1.10
The Committee have requested to receive an update on the impact of COVID-19 on Education and Oxfordshire Schools. Accordingly, Corporate Director of Children’s Services, Kevin Gordon and the Deputy Director for Education, Hayley Good will attend the meeting to give a verbal update on the current situation following the return to school in March.
Minutes:
The Committee had requested to receive an update on the impact of COVID-19 on Education and Oxfordshire Schools. Accordingly, the Corporate Director of Children’s Services, Kevin Gordon and the Deputy Director for Education, Hayley Good attended the meeting to give a presentation on the current situation following the return to school in March, a copy of which is attached to the signed copy of the Minutes.
The Corporate Director for Education, Kevin Gordon reported that a key priority had been attendance and to ensure children came back to school after the latest period of Lockdown. The Government had been monitoring attendance which allowed officers to do a comparison against the National picture. The overall attendance rate across the board had been above the National average and they were very pleased with the secondary school attendance rate. He believed that it showed that parents had confidence in Oxfordshire Schools.
Special school attendance was also good but had been affected by illness and ‘bubble closures’ due to the complex needs of the children. Officers had carried out a lot of work around covid support to reduce the need for bubble closures. Additional work had also been carried out to help children on EHCP return to school. The data from that morning was as follows:
• Overall daily attendance – 94.6%
• Primary - 97.5%
• Secondary - 91.3%
• Special - 89.8%
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Overall attendance rate had dropped slightly from Monday (probably more as a consequence of more schools opening on Tuesday). Interestingly attendance rate at primary schools had increased (the decrease was at secondary and special schools). There were currently 25 children self-isolating, compared to over 1000 in January and only 5 children were positive for Covid. Currently there were no staff with Covid or self-isolating.
In relation to Free School Meals, he reported that they had just received some funding announcements from Central Government about the Covid Support Grant. The grant had to be used on Free School Meals, but Oxfordshire along with many other authorities had decided to use some of the funding to provide Free School Meals over the Holiday Period (Half Term). There was no funding for this locally, so they were waiting to see whether any further provision would be forthcoming to provide free school meals over the Summer Holidays.
He further reported on the Holiday Activity Programme which ran over the Easter Holidays which also included a meal for Children as well as some Social Education around food and nutrition. 4537 places had been available across Oxfordshire for the Easter break. The provision had been set up quickly, but had gone very well, they had received a lot of positive feedback. Planning for Summer Provision was now underway, with plans to increase the scale and reach of the provision including liaising with partners and the voluntary sector, with the hope to get the provision closer to the 10 – 12 thousand mark.
The Chairman questioned whether the partners included district Councils. The Director confirmed that they ran them together with the districts and that a steering group pulled all the various strands together.
He further reported on the social media Youth Mental Wellbeing campaign, which members had received a recent briefing on. The Campaign had three core objectives which were: reaching out to children who felt isolated; were feeling anxious or had trouble sleeping – the target had been set for ten thousand hits on the campaign webpage – they had achieved 100,000 hits. They were now looking at doing other similar campaigns to reach children and parents and also looking at how that was followed through into increased service take up within those services that provided support, particularly for older teenagers with emotional mental health and wellbeing issues. There would be a massive focus going forward on children’s well-being, the issues were there before but the Pandemic had impacted young people further.
Carole Thomson questioned what the CAMS waiting list was looking like currently, as she was receiving negative feedback from Governors around long waiting times. In response, the Director reported that they had a single point of contact into their child/adolescent mental services. For too long there had been a reliance on clinical interventions through the CAMS service as being the only provision that was available, so they were trying to spread the reach and look at children’s emotional mental health and wellbeing across the continuum. Every CAMS service across the County had a waiting list and always had. CAMS was funded to carry out a role with a limited group of children with particular needs, with a threshold. There was a need to look at children’s emotional and mental wellbeing across a much broader spectrum. He was undertaking lots of conversations across the County to cause a shift in thinking, as it was not the sole responsibility of health colleagues, but rather the responsibility of every adult who comes to work with young people.
Through the pandemic, they ran a very successful DfE funded programme developed by Anna Freud (Train the Trainer Programme) which was about providing specialist training, input and sharing knowledge with schools staff about how to identify and provide lower levels of emotional and mental health and wellbeing support to pupils. This was done through delivery, training, webinars and that translated into an increase in overall confidence and capabilities for school staff in feeling more informed and equipped to deal with situations. Over 127 people attended from schools & charities across the county.
Deborah Bell, Head of Learner Engagement commented that one of the main benefits of the programme was that it had been rolled at pace, with sort notice Whitehall money. They had an ambition to broaden the audience and had been given the opportunity to create legacy resources, so that once schools were in a position to address the training need and awareness, they had the opportunity to do that.
Kevin Gordon commented that this would become the new way of working and a key part of the teacher’s tool kit and support. It would not be just teachers, they had plans for a scaling up and rolling out an emotional and mental health and well-being training and support to all children’s practitioners across the County. The Pandemic had shown that could do things at pace and scale and equip people with the skills they needed.
The Chairman commented that it had been a very positive piece of work and had underlined what could be done in terms of capabilities with training and support. Kevin Gordon commented that they were now re-grouping and preparing for the next stages of the Government’s roadmap. They now needed to be preparing for the ‘new normal’ looking at how children had been impacted by the Pandemic, whose education will have suffered, despite all the excellent work schools had put in to provide on-line education and support. They needed to address future needs, which were not just about education, attainment and learning, but were about the person as a whole.
Councillor Emma Turnbull welcomed the attendance figures, but asked whether the Director could comment on those children who were not attending and queried whether any analysis had been undertaken to determine whether is was particular sections of the community who were struggling with getting back to school. In response Kevin Gordon commented that normal figures for Primary School attendance was around 95-96% (or slightly below), therefore there was not a big group of children who were not attending as levels currently were normal.
Deborah Bell explained that now and pre-pandemic it had been identified that children who were struggling to attend were on the autistic spectrum. Many children who were on the spectrum had enjoyed the lesser stimulus of being at home, where they had previously been struggling with being hyper-alert in a school setting. This was not unique to Oxfordshire. There was a piece of work which had been put together by the education phycologists which schools could draw on when supporting children on the autistic spectrum. There was also the communication and interaction service which was aligned to support that cohort.
She was also currently undertaking some analysis on children who were overseas and were possibly stuck overseas due to parents can’t or won’t pay to quarantine in a hotel. This was something not experienced before and presented a challenge which they were working their way through. This was also a National issue.
Councillor John Howson commented that he would hope those children stranded would be able to use on-line learning and queried whether the DfE had made provision for children who were quarantining in hotels who might not have their own internet access. Kevin Gordon undertook to take this up with the DfE. He also commented that they could work with schools to have laptops couriered to hotels in those circumstance. Deborah Bell commented that guidance had been sent out to schools encouraging them to stay in touch with those families and expressing the importance of not taking the off roll.
The Chairman thanked officers for their presentation.