Agenda item

To receive a presentation from the Quality Assurance Principal Manager

Mark Bayley, Quality Assurance Manager, attended to provide a presentation on school improvement, addressing issues around the changing national landscape.

Mark firstly touched upon the changing status of schools, noting that there was not only a shift in terms of maintained schools towards Academies but that there were also other alternative models such as Free Schools, University Technical Colleges (UTC) and Studio Schools available. Explaining the principle of the UTC further, Mark described how these would be a 14-19 school that worked closely with industry and/or business. He reported that Reaseheath College had recently attempted to bid for this status but had been unsuccessful.

A number of comments were made about UTCs. Firstly, it was suggested that they could potentially create an issue as there were only a small number of middle schools in Cheshire East. Therefore, in any admission arrangement the UTC would be accepting pupils who already had a secondary school place – potentially causing disruption in year and class sizes. It was also queried whether the Council would have a responsibility to transport young people to the UTC and whether any extra funding would be made available for this. Tony Crane, Deputy Director of Children's Services, explained that the detail on UTCs had yet to fully emerge but that he would explore the issues raised and get back to the Committee with a response.

Mark Bayley continued to explain the ramifications on the accountability of school performance following the changing status of schools. He explained that as schools became increasingly autonomous from the Council they would be expected to take more responsibility for their own school performance. Aligned to this, the role of the Department for Education (DfE) in school performance had also changed. Mark reported that the DfE had recently established a ‘School Underperformance and Brokerage Division’ in which a number of national advisors had been appointed to work with local authorities and schools around Academy conversions, warning notices and Interim Executive Boards. The DfE had also revised national floor standards and had identified approximately 500 schools which had performed at or below the new thresholds over the last three years. Mark noted that there was one Cheshire East school on this list but that the Council were confident that the school had made the necessary improvements to come off the list.

It was queried that if an Academy returns a poor performance who or what body would be accountable for improving this. Mark confirmed that there was not currently a division in the DfE who would address this issue. A comment was also made that this issue was further complicated by the fact the Council had a statutory responsibility to intervene for those children and young people with a special educational need, even if they were in an Academy school. Tony Crane acknowledged that this was an issue and suggested that the Committee work with the department to draft some ideas about what the Council response would be to a failing Academy.

Moving on to discuss what further options were available to aid school performance, Mark Bayley drew attention to the emergence of teaching schools. These had initially been appointed nationally and Cheshire East had two – Fallibroome and Holmes Chapel Academies. Phase 2 of the process had seen a Crewe partnership of schools emerge as a teaching school. Mark reported that a strategic partnership between the Council and teaching schools had been formed in order to utilise a range of resources to bring about further school improvement through effective school to school support. The Council also had the option to use National Leaders in Education – nationally identified exceptional school leaders who offered direct support to underperforming schools.

As a final point, Mark noted that there was a new Ofsted Inspection framework. Further changes to the framework were currently being consulted on and it was suggested that the Committee Members could contribute to this by email prior to the 3 May 2012 deadline.

RESOLVED –

a)    That the presentation be received

b)    That the Deputy Director of Children's Services be requested to explore the issues raised around admission and transport arrangements with regard to University Technical Colleges and report the findings to the Committee.

c)    That the Ofsted Inspection Framework consultation document be emailed to Committee Members so that any possible responses can be collated prior to 3 May 2012.