Meeting documents

(Agenda Item 5)

The Committee considered a report (CH5) which outlined proposals put forward by the Working Group (consisting of officers from the Learning Skills Council (LSC) and the County Council with representatives of CHOICE, the connections service, Colleges and Special Schools) for new Post-16 SEN provision in Oxfordshire based on:

Mr Simon Adams, Senior Education Officer, Ms Sarah Rusby, Partnership Advisor for the LSC for Milton Keynes, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, Dr Tony Eaude, Education Consultant and Dr Linda Hulin, CHOICE attended the Committee in order to give a presentation and to respond to questions from members. The Chairman also invited the Cabinet Member for Schools Improvement to the table in order to take part in the discussion.

Mr Simon Adams reported that the group had met on a number of occasions to look at this area and had made some progress, including a draft curriculum framework, to meet the needs of all youngsters aged between 16 and 22. The report before the Committee today outlined 3 options for the Cabinet’s consideration. The first option would be strengthening the existing arrangements, to which there were obvious drawbacks, not least the fact that there was no additional funding available for colleges from the Learning & Skills Council or from any other source, so if they were having difficulties meeting needs now financially these would continue.

Option 2, which was for colleges to fund provision in special schools (there were a couple of pilots in Oxfordshire where this was already happening) did not really resolve the big issue of parents wanting to have real choice. The third option, to extend the age range of some of the special schools would be the preferred option for many parents but would be very costly for the County Council.

Ms Rusby welcomed the opportunity to be part of this debate. She hoped that collectively these proposals ought to be able to predict and manage and meet the needs of individual young people in the future. She believed that the opportunities that the Children & Young People’s Trust provided, which was the opportunity to move away from budget constraints, and to think laterally about how to support young people’s learning needs, their health and social needs and to work across different agencies to enable young people to progress was the way forward. What the Learning & Skills Council were urging through this type of debate was that we don’t try and replace the system there hasn’t been working, but that we use this opportunity to actually develop provision that was different and actually responded to the government’s agenda around Every Child Matters and truly do this for young people with learning difficulties and disability and include within that a choice of the range of provisions that they were able to access, as was the case for other young people.

She stressed the need to phase these developments, to make sure that things were right and to use the curriculum framework as the mechanism for doing that, looking at what a young person needs and whether they were using the resources that had collectively been put in place.

Dr Halin spoke in support of the written statement by CHOICE tabled at the meeting (a copy of which is attached to the signed minutes), which outlined the findings of a questionnaire produced jointly by CHOICE and the County Council to assess parental satisfaction with the current post-16 SEN provision and to give parents the opportunity to state what their preferred option would be.

She welcomed the fact that CHOICE had been able to deliver their opinions to the local Education Authority and to the LSC and stressed that CHOICE recognised their flexibility in listening to them. She welcomed the stepped qualification allowed by the curriculum framework, which would look at not merely the cognitive ability of a child but also their social development divided into 8 steps, i.e. this group of children stay on for one year, the next group of children stay on for 2 years then others for 3 depending on where they were in that level of development and that level of development is then linked into what the colleges would offer should options 2 or 3 be adopted. This was much more likely to appeal to parents.

Following the presentations the Committee were invited to question Mr Adams, Mr Mill, Ms Rusby and Dr Hulin on Post-16 SEN Provision in Oxfordshire.

Following gathering evidence from all the witnesses and a lengthy debate (a record of which is attached to the signed minutes) the Committee AGREED to:

(Agenda Item 6)

The Executive had made decisions in respect of the recommendations from this Scrutiny Review on 24 July 2004 and 19 July 2005, the main objectives of the review were to:-

It had now been over a year since the (then) Executive agreed the recommendations of this Scrutiny Review. Accordingly, the Committee was asked to question the Cabinet Member for Schools Improvement and the Head of School Development in relation to the progress of implementing the Review recommendations that the (then) Executive had endorsed. Dr Tony Eaude, Education Consultant had also been invited to take part in the debate. A selection of the Committee’s questions together with the responses are listed below:

Following debate, the Committee AGREED to nominate Councillor David Turner and Mrs Sue Matthew to work in consultation with Ms Judith Morris and her Team to view documentation in relation to Faith Schools, including Ofsted Reports and information from the Equality & Diversity Award and report back to the Committee to advise whether they feel any further action is necessary with regard to this subject.

(Agenda Item 9)

Report back on advice by this Committee to the Cabinet or Council.

(Agenda Item 10)

Members were asked to suggest items from the current Forward Plan on which they might wish to have an opportunity to offer advice to the Cabinet before any decision was taken.

No items were identified.