Agenda item

1.10 pm

Report by Head of School Improvement and Learning (ESC6).

This Annual Education Performance Report 2017-2018 gives a summary and overall analysis of key outcomes and progress measures as well as analysis by key cohorts.

The Education Scrutiny Committee is RECOMMENDED to note the report for discussion.

The Committee had before it the Annual Education Performance Report which set out a summary and overall analysis of key outcomes and progress measures as well as analysis by key cohorts for Oxfordshire Schools.

In introducing the report, David Clarke, Deputy Director for Education and Kim James, Head of Learning and School Improvement, stressed Oxfordshire needed to have good schools and that those schools needed to be good for all groups of children.  As a result of the data analysis, a new post had been put in place to concentrate on the tackling education disadvantage project, including projects on spelling, vocab and mathematics.  There had been a good take up on the DfE funded projects, with 24 schools partaking in the math project and 17 schools in the writing project.  Kim James outlined the key messages from the data as follows:

·                     Early Years Foundation Stage outcomes continued to increase and remained above the national average with 74% achieving a good level of development at the end of early years foundation stage.

·                     Phonics screening outcomes continued to increase and remained in line with the national average, with more than 8 in 10 meeting expected standards.

·                     Key stage 1 outcomes remained above national in both reading and mathematics.

·                     Writing had increased at a greater rate than that nationally and in 2018 was just below the national average.

·                     Key stage 2 performance in Oxfordshire in 2017 was at national, in 2018 Oxfordshire attainment rose by 1% but the national performance rose by 2% thus Oxfordshire was now 1% below the national average.

·                     GCSE average Attainment 8-point score was slightly above the national average.

·                     The performance of pupils known to be eligible for free school meals (FSM) / disadvantaged continued to be an area of focus, remaining in the lowest quartiles for all key stage performance measures.

·                     The performance of pupils with SEND support increased at both key stage 1 and 2. Performance decreased for this group of pupils in the Early Years Foundation Stage profile and phonics screening.

The Committee made the following point during discussion:

Concern was expressed that disadvantaged children had been flagged in every Key Stage.  Ms James responded that Oxfordshire did fall below the national Average and agreed that focus and improvement was needed in this Area.  The Scrutiny Committee were due to undertake a Review of Education Attainment and attainment for disadvantaged pupils and officers expected there would be reviews would arise from the outcomes.

In response to Members’ request, officers agreed to provide ‘A Level’ data in numbers as well as percentages.

Following a question around what officers were doing in relation to vulnerable learners, Ms James reported that a new post had been put in place to focus on pupil premium and SEND.  Lucy Mettyear who had taken on the role was carrying out a lot of work with schools to try and improve the uptake of pupil premium, visiting good practice schools, looking at what the barriers to learning were and drilling down into Pupil Premium data.

The Committee noted that other authorities had an advantage if they were a Unitary Authority as they knew who the pupils were.  Oxfordshire would benefit from looking at the very good models adopted by other authorities.

The Chairman commented that the Committee needed to lobby Government on this issue as it was just about data exchange but was having a large impact on school finances.

The Committee noted that there was a clear demarcation in Oxfordshire of children with SEN or disadvantaged pupil and those without and that the gap was widening.

The Chairman commented that it would be useful to get trend data on schools that were achieving consistently above the national average including how many disadvantaged children the school had and the same data for consistently under performing schools.

The Committee noted that Ofsted were looking at spend and linkage on education progress of children and that only 3 Ofsted inspections in the last year did not mention disadvantaged children.

Following debate, the Committee thanked officers for the report and AGREED that the Chairman and the Cabinet Member for Education & Cultural Services write a letter to the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Education, copying in all Local MPs regarding families not coming forward to declare their eligibility for pupil premium and looked forward to the all member briefing on this matter.