Issue - meetings

Joint report of the Director of Education and the Corporate Director for Children and Adults

Nick Lee, Head of Access and Inclusion, and Ceri Walters, Head of Commercial Finance, introduced the report and delivered a presentation highlighting the following:

(a)  a multi-agency working group to explore early intervention and other models to decrease the rate of exclusion has been meeting monthly since from September 2017 to January 2018, with representation from secondary, primary, PRUs, education support services, social care, the youth offending team, the police and mental health services;

(b)  a problem profile was created and used to explore the impact of high exclusions on different phases of education. Learning was taken from the experience of five schools that took part in a pilot of having no permanent exclusions;

(c)  early intervention models being developed focus on behaviour support and early identification of indicators, priority families, and approaches to high profile issues such as knife crime and drugs;

(d)  there has been wider consultation of school stakeholders through the SEND Strategy consultation I November 2017, and local concerns have been identified with the Department for Education, Regional Schools Commissioner and Ofsted at a strategic level;

(e)  the working group and consultation has found that a reduction of secondary permanent exclusions is critical to provide both capacity on the system and financial sustainability. There is strong support from all sectors for a model of internal capacity building for mainstream schools in behaviour management and clearer referral pathways for children identified with behaviour challenges. There is also strong support for a resource unit model to enable referral for targeted short term intervention;

(f)  the pilot of schools not permanently excluding demonstrates that the model could work but that a total exclusion ban is very challenging given the inevitable occurrence of a small number of high profile incidents of serious concern. Permanent exclusion therefore needs to be an available option as a genuine last resort. It is critical that more excluded pupils are reintegrated to mainstream education and the managed move process is made more effective;

(g)  the revised model for secondary permanent exclusion detailed in the report should reduce the rate of permanent exclusion, and continues the work undertaken by the pilot schools. It is a quota model with penalties for exceeding the quota of permanently excluded pupils;

(h)  it is proposed to launch and roll out the Routes to Inclusion model, a toolkit being designed by SENCOs, focussing on pupils at risk of exclusion at primary and transition into secondary;

(i)  a Service Level Agreement (SLA) will need to be approved by secondary schools to begin the new model. Following this, a quality assurance model and expectations for Alternative Provision (AP) are being established, and outcomes for all pupils subject to AP will be tracked rigorously;

(j)  Fair Access Protocol management will be transferred back to the Local Authority (LA) from April 2018, which will allow information to be shared more seamlessly;

(k)  additional capital funding for resource units may be available through the SEND Strategy when it is published. Also, the LA is developing a  ...  view the full minutes text for item 22