Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from Karen Allen (Chair), Graham Bett, Julie McBrearty, Martin Towers and Suzanne Uprichard.

Ms Jo Beaumont was substituting for Karen Allen and Mr Chris Parkinson (Vice-Chair) was chairing the meeting in the absence of the Chair.

The minutes of the meeting held on 23 February 2022 were agreed.

Matters Arising

Jenny Lawrence reported that she had received an email from Martin Towers before the last meeting with a set of questions and queried whether they should have been presented with the minutes.  Jenny agreed to send out those questions and answers as an addendum to the minutes to Members.

Jenny clarified that this proposal was one decision for maintained primary and secondaries.  Representation was quorate from maintained schools however small.

Chris Parkinson suggested that the paper was presented by Ted Walker but recorded in order to send to those representatives who are eligible to vote, and a vote taken by email return rather than taking a decision with a very small level of representation.  Jane Moore agreed with this suggestion but that a tight deadline would have to be put in place.  Jenny explained the process and timescales involved and it was agreed that responses should be emailed in by 9.00 am on Monday 28 March 2022 with a clear indication that a non-return is taken as approval of this proposal.

Ted introduced the report which presents De-delegation for School Improvement Proposal.  Ted explained that the local authority had over the past few years received a grant from the DfE which is the Local Authority Monitoring and Brokerage (LAMB) Grant, which covers the work of school improvement and the maintenance of its local authority maintained schools.

Following a consultation at the end of 2021 a decision was made in January for the DfE to withdraw this grant in a phased process.  Ted stated that for 2022/23 50% of the grant would be withdrawn and for subsequent years the whole grant would be removed.  Ted said that for Leicestershire that represented approximately £160,000 in 2022/23 and £330,000 for subsequent years.  Ted reported that to replace this funding an amount of £9 per pupil had been identified for 2022/23 and outlined the school improvement functions this funding was for as described in the consultation paper.  Ted said that without this funding the local authority would lose the capacity to do this work with maintained schools and the proposal was to replace that.  Ted added that the consultation sent to maintained schools came back with a largely consistent response around the questions that were asked and specifically the ultimate question of whether maintained schools support the proposal out of 20 schools; 14 said yes to supporting, 2 had no opinion and 4 did not support.  Ted outlined the reasons for the 4 schools who did not support the proposal.

Ted summarised that this largely represented the proposal and summary of feedback and the consequence of not doing this would be an inability of the local authority to perform any school improvement functions with maintained schools which was articulated in the paper but actually the proposal suggested that it was not a very good strategy to leave schools by themselves without any kind of checks and balances and support but that experience of the past had been proactive and developmental work with schools is going to be a more effective and sustainable model going forward if the local authority was going to continue to maintain schools.

Ted reiterated that in this process the money would only be used for the benefit of maintained schools and not part of a wider universal offer that the local authority had with academies and all schools.  Ted stated that it was not possible to carry forward this money therefore any unspent monies on school improvement for maintained schools and collected would be returned to schools, possibly through the collaborative groups for schools to then use.

Chris Parkinson asked if there was a proposal to charge more than £9.  Ted stated there was no proposal and the £9 was set as a short-term offer to maintain the current system for another year but one of the questions in the consultation was whether a more detailed and sustainable longer-term  ...  view the full minutes text for item 160.

There was no further business to discuss.

Monday 6 June 2022, 2.00 – 4.00 pm via Teams.