Agenda and minutes

The Chairman welcomed everyone to the Meeting and in particular Councillor Lorraine Lindsay-Gale, the new Cabinet Member for Education & Cultural Services, and Kim James, the new Head of Learning and School Improvement.

An apology for absence and temporary appointment was received as follows:

To approve the minutes of the meetings held on 18 June 2018 and 27 June 2018 (ESC4) and to receive information arising from them.

The Minutes of the Meeting held on 18 June 2018 were signed as a correct record of the meeting subject to the following amendments:

Minute 98/18 – 5^th paragraph – replace ‘overllok’ with ‘overlook’

                         9^th paragraph – replace ‘found’ with ‘find’.

The Minutes of the Meeting held on 27 June 2018 were approved and signed as a correct record of the Meeting subject to the following amendments:

Minute 101/18 – 9^th paragragh - replace ‘dash board’ with ‘dashboard’

                           11^th paragraph – replace ‘done’ with ‘completed’.

Minute 102/18 – insert the text ‘work’ in the resolution.

1.00 pm

Report by the Director, Capital, Investment & Delivery (ESC6)

At the meeting in June 2018, the Committee received an initial update on the Council's response following the liquidation of Carillion. The report provides an update on the next phase of the plan which focuses on an assessment of the Carillion legacy issues - including completing projects that were underway, defects on completed projects and the management of the longer-term project risks such as latent defects. The report further provides an update on the progress with the assessments and the plans to establish a business as usual situation regarding these former Carillion projects.

The Education Scrutiny Committee is RECOMMENDED to:

(a)      note the progress in relation to the Recovery Plan;

(b)      note and comment on the proposed joint review on the maintenance of the schools estate.

At its meeting in June 2018, the Committee had received an initial update on the Council's response following the liquidation of Carillion. The Committee now had before it a report which provided a further update on the next phase of the plan which focused on an assessment of the Carillion legacy issues - including completing projects that were underway, defects on completed projects and the management of the longer-term project risks such as latent defects.

The report further provided an update on the progress with the assessments and the plans to establish a business-as usual-situation regarding these former Carillion projects.

Vaughan Burnard, Interim Head of Construction, and Varinder Raulia, Assistant Director Major Infrastructure Construction, attended to speak to the report and answer any questions the Committee might wish to ask.

In introducing the report, Mr Burnard explained that replacement contractors were now in place for all the in-flight projects and that most of the projects were now completed.  The Property Service had maintained regular contact with stakeholders to ensure that they were aware of the replacement arrangements, including the timescales for completing works.

An assessment had been carried out in June in relation to the rectification of known defects, including consideration of optimal solutions for rectification.  Costings and implementation plans would be considered by Cabinet in the Autumn as part of the budget setting process. 

Urgent defect rectification had been carried out since Carillion’s demise and c.£650k had been expended in doing so in order that schools affected could continue to operate. Although there were over 150 projects in the exercise, most were minimal in terms of scope. However, there were five key projects that required more substantial attention. They were:

(1)      Bodicote (Longford Park)

(2)      North West Bicester, (Gaglebrook)

(3)      Dicot, Great Western Park (Gems Academy)

(4)      McIntyre Academy SEN & Residential School (Endeavour/Ormerod)

(5)      Faringdon Junior School (Faringdon Academy)

He further explained that whilst it was important to note that correcting the defects was essential and would be undertaken as soon as possible, none of the projects presented a health and safety risk and therefore did not require immediate action.

In relation to the treatment of latent defects, he went on to explain that two options were being looked at: establishing an internal process to review Latent Defect claims from schools and if qualifying, correct them, funded by an OCC provision and a legal response to other parties in the OCC/Carillion contract to recover costs of OCC’s defect clearance and ongoing latent defect liabilities.

The other area of concern Mr Burnard drew the Committee’s attention to was the Schools Estate. It had become increasingly clear through the Carillion legacy assessment, audit work direct contact between schools and the Property Service that the position on repairs and maintenance of schools needed to be more fully assessed and quantified. Maintenance was currently delegated to schools and only became an OCC issue in rare cases where certain structural repairs were required that could be legitimately funded from the Schools Structural Maintenance Programme  ...  view the full minutes text for item 110/18

1.30 pm

The Committee will receive a presentation from the Deputy Director for Education about the draft Special Educational Needs and Disability Strategy. The strategy is intended to:

i.             Ensure the right type of special education provision in the right places to meet the needs of Oxfordshire’s growing population.

ii.            Enhance support for Oxfordshire’s mainstream schools to provide inclusive education.

iii.           Increase the effectiveness of the use of the High Needs budget to better meet the needs of children with Special Educational Needs & Disabilities.

The Committee received a presentation (a copy of which is attached to the signed copy of the minutes) from the Deputy Director for Education on the draft Special Educational Needs and Disability Strategy which had been developed to ensure the right type of special education provision was in the right place to meet the needs of Oxfordshire’s growing population; to enhance support for Oxfordshire’s mainstream schools to provide inclusive education; and to increase the effectiveness of the use of the High Needs budget to better meet the needs of children with Special Educational Needs & Disabilities.

In introducing the presentation, Deputy Director for Education, David Clarke, explained that the vision of the Strategy was that investing in and developing good quality local provision which met the need of children and young people with SEND within Oxfordshire – the right pupils in the right provision at the right place.

Oxfordshire County Council had a whole-hearted commitment to investing in and developing schools’ SEND provision for the children of Oxfordshire. The ‘local first’ approach would ensure that children and young people’s needs were at the core of our service planning. He further announced that they had appointed a new Head of SEND, Ms Jayne Howarth to oversee the process.

Oxfordshire was proud of the SEND education provision that was currently being delivered which enabled more children and young people with SEND to access local provision. The future programme and creative approaches were enabling the work to expand and deliver even better outcomes. 

He further outlined the challenges the council faced including the changing needs of SEND children, Mental Health issues, the need for better outcomes for mainstream schools, fixed term exclusions of children with SEND, together with:

•      Insufficient places

•      Increase in demand

•      High Needs Block funding pressures

•      OFSTED and Statutory requirements

The Committee noted that the Council maintained overall responsibility for SEND in all schools including academies, and that, whilst the Council were unable to impose the Strategy on all schools, it was now written into the specification for all new schools.

Mr Clarke, during the presentation set out proposals to support the Council’s mainstream schools, particularly around assessments, including: the integration of the high needs project; funding following the child in order to support schools keeping the child; SEND advisors; and a Countywide admission panel to establish where the need was around the County.

The Chairman reiterated the need to keep pressure up on the high needs block funding, as Oxfordshire remained very low in comparison to Buckinghamshire and suggested that he write again to the Government to lobby them in relation to the low funding.

Carole Thomson reported that she was a member of the F40 Executive which had a parliamentary lobby on the 15 October 2018 and that she would email the representative to ensure that the high needs block formed a part of that.

RESOLVED: 

(a)          to note the report and ask officers to report back progress in six months;

(b)          ask the Chairman and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 111/18

2.00 pm

The Committee will receive a verbal update that will cover outcome trends at each key stage and include:

·                Early years foundations stage

·                Phonics check ( Year 1)

·                Key Stage One ( Year 2)

·                Key stage Two ( Year 6)

·                Key stage Four ( Year 11)

·                Key Stage Five ( Year 13 )

A more detailed report will be brought to a future Committee meeting.

The Committee received a brief presentation (a copy of which is attached to the signed copy of the minutes) on outcome trends at each key stage, including work in progress on raising standards across all key stages to raise the number of good and outstanding schools in Oxfordshire and to raise the percentage of students reaching the ‘standard’ at all key stages to achieve ‘Good schools for all pupils.” 

Initial results indicated that the trend of improvement year on year continued, and officers anticipated to see the impact of focused work carried out in KS1 Reading and Writing and that the proportion of children reaching a good level of development continued to be above that nationally.  However, the Head of Learning and School Improvement explained that many schools were yet to supply their exam data.

The Chairman indicated that the Committee had identified the lack of data sharing from schools to be an ongoing issue and with the agreement of the Deputy Director for Children’s Services, undertook to write to schools to encourage them to submit their examination data to the authority and to encourage them to sign up to the data sharing protocol that was being developed by the Deputy Director for Education and if schools still did not share their data, to escalate it where necessary to the Trustees.

The Committee requested that, when all the data was in and officers brought a detailed report came back to the Committee, for the locality data to be school-by-school data.  The Committee further suggested that all members of the Council be invited when the data is presented to the Committee.

To receive a verbal update from the Deputy Director for Education, David Clarke in relation to the Planning Decision for the Swan School Marston.

The Committee had requested an update in relation to the Planning Decision for the Swan School in Marston. 

Accordingly, David Clarke, Deputy Director Educatio, attended the Meeting to provide an update and answer any questions the Committee may wish to ask. 

Mr Clarke, in introducing the item, explained that unfortunately, due to the sensitivity of the situation and the uncertainty over whether the proposed school would get planning permission in time to open in 2019, there was not much to report on at the current time.

He went on to explain that officers were unable to provide specific details at this time as they were in meetings with the Education and Skills Funding Agency and those meetings were complex and difficult meetings with multiple threads to the negotiations. He assured the Committee that officers were currently working with existing schools to plan contingency arrangements and looking at all temporary options should it become necessary and that urgent negotiations with ESFA had started to advance the situation. 

The Committee expressed concern over the admissions process for the Swan School.  The OCC website had referred to an alternative admissions process for the school and referred parents to the Swan School Website.  However, no application process had appeared on the Swan School Website and the link on the River Learning Trust Website was broken.  Members felt that the Council had a duty of care to ensure that the admissions process for any school should be available for day one of the admissions process.

The Committee also noted that Oxford university had announced a new graduate college was due to open with over 800 graduate spaces, some of which would be bringing children which could potentially impact on the Swan School numbers and place planning.

The Deputy Director undertook to look into putting something on the website in response to these points.

Members considered the forward programme of items and agreed items for the December and March meetings as shown below (changes shown in bold italics and strikethrough). Due to the extent of Items on the forward plan, it was agreed that the Chairman, Deputy Chairman and Labour spokesperson, together with officers would scope and move items to fit in with when data and officer resource was available.