Agenda item

12.20

Janet Johnson, Strategic Lead for Vulnerable Learners, will attend for a discussion of the role of the Oxfordshire Hospital School and the current challenges it faces.

The Committee had before them a report on the Oxfordshire Hospital School (OHS).  Ms Janet Johnson, Strategic Lead for Vulnerable Learners in introducing the report explained that the school was made up of 3 sectors:

The Children’s Hospital section encompassed teaching at the Children’s Hospital, the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre and Helen & Douglas House Hospice.

The Highfield (an adolescent unit for the assessment and treatment of 11 – 18 year olds with a wide range of acute mental health issues) had 18 beds plus two high dependency beds. The Highfield served children from Oxfordshire and nearby counties, and referrals are accepted from anywhere in England if an emergency bed was required.

The Outreach Teaching Sector was based at The Harlow Centre in Oxford. OTS supports the education of children and young people in Oxfordshire unable to attend school due to their medical or mental health needs. This group of children were not in-patients but may attend a hospital as out patients.

In 2015/16 OHS had a budget of approximately £1.6m and end of year balances of £0.526m (32% of the annual formula funding). Local authorities might advise the Education Funding Agency of changes to hospital education place numbers through the place change request process in October/November each year. For 2014-15 an exceptional case was made to the EFA by the school, supported by the authority, and was accepted.  One of the significant changes behind the case related to the new Highfield Adolescent Unit. This resulted in an additional £267,805 being received by the authority and allocated to the Hospital School. Therefore the school’s budget allocation for 2014-15 increased to £1,606,831.

For 2015-16 an exceptional case was made by the school but was not accepted by the DfE, so the allocation for 2015-16 remained at £1,606,831. Schools generally had not seen inflationary increases since 2011-12, and the funding source for the Hospital School and other High Needs provision, the High Needs block of Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG), had been frozen at 2012-13 budget levels with no adjustment for pupil demographic changes other than specific cases approved as part of the exceptions process mentioned above.

The view of local authority officers was that referring to funding for a number of places was unhelpful and not relevant for hospital education. Currently the system of funding was not based on any proxy indicators or a formulaic funding system and so was not fit for purpose. It was based on historic levels of spend which did not encourage efficient use of resources. Members of Schools Forum consider that schools should not be charged for services for which OHS was being directly funded.

Further challenges were that the school had an interim Headteacher with a substantive post holder beginning in September. 

There were also uncertainties about the existing accommodation in the Harlow Centre and the school was likely to move. The service also used Early Intervention hubs for outreach work and they were therefore exploring alternatives, but new venues might incur some charges. OHS has over £50k devolved capital reserves, in addition to the 2015/16 balances. It was estimated that the likely move and costs incurred will be between £40k to £100k.

In terms of the outreach teaching sector 101 children were taught in 2014/15 (the children came from 1 special school, 7 primary, 26 secondary, 1 independent college). In 2013/14 OHS was allocated £450k to provide for children medically unfit to attend school. The hospital school supports children from neighbouring areas, including Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Bedfordshire and Warwickshire. There is no longer any inter-authority recoupment.

A paper on OHS, setting out the current position and challenges, was discussed at Schools Forum on 15 June 2016.  A review of roles and responsibilities was being undertaken to clarify the legal position and charging arrangements.  Relevant documents included: Section 19 of the Education Act, and statutory guidance ‘Education for Children with Health Needs who cannot attend Schools’, DfE, May 2013 and ‘Supporting pupils at school with medical conditions’, guidance for governing bodies of maintained schools and proprietors of academies in England DfE 2014.

The local authority would submit another exceptions case to the EFA in the autumn to highlight how the current funding approach was not fit for purpose.

Mr Gareth Lewis, Interim Head of the Oxfordshire Hospital School set out his views that following his appointment in January2015, he soon became aware of significant faults lines relating to the schools funding, accommodation, capacity and sustainability, particularly in relation to the Outreach Service it ran on behalf of the Local Authority. He believed that the first and most major fault line was that due to historic rise in local demand for Outreach Services, outstripping the designated budget and funding frozen at 2013 levels, funds meant for Hospital Based Provision had been diverted to subsidise Outreach funding deficits. DfE funds for Local Outreach Service equated to 28% of total OHS income, and accounted for 40% of total expenditure. 

Although there were some strategic adjustments a school could make to cover shared central costs admin and management costs, in his opinion, this situation should never been allowed to happen on this scale. In effect Outreach nominal funded capacity had been dangerously exceeded through wrongly drawing on core Hospital Provision funds. Even taking this into account, the Local Outreach Service was at breaking point due to insufficient funds to maintain current staffing levels and the absence of “fit for purpose” accommodation, which included overcrowding and occasionally unsafe and insecure situations having to be managed by a very committed and tolerant Outreach staff team.

Besides Home Tuition, the Outreach Service currently operated from:

The Harlow Centre (Oxford Base)

Early Intervention Hubs at Abingdon, Banbury, Bicester and Witney

None of those were currently deemed suitable or fit for purpose and the school would not be able to access some of the hubs from Christmas 2016 and they would be totally unavailable from 31st March 2017. There were currently no concrete plans in place to cover relocation or a budget to fund relocation or potential rental costs. It had also became clear that the authority were not in a position to allocate additional funds and that the school would be reliant on utilising reserves to maintain our teaching capacity and to give a successor time to undertake a realignment to redress the incorrect allocation of funds for Hospital Based to Local Outreach Services.

This would also buy time for the authority to make a compelling case increase funds from the DfE to meet the growing demand for LA Outreach Services. This process would necessitate defining our current capacity for Outreach to continue to operate within safe and secure limits and allow us some prospect of gaining Outstanding when next Ofsted Inspected. In his view a Service Level Agreement and a submission to the DfE for increased funding needed to be completed by 31st August.

The Chairman thanked Mr Lewis for his presentation whist noting that at the very least the Authority should be able to get a Service Level Agreement drafted by 31 August and therefore proposed to ask officers to work with Mr Lewis in order to get a Service Level Agreement in place for the 31 August.

RESOLVED: (nem con) Accordingly.