Agenda item

The Committee considered a report of the Director of Children and Young People’s Service which presented the first monitoring report outlining the progress made in implementing the Leicestershire Education Excellence Partnership (LEEP) and the performance of schools and inspection outcomes.  A copy of the report is filed with these minutes.

The following points arose from discussion:

 i.          There was a strong desire from schools to work in partnership through the LEEP.  All schools in Leicestershire were currently represented.  However, to ensure this continued, the operation of the LEEP would need to be supported with evidence of it achieving positive outcomes;

ii.          The Internal Audit Service had been conducting a review to assess the local authority’s approach for securing improvement through the LEEP and to ensure this was sufficiently robust.  This would be completed early next year and the final report would be shared with the Committee in spring 2014;

iii.          The £350,000 funding allocated in the County Council’s Medium Term Financial Strategy in February 2013 was not a school improvement budget.  Such funding had been allocated to support the development of the partnership with a view to encouraging schools to work together to secure improvements and thus making the best use of the resources now allocated directly to them for this purpose;

iv.          Separate funding in the sum of £248,000 had been allocated by the County Council for Schools Causing Concern.  This had been carefully targeted to those local authority maintained schools judged to be inadequate or at risk of an adverse inspection and therefore requiring the most support;

v.          Information about the LEEP had been distributed to all School Governor chairs and briefings had been held to ensure details of the partnership arrangements were widely available.  It was requested that further efforts be made where possible to distribute information by email direct to school governors who were not always kept informed if they were unable to attend governor meetings.

vi.          Details of the LEEP had been made available to schools on the Education Information Service (EIS) and it operated a webpage and an inbox through which queries could be raised or requests for information made.  For the future, it was proposed that specific contacts would be established for schools requiring support which would be made widely available;

vii.          Neither Ofsted nor academies were obliged to notify the local authority of any concerns raised following an inspection.  However, the LEEP offered the opportunity for details of any concerns to be shared and addressed collaboratively.  The LEEP approach supported the view that schools were best placed to support other schools experiencing difficulties;

viii.          The Authority would not provide direct support to an academy in need of assistance, as it no longer received the funding necessary to do this.  However, as part of the LEEP, the Authority would promote academies to work in partnership to provide such support and would offer direction and guidance where possible;

ix.          In response to members questions about the role of academy sponsors, the Committee noted that:

·           The Department for Education directed the local authority to seek a sponsor for any school judged to be in special measures in line with statutory guidance.  That sponsor then became accountable for that school;

·           A school had to be judged to be outstanding by Ofsted in order for it to be able to sponsor another school.  If during the sponsorship that school was subsequently judged by Ofsted not to be ‘outstanding’, another sponsor would need to be found. The local authority would continue to broker support and would be accountable until the point of conversion;

·           A large proportion of schools in Leicestershire had been rated good or outstanding.  The Authority was therefore keen to encourage, wherever possible, for a Leicestershire school to sponsor another Leicestershire school causing concern.  This would help to keep relationships strong within the LEEP as schools improved;

·           It would be the local authority’s role to hold a sponsor to account and it had therefore been keen to establish links early on with possible sponsors coming into the Leicestershire area. The Authority was in discussions with external sponsors (which could be another school or a private company) and some of these discussions had been positive in terms of their desire to work with the LEEP.

RESOLVED:

(a)   That the content of the report be noted;

(b)   That it be noted that the outcome of the Internal Audit Service review of the Authority’s approach for securing school improvement arrangements for Leicestershire would be reported to the Committee in the Spring of 2014.