  Those were monitoring visits with the aim to ensure that schools continued to provide good education in the current context.  Two schools in the Borough experienced those visits: Gorse Ride and Forest, both were judged to be providing effective education;

·           Substantive inspections were paused until September 2021.  Section 8 inspections (which cannot change the grading of a school) did take place in the summer term.  Section 8 inspections did, however, have the power to bring forward Section 5 inspections if it was found that the current grading no longer reflected the level of the school.  This happened to the Forest School (at the time of writing the report the result of this inspection was not available);

·           The full inspection programme had now re-started.  However, there is a delay of approximately 6 terms in the schedule;

·           The service was going to be working closely with the schools which were due to undergo inspections;

·           The report highlighted some of the key lines of work, such as: Racial equity at schools; therapeutical approaches and mental health strands.

 

During the discussion of the item the following comments were made:

 

·           Councillor Bray stated that the Forest School’s Ofsted report was now publicly available and that the school had been graded ‘Good’.  This was a fantastic result and a huge improvement from the previous grading.  She expressed her gratitude to the support received from the Council and gave credit to the work undertaken by the Headteacher to achieve such a good result;

·           Councillor Mickleburgh stated that areas outside and near schools were being targeted with anti-vaccination propaganda.  He asked if schools had raised this issue with WBC and what was being done to tackle this issue;

·           Gillian Cole stated that she was not aware of this occurrence and stated that she would take this back a look at ways in which to support schools to re-enforce a positive message around vaccinations;

·           Councillor Mickleburgh asked if there were any concerns around remote teaching and remote learning going forward;

·           Gillin Cole stated that it was important to recognise the additional workload involved in delivering remote learning.  She stated that schools were now better prepared, with resources on their websites and packs that could be sent to children at home.  Some staff who were unable to attend school had been able to support remote learning offer, which was positive;

·           Gillian Cole stated that since September attendance at school was again compulsory, so it was only the children who were awaiting test results or who had tested positive that were accessing remote learning.  This was being monitored by staff;

·           Councillor Mickleburgh asked for data in relation to the uptake of summer school catch up.  Gillian Cole stated that there had been a high uptake, however she did not have the data to hand and offered to circulate this information post meeting;

·           Councillor Mickleburgh asked for details of the Racial equity programme being rolled out to schools;

·           Gillian Cole stated that there had been work with a local black and minority ethnic stakeholder group across the education sector to develop programmes; the service had also commissioned the Reading International Solidarity Centre who have a lot of expertise in this field of work to do some facilitation with staff in order to help develop the strategy;

·           Some of the programmes are:

·           A planning for equity workshop for school leaders.  Leaders are being encouraged to bring along a person of colour or from an ethic minority who works in their school;

·           Stakeholder group working in the community engagement group developing activities for the black history month in the Borough;

·           Training is available to schools on developing an understanding unconscious bias;

·           Training sessions for school staff and governors led by Race Matters on racial literacy;

·           Work around auditing resources in primary schools and how they could be more equitable and around teaching about black history;

·           Work for secondary schools involved creating safe spaces for Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) pupils, training for staff to be able to facilitate workshops for pupils of colour, Staff Allies training for staff to review how incidents are reported;

·           Another element was working with Reading University led by students of colour mentoring pupils of colour in Wokingham secondary schools, this was at discussion stage;

·           Members commended the offer and felt it was very innovative;

·           Councillor Chadwick asked what was meant by the statement in the report which stated that Officers would be challenging schools;

·           Gillian Cole stated that the local authority’s statutory function was to support and challenge schools.  Conversations, in particular with schools which are due to have Ofsted inspections would be undertaken to challenge them and prepared them for inspections;

·           Councillor Bray asked for information about the pressure for primary school places created by the fact that Farley Hill school had moved sites, and the insufficiency of school places in the Strategy Development Location (SDL);

·           Gillian Cole confirmed that Farley Hill school had changed site, however the designated area and published admission number had not changed;

·           Piers Brunning, Senior Specialist Strategy and Commissioning (People and Place) stated that the local authority had a responsibility to ensure sufficiency of places across the Borough.  Creating additional places at that school could not be justified in the context of places within the area.  The garrison area, now the Arborfield Green community, had always been served by two schools: Farley Hill and Coombes.  The Coombes school had capacity to take more children.  The majority of the children in the area had been able to secure places in one of their preferred schools and within walking distance to their houses;

·           Councillor Bray asked what the role of the Council in a case was where a child with and Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP) was unable to secure a place in their preferred school, where the preferred school is an academy school;

·           Carol Cammiss offered to provide an answer outside of the meeting.

 

RESOLVED That the Education Update report be noted.

Supporting documents: