Issue - meetings

To consider a report of the Director of Children’s Services

Mark Bayley attended to provide a report which captured the performance of Cheshire East Schools in relation to Ofsted Inspection judgements/outcomes as well as summarising the interventions which were in place within Cheshire East’s schools.

In opening, it was reported that the service published a spreadsheet which outlined all of the available Ofsted Inspection data on Cheshire East’s schools. It was explained that whilst this was already in the public domain it would be useful if a hard copy could be distributed to Committee Members for information and review. It was also outlined that it was difficult for the service to make accurate comparisons of data from each Ofsted Inspection framework to the next. This was due to the parameters of measurement often changing and Members were asked to bear this mind when reviewing information.

Mark Bayley continued to outline the main headline issues from the report. Attention was drawn to paragraph 1.3 in which it was described how the commissioning of support from external Ofsted Inspectors to work with targeted schools had been introduced this year. It was reported that this had been a very successful initiative and had proved excellent value for money.

Further to this, it was reported that the recent Government White Paper had suggested that the frequency of inspections would be reduced for some schools. As had been previously explained, Cheshire East had been very successful in working alongside schools to improve performance. There were concerns therefore regarding how the Council could maintain the momentum of improvement if the ability to offer a wide range of interventions was reduced due to budgetary pressures. It was suggested that Members could get extra training on the inspection regime and intervention options and form a sub-group to gain a better understanding of the relevant issues in a changing policy landscape. It was noted that this issue would be discussed at the next mid-point meeting.

A breakdown summary of the recent Ofsted Inspections was provided. It was explained why the figure for Primary schools achieving ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ appeared lower than expected (54%). Principally, this issue related to the fact that Ofsted targeted schools in terms of those where the data or previous inspection suggested ‘lower performance’. Consequently, there had been a reduction in the number of inspections taking place in ‘higher achieving’ schools therefore skewing the results.

Attention was drawn to the fact that Ofsted Inspections were only ever a snapshot of school performance and that they should always be followed up by the Council’s own inspection work.   

As a final point, the issue around diversity of interventions was highlighted. It was explained that with such a wide range of interventions, it can be difficult for a strategic management team to understand all of the work and its subsequent outcomes. As a result, Cheshire East had produced a document (example provided as Appendix B in the report) to bring all of the intervention data together to help schools look strategically at issues and to monitor spending and impact.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 25