Agenda item

Councillor Neghat Khan, Portfolio Holder for Education and Skills gave a presentation to the Committee regarding progress of Council Plan objectives relevant to her Portfolio and future plans for the Portfolio. She highlighted the following points within each Council Plan priority:

(a)  Ensure every child in Nottingham is taught in a school judged good or outstanding by Ofsted: 

·  87% of pupils attend schools judged as good or outstanding by Ofsted, which is 2% above the national rate of 85% and 5% higher than statistical neighbours.

·  Local Authority maintained schools in the Requiring Improvement category are being allocated additional targeted School Improvement Advisor support.

·  Nottingham City Council continues to liaise with the Regional Schools Commissioner for East Midlands and Humber and with the County Council Cabinet member for Education around schools in the County attended by City students;

(b)  Guarantee a preference for places for every child at a local primary school:

·  96% of pupils obtaining a place at their first or second preference primary school in 2018.

·  There are challenges surrounding access to a first preference primary school through the ‘in-year’ admissions process, as well as there being pressure in upper year primary places due to a large influx of new arrivals to the City.

·  The primary expansion plan has delivered around 5000 new places since 2010 and the expansions at Glade Hill and Middleton will create over 400 more places combined;

(c)   Reduce absence from school by a quarter:

·  School absence rate at the end of the 2017/18 academic year was 4.5%, which is 0.2% higher than the national average.

·  Work to reduce this figure includes the Every Day Counts initiative, truancy patrols, the Check and Challenge hotline and the recommencement of fines following the outcome of the Isle of Wight case. The Lord Mayors Attendance Awards for primary school children continues to be rolled out and expanded.

·  The Local Authority is working towards accessing live attendance data from all schools to enable effective target setting and early intervention strategies;

(d)  Increase the number of young people getting good GCSEs in English and Maths to be above the national average:

·  This remains challenging with Nottingham ranked 144 out of 149 Local Authorities.

·  Results from 2017 and 2018 are not directly comparable given changes in grading systems, however the unvalidated results from 2018 suggest a significant gap from the national average.

·  In order to reduce the gap, the work of the Education Improvement Board is on-going, with funding of £1.2 million being allocated to ensure that this continues.

·  A teacher support and mentoring programme is in the early stages of development and learning from a school in Stoke on Trent ranked in the top 25% is being pursued.

·  Work will continue around the Key Stage 2-Key Stage 3 transition and recruitment and retention of high quality teachers remains a focus;

(e)  School exclusion rates were briefly discussed but the Chair proposed to examine the issues in detail in the next agenda item which was specifically focused on school exclusions;

(f)  Place within mainstream schools for pupils with special educational needs (SEN) remains a challenge. SEN pupils continue to be overrepresented in exclusion figures leading to a strain on alternative provision and special school places;

(g)  There are now 526 places available at special schools, this has increased following expansion at Westbury Special School;

Following questions and comments from the Committee the following further information was given:

(h)  Work is taking place with parents who choose to home school their children.  There are concerns that some schools are advising parents to take their children out of school instead of having them excluded. This concerning practice is being very closely monitored by the local authority and any issues relating to academies will be fed back to the Regional Schools Commissioner;

(i)  Schools involved in the expansion programme have all maintained their 30 pupil class size limit for Key Stage 1. Funding for these schools has been maintained proportionally.

RESOLVED to review the results for the percentage of pupils who achieved a strong pass (9-5) in English and Maths once the results have been validated.