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ITEM LC14(b)

LEARNING & CULTURE SCRUTINY COMMITTEE – 20 MAY 2003

Minutes of the meeting for county councillors, head teachers and chairs of governors in the Thame partnership of schools at Lord Williams’s School on Thursday, 20th March 2003, 4pm – 5pm

Present:

County Councillors: Andrew Brown, Alan Bryden, Shereen Karmali, Brian Hodgson, Neil Fawcett, Diana Ludlow, Jim Moley, Tony Crabbe.

Chairs of governing bodies/governors: Michael Thompson (St. Andrews), Diane Clough (Aston Rowant), Geoff Emerson (St. Joseph’s), Vivienne Hall (Tetsworth), Beatrice Dobie (Adult Community Learning).

Head teachers: Alan Haigh (John Hampden), Jackie Million (Mill Lane), Gill Copsey (St. Andrew’s), Celia Wilson (Aston Rowant), Mary Stiles (Thame Adult Community Learning), Alison Barrow Williams (Chinnor Community Education Centre), Rachel Caseby (St. Joseph’s), Anne Walkinshaw (Tetsworth), Michael Spencer (Lord Williams’s), John Hulett (Barley Hill).

School administrators: Dawn Armitage (Lord Williams’s).

Advisers: Richard Howard, Dorothy Kavanagh.

1. Welcome:

The group was welcomed by Michael Spencer, chair of the Thame partnership of schools.

2. Introduction:

Michael Spencer described the work of the partnership, emphasising the schools’ close and effective working relationship, including the two Buckinghamshire primary schools in the partnership.

3. Networked Learning Communities:

The Thame school partnership has made a successful bid for a Networked Learning Communities grant to enable them to work together to improve the quality of learning and raise standards in all partnership schools. This work is being carried out in collaboration with King’s College, London, and Cambridge and Reading Universities. John Hulett made a presentation, highlighting the key points:

• The NCL will provide up to £50,000 matched funding.
• A key feature will be evidence of collaborative working which proves to be time effective for all concerned.
• The involvement of teachers and support staff in joint training is crucial.
• The full use of broad band to support the work and share work and ideas across schools is expected.
• The partnership bid was approved in November 2002 and £25,000 (half of the total grant) has been received.

Question:

How will the success of the project be measured?

Answer:

The partnership will need to be able to demonstrate how staff are able to work effectively to achieve the objective of improving teaching and learning.

4. Open forum:

Councillors made it clear that they were keen to hear the issues that head teachers and governors felt to be important.

• Dawn Armitage presented a number of issues which are of concern to the partnership (paper attached). These included i) the job evaluation scheme, ii) MIS, iii) the new payroll service, iv) admissions.

Discussion points:

i) The job evaluation scheme.

ii) MIS and iii) the new payroll service.

In addition to the points made by Dawn Armitage:

• Alison Barrow Williams supported the concerns about payroll changes, outlining particular difficulties encountered in the case of part-time tutors.
• Mike Spencer emphasised that accounts should continue to be held at school level in the spirit of local management of schools.
• John Hulett pointed out that governors’ ability to make long term plans was being compromised by the lack of timely and reliable information on school budgets.

Councillors accepted all the criticisms that were made and confirmed that they were well aware of the serious nature of the problem outlined, as is the new head of ICT. They consider it a top priority to sort the matter out. In the longer term, they expect the new system to reduce the duplication of work.

Councillors affirmed their support of local management of schools and that they do not wish to change this.

Richard Howard proposed that a representative from the Strategic ICT team should visit the partnership and discuss issues of concern with the administrative staff.

iv) Admissions

Councillors made it clear that they understood the issues and know that they need to streamline the process (within present resources) and focus on the needs of individual pupils.

Dawn Armitage emphasised that no criticism of schools’ advisers or officers was being implied. Schools felt well supported and had excellent relationships with them.

• Additional issues:
• Question:

Do any classes in partnership schools have more than 30 pupils?

• School meals:

• Small School budgets:

5. On behalf of the partnership, Michael Spencer thanked the LEA staff and councillors for providing the opportunity for this open and frank discussion. Tony Crabbe, on behalf of the councillors, thanked the schools for their warm welcome throughout the day and for the very useful and informative discussion that had just taken place.

Lord Williams’s School

Briefing Paper – 20^th March 2003

Job Evaluation Scheme

Large numbers of schools are opposed to the imposition of this Scheme because:

• Schools were not consulted about the introduction of the scheme.
• There appears to have been no consultation over which scheme was chosen and the NJC Scheme gives no examples of and makes no reference to school based posts
• There is a contradiction between schools operating under Local Management procedures and the County Council imposing rates of pay
• Schools which have valued support staff and paid at local market rates in order to recruit may be penalised.
• Reducing (already low) rates of pay will demotivate school staff and cause huge recruitment and retention problems in schools.
• 3 years’ pay protection is insufficient to protect staff in schools as there will be very limited opportunities for re-deployment. It is more likely that we will lose valued and trained staff to the private sector
• We have no confidence in the grading scheme: Indicative grades for teaching assistants indicate that they will commence on a lower rate of pay than cleaning staff
• School staff have not been trained to administer the scheme and yet very few school staff have been interviewed by County officers
• Staff have been allocated job overviews and the only basis for this appears to be their job title. This is a ludicrous situation
• County officers are preparing to introduce pay increases in June but have not yet advised us how market supplements or recruitment and retention points will work

MIS

Schools have expressed considerable concerns over the introduction of MIS. In summary these are:

• Lack of formal consultation on the decision to introduce MIS. Road shows were organised to provide limited information but came after the decision had been made.
• Lack of information on the long-term consequences. What are the plans for personnel and student databases?
• Financial costs of re-locating services centrally – will there be duplication at school level?
• Lack of choice for schools in terms of service providers
• There is an implication that there will be a reduction in schools’ autonomy eg where will file servers be located, what control will we have over them?
• A centralised payment system will result in a lack of control by schools and risk of severe reduction in service levels both to schools and our suppliers etc.
• Will schools be able to retain their own bank accounts?

Payroll

Schools have noticed a significant deterioration in the services that they receive from the County. This is particularly true of the payroll service. The main areas of concern are as follows:

• The new payroll service was introduced without consultation.
• The re-organisation of the staff teams means that there are insufficient trained staff to provide the service.
• There are countless errors with payments and these have taken too long to resolve. We do not have confidence that the staff have the skills to rectify problems.
• Closing telephone lines is totally unacceptable particularly when staff are only available to take calls when many school staff are off duty.
• The service now costs us more yet is of significantly poorer quality.
• In theory we should be able to terminate our contract for this service, in practice the intertwining of all the management systems means that schools do not have a choice.

Admissions

• Staff dealing with admissions appear inexperienced and do not appear to have control over the work.
• Information on admissions was late being posted to parents and late arriving in schools causing considerable administrative difficulties
• Despite new IT systems, the Admissions Team appear to be operating with out of date information. This is despite the fact that schools are sending in monthly data transfers.
• Our confidence in the way the County Council handles our admissions has been considerably dented.
  
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