UPDATE NO 351 10 May 2019

Complex LAC – Project meeting 17 July 2019

There will be a project meeting for the Complax LAC Project on Wednesday 17 July 2019 – venue somewhere in London. Because all 19 authorities in the South East are now involved (see below) we will need to restrict attendance to 2 people per authority. Please contact Rosemary Perry – details below to arrange your places.

Progress on the Project

The most exciting news is that, following our very positive meeting with the DCS group in March, all of the 7 remaining authorities in the south east have joined us. So welcome to Bracknell Forest, Buckinghamshire, Medway, Reading, Slough, Surrey and Windsor & Maidenhead.  This group of authorities are now completing the data collection exercise so by the time we all meet again in July, we will have analysed data from over 1200 cases………

We met with the outgoing and incoming Chief Executives of ICHA last week and they are very interested to work in partnership with us on the project; this will be reflected in the DfE bid which is due to be submitted next week.  We have also made contact with other organisations, including TACT, to gauge their interest in being involved.

We have started some work with East Sussex, Milton Keynes, Oxfordshire and Southampton to identify ways of recording the views of looked after children themselves, using existing groupings and children in care councils.  We also want to use this workstream to identify how young people themselves can be involved in our project.  If any other authority would like to be involved in this and/or has experience of incorporating the views of looked after children into the delivery of similar projects or the actual governance of such projects, please do let Mark Evans (details below) know.

The DfE bid is drafted and subject to agreement and any amendments, it will be submitted by the due date (17 May); we will forward everyone a copy after that. 

AD Education Network – next meeting Friday 7 June

The next meeting of the AD Education network will be on Friday 7 June, and it’s shaping up to be a great session. Please can you contact Alison Rendle (details below) to confirm who will be attending (substitutes welcome).

The meeting will focus on how local areas are delivering school improvement in the changed landscape of LA responsibilities. Simon Day from ISOS Partnership will share his knowledge about the different models and approaches which are being developed across the region and nationally.  This presentation will be followed by updates from delegates and a general discussion. 

We will also be joined by Stewart Jackson HMI, who will return to give feedback and share learning from the post-16 focus in this year’s round of annual conversations.

The AD Education Network is now part-way through an interesting and varied programme of meetings and activity for 2019.  In April, the group met for a lively and informative full day network with SEND colleagues.  The agenda included sharing of practice from across the region; a focus on managing HNB budgets and exploring approaches to post-16 SEND.  There was a great buzz in the room as colleagues shared experiences and everyone went away with new ideas to take consider and new contacts made. 

Colleagues have developed an interesting and wide-ranging forward plan for the year. In the autumn the group will consider approaches to teacher recruitment and retention. The network also now has two task and finish groups.  The first, led by Portsmouth, is looking at issues around attendance, children missing education and elective home education.  They will report back to the network in the autumn.  The other group, which is in the process of setting itself up, will be working on educational data across the region.

Please can you visit the AD Education Network page and check that we have the right contact for your authority. If you discover that our information has gone out of date, please contact either Isabelle Gregory or Alison Rendle (details below).

LGA: Chief Executives’ “must know” for Children’s Services

This publication has been shaped by chief executives who are either former directors of children’s services or for other reasons have been closely associated with leading improvement journeys in council children’s services.

This is not intended to be a comprehensive blue-print for guaranteed results. Rather, it is intended to be a clear summary guide for chief executives, showing how to avoid some of the more obvious and dangerous errors and challenges involved in leading one of the most sensitive, expensive and high-risk areas of local government.

More detail available from here

Unexplained pupil exits from schools: A growing problem?

The Education Policy Institute (EPI) has published the most comprehensive analysis to date of unexplained pupil exits from English schools, using over a decade’s worth of Department for Education data.

The research improves on estimates of the potential size of so-called “off-rolling” in the school system – where schools informally remove pupils in order to boost GCSE results, or for other reasons.

You can read the full report here.

While the number of official school exclusions is recorded by the government, too little has been known about the phenomenon of pupils who are removed from school rolls unofficially. These unexplained pupil moves are not consistently recorded or regulated.

This new report, which is sponsored by the National Education Union (NEU), fills this evidence gap by examining the prevalence of unexplained pupil exits nationally. The study considers unexplained pupil moves that have taken place both between schools, and those involving pupils leaving the school system entirely.

The report is being published as a working paper, with an open consultation on the methodology used. Further details can be found here.

Children not in school – DfE Consultation

The DfE has launched a 12-week consultation on “Children not in school”.

The earlier consultation report is here, and the revised Elective Home Education guidance for local authorities is here. 

The current consultation document seeks views on a number of proposals for legislation and the way in which those proposals would be implemented:

• a duty on local authorities to maintain a register of children of compulsory school age who are not registered at schools of a specified type;
• a duty on parents to provide information to their home local authority if their children are within the scope of such a register;
• a duty on education settings attended by the children on the register to respond to enquiries from local authorities about the education provided to individual children. The settings in scope would not include those providing supplementary education outside school hours;
• a duty on local authorities to provide support to home educating families – if it is requested by such families.

Peer Challenge Triads – Planning for 2019-20

We now have a full set of dates for  Peer Challenge Triad sessions in November 2019; the move to late autumn is to avoid clashing with Ofsted Annual Conversations which will run from January 2020.

We have commissioned ADCS to undertake an independent review of the recent round of Triad Peer Challenges, and their report will feed into the detailed planning for 2019-20.

18/19 2019 self-assessments have now been uploaded onto DCS-only area of website. We look forward to receiving Ofsted Annual Conversation letters as when they are available for circulation here.

For access to this page please consult your DCS or Isabelle Gregory (details below).

Triad 1 – East Sussex, Surrey and Wokingham on Monday 25 November 2019

Triad 2 – Kent, West Sussex and Portsmouth on Friday 1 November 2019

Triad 3 – Hampshire, IoW, Milton Keynes and Slough on Monday 11 November 2019

Triad 4 – Medway, Oxfordshire and Windsor and Maidenhead on Friday 29 November 2019

Triad 5 – Brighton and Hove, Buckinghamshire and West Berkshire on Friday 15 November 2019

Triad 6 – Southampton, Bracknell Forest and Reading on Wednesday 13 November 2019

Please contact Isabelle Gregory (details below) for further information on these events