Agenda item

1.10 pm

 

This Learner Engagement Strategy has been co-produced by key stake holders and partners engaged in optimising the inclusion in education of all Oxfordshire’s statutory school aged children.  The purpose is to ensure that children access their full educational entitlement to enable them to thrive as adults and fully participate in the economic, learning, personal and social life of Oxfordshire.

 

The Committee will receive an update from the Children’s, Education and Families Director team on the impact of Covid-19 on learner engagement and the current situation in education more widely.

 

The Education Scrutiny Committee is RECOMMENDED to consider and note this report.

 

 

 

The Committee had before it the Learner Engagement Strategy which had been co-produced by key stake holders and partners engaged in optimising the inclusion in education of all Oxfordshire’s statutory school aged children.  The purpose of the Strategy was to ensure that children accessed their full educational entitlement to enable them to thrive as adults and fully participate in the economic, learning, personal and social life of Oxfordshire.

 

Mr Hilliard, Consultant Deputy Director of Education reported in relation to COVID 19 that officers had continued to operate across the four service areas from the moment lockdown began using the business continuity plan.  A school brokering service and early years team were put in place immediately so if people with vulnerable children or key worker children were having difficulty placing their children, they were able to help. 

 

Looking at the bigger picture, an important decision taken early on was to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) for all schools which had had a significant impact on school confidence in opening to provide for vulnerable children and key worker children and then opening up further to other groups.  They were acutely aware that they were one education Services across all ages and therefore had made a grant available for PPE for nurseries and childminders etc, encouraging those organisations to keep going and provide support.

 

Weekly meetings had been carried out with the Department for Education and Ofsted throughout the crisis enabling officers to feed back the position on Oxfordshire which early indications show had been very positive.  Officers had received a wealth of support from Senior Officers and Members.

 

Mr Chris Hilliard, highlighted the services’ response as follows:

 

Education

 

·        All Children’s Education Services (Learner Engagement, Special Educational Needs, Access to Learning and School improvement and Learning) had been fully operational during the lockdown period.

·        Staffing had been shared internally across the four service areas to enable the teams to continue to deliver and set up new work streams e.g. the ‘School Places Brokering Service’ and the Early Years Teams which had run the EY places brokering service mainly through the Family Information Service.

·        A grant had been provided to early years providers for the purchase of PPE.  All schools were provided with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for staff when their local supplies had limited access to PPE.

·        The team had liaised with the Department for Education (DfE) on a weekly basis and Ofsted throughout the pandemic.

·        There had been clear support and challenge for education officers from the Cabinet Member, the Interim Director of Children’s Services and other councillors.

 

 

Transport

 

Home to School Transport teams were working hard to ensure sufficient transport was in place for when more pupils return to school in accordance with government guidelines. 

 

Admissions

 

The main admissions round for Reception Year, Year 7 and Year 10 in September 2021 had been completed on time. There were high levels of appeals daily to address the backlog and support children being in school in September. 

 

Early Years

 

Early Years providers (childminders, preschools, day nurseries and nursery schools had remained open for vulnerable children and children of Key Workers. Approximately 60% of providers were currently open across the county with more opening daily.

 

Schools

 

·            All schools had remained open throughout the period to children of ‘Critical workers’ and those deemed vulnerable. During the lockdown, only 5% of schools had closed due to staffing shortages; mostly for less than two days. Where a school was closed for a brief period, all families requesting a place for their child in another school had been placed by newly formed ‘School Places Brokering Service.’

·            Weekly ‘virtual’ meetings had been held with Headteachers to support them with the phased expansion of places in schools and offer support and practical advice; most recently Public Health colleagues had attended those meetings.

·            Practical written advice through documents, frameworks and Frequently Asked Questions sheets had been offered to all schools irrespective of status.

·            Since the 1st June primary schools had expanded their offer to include children in Year R, 1 and 6.  From 16 June 2020 primary schools can, if they had the capacity (space and staffing) widen their offer to other Year groups.

 

Vulnerable Learners and SEND

 

Children’s Social Care and other Education service colleagues had worked together with schools to ensure that when children were not in school, the absence was followed up and appropriate safeguards were put in place. Attendance had been monitored daily.

 

 

 

 

IT Equipment for Schools

 

The Department for Education had offered to provide digital devices and internet access for disadvantaged families, children and young people who did not currently have access to them through another source, such as their school. Digital devices could be requested for:

·            care leavers

·            children and young people aged 0 to 19 with a social worker

·            disadvantaged year 10 pupils

 

It was hoped to have equipment in schools by the end of this month and officers would be asking schools to ensure appropriate links to school IT platforms.

 

Deborah Bell, Head of Learner Engagement reported that she hoped that the report and the Learner Engagement Strategy articulated just how widespread representation on the Board was. It had been expanded to merge with the early help board to include case capacity.  There was very strong representation from all schools, including Governors and Health and Police were also very heavily involved.  Inclusion and Learner Engagement was ever bodies business.

 

COVID 19 had presented many challenges and as a result a task and finish group had been set up to look at what the primary challenges would be of pupils returning to school in a phased manner.  As a consequence, support web pages had been made available from 1^st June and had received over 10,000 hits so far.  Feedback had been positive from all partners that the resource had been widely used.  The benefit of having an online resource, was that officers were able to update it daily, as it was still a very fast-moving situation and it had avoided sending further emails to head teachers who were deluged with information.

 

The stabilisation of Elective Home Education rates had been achieved.  Many parents had decided to electively home educated their children before Whitehall closed schools officially and she was anticipating locally and nationally that many parents would have had a positive experience educating from home and would continue to exercise that right and preference going forward.  During the last few months, learner Engagement had contacted every electively home educated families that they were aware of to check that they were happy with their decision.  This had been a useful exercise in enabling the service to see where families needed support. 

 

There had been no exclusions since school closures in March.  However, there had been 3 schools in the County who had sought to permanently exclude 3 children from the vulnerable cohort.  This outcome had been avoided by negotiation and offering alternatives. 

 

She further reported that staff from Learner Engagement and other services within the Council had contributed to research being led by Professor Harry Daniels through the Excluded Lives piece of work being carried out by the Institute for Education at Oxford University who had published a report on the impact of COVID 19 on Children’s Education.  The report had identified that the biggest risk of this period of school closure, would be on children’s wellbeing and emotional health and that was very much the focus of work moving forward.

 

The Chairman commented that he had been very comforted and proud of what had been achieved by the Council and the Department over the last few months.  School had been taken aback by the gift of PEE and that it was a tremendous initiative.  He also commented on the very positive effective of all schools coming together, which had not happened for many years.  The partnership meeting had been very welcome and there had been extensive collaboration.  He further wished to dispel the myth that schoolteachers had not been working during the period and thanked schools for all they had done.

 

Councillor John Howson reiterated the points made by the Chairman adding he thanks to all school staff including Governors.  He lamented the fact that Oxfordshire were not able to offer IT equipment for all schools in the same way.  He questioned whether officers had any local information to go with the national information regarding the proportion of reception and year 6 had been attending?

 

Chris Hilliard undertook to provide the attendance information to members outside of the Meeting.  He further reported that the Council had bid on behalf of all children, irrespective of status of schools from 0-19 with a social worker of a care leaver for IT (laptops and routers).  There was only a separate process for academies for year 10 and there understanding had been that there had been a positive outcome.  The Chairman requested that officers provide information to the Committee on what IT had been awarded.

 

Deborah Bell indicated that she had locality data that showed that Oxford City attendance had been exceptionally good during the crisis period.  Nationally it was 2.7% and Oxford City had double that for vulnerable children.  Didcot and Banbury had also done very well.  Kim James added that some schools had got all year groups back but that some schools were challenged geographically and just didn’t have the space and some schools had staffing issues due to staff shielding and some schools where parents had decided not to send their children back to school.  There had been amazing attendance figures at individual schools.

 

Donald McEwan added his thanks form COTO for the collaborative working, during the period, finding local solutions to the National problem.  He further reiterated his thanks for the PPE deliveries and for the local partnership heads meetings.  In relation to the mental health and nurturing side for children he reported that COTO would wish to see a reduced curriculum rather than a catch-up curriculum model to reduce pressure on children returning.

 

Councillor Turnbull questioned what had been done to encourage children to return to school in the year groups that were able to attend as numbers seemed to be low both nationally and locally and particularly what assurances had been given to parents around safety and also what plans around comms were going to go out over the summer to reassure parents who were still scared for September and whether apart from PEE whether there were any other interventions for vulnerable staff?

 

Mr Hilliard responded that the priority had been the children from key workers and vulnerable children and many schools were filled up with those groups.  Kim James in relation to reassuring parents, reported that for early years they had the family information service and everything was going through that route.  They were also putting messages out through the OCC media routes.  Officers were also working closely with public health who had written a letter to all Heads to share with parents to get those messages out.

 

In terms of staff, she reported that they had risk assessments which were available to schools for a whole range of individual needs.  They were encouraging schools to use them, and the message was going out via school’s news.  They also had the OCC Health & Safety Team and PamAssist.  It was different for academies if they hadn’t bought into OCC HR, but they were a whole range of professional organisations offering support and advice.  The risk Assessment was key to ensure things were in place.

 

Deborah Bell reported that operationally, a daily localised multi-agency network virtual meeting had been held created and schools were invited to bring children and families they were concerned about in relation to returning to school, which (with parent’s consent) provided an opportunity for partners to come together and talk about individual case work that may be necessary particular concerns.  In terms of staff well being and safety, there were also resources available through the return to school web pages and the parent carer forum had received the link for the web pages resources and had distributed it widely.

 

Councillor Lorraine Lindsay-Gale, Cabinet Member for Education & Cultural Services added that there had been no cases in Oxfordshire schools and expressed her frustration that parents were not of aware of that fact.  She had spoken with the Director of Public Health with a plea to send out encouraging messages about returning to school.  It was of the upmost important to get children back to school as soon as possible.

 

Donald McEwan welcomed the phased returned which had allowed schools to put procedures in place and try and test them before allowing more children into school.  He reported that there had been a small number of cases in Oxfordshire schools but agreed that they had not caught it from school and had not passed it on.

 

The Committee made the following points during debate:

 

The Committee noted that all the statistics in the Learner Engagement Strategy related to 2015/2016 and needed to be update.  The Committee noted that this was due to happen in July.

 

The Committee welcomed the 3 pupils not being permanently excluded during lockdown and wondered if lessons learnt could be carried forward in the future.  Deborah Bell commented that moving forward she would expect to see more applications for flexible schooling arrangements and ways of working for children.  There was now a multi-agency strategic board in place for exclusions.

 

The Committee noted that the Learner Engagement Strategic Board accesses performance against data at the end of each academic year, which was then reported to the Education Senior Management Team and the Children’s Trust and the Oxfordshire Safeguarding Children’s Board.

 

The Chairman expressed the need to understand the distribution of exclusions across the County to see if it was area based.  The Chairman further noted that there was a paper on the high needs block funding and that the Committee would wish to pre-scrutinise that report.

 

The Chairman thanked officers for their work and commended the joint working around the crisis.