School Improvement (Raising Standards in Education)

Transcription

1 Children, Education & Families (Raising Standards in Education) Original Service and Community Impact Assessment: December 2010 Review Purpose of Assessment This review document is an updated Service and Community Impact Assessment following changes to the Service, as part of the Council's 2011/ /14 budget proposals on Oxfordshire s communities and those groups protected by equalities legislation. The assessment is based on the Council s legal guidance for Making Decisions Lawfully and is informed by the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) of local health & wellbeing. Proposal: Reduce the supply of school improvement services to a proportional offer so that satisfactory schools receive more support than outstanding and good schools. Ensuring that the majority of resource for intervention and support will be focussed on schools deemed satisfactory or requiring improvement. Context Our directorate Business Strategy outlined how the Local Authority (LA) intended to achieve the significant savings required by the spending review, confirmed within the detail of the local government settlement, and how we proposed to redesign and reshape our services for children, young people and families. Within the service relating to education, our intention is to both adapt and improve the effectiveness of the current school improvement service in line with the Coalition Government education policy whilst ensuring we meet the required savings, which for amounted to 558,000. This has resulted in an overall reduction in the supply of school improvement services to schools, in particular for those good and outstanding schools who have received less support than others. With a reduced intervention team we have focused our main challenge and support at schools deemed satisfactory or requiring improvement, with more time devoted to those schools in either a Local Authority or Ofsted category of concern. Since September 2011 this work is undertaken mainly by Local Authority Officers. Service and Community Impact Assessment Page 1 of 7

2 In addition to Officers focused on targeted work with schools, we are also building on the work we have already started with schools and leaders across the county. In particular this has included developing the commissioned work of Local and National Leaders of Education from schools from within Oxfordshire to provide additional support and challenge for those that require it. The capacity of Governing Bodies to fulfil their statutory responsibilities has also been essential in this work. The work supported through the national strategies grant funding ceased as from April However, Schools Forum have funded some improvements programmes until April 2015 e.g. ECC (Every Child Counts). Government policy makes clear that the main responsibility for school improvement will in the future rest with schools and that the best schools and leaders will be expected to take on greater responsibility for leading improvement across the education system. These aspirations will require time to put in place in particular to ensure that the needed capacity develops within schools to take on this increased responsibility. The LA will work with schools and partnerships to this end and has proposed a programme of Aspiration Networks for The significant implications of schools moving towards academy status and outside of LA maintained status will be a major focus of change management activity over the next months and years. Early dialogue at a strategic level has already taken place and with a small section of the school community and this will be a key focus for development in Peer to peer support, innovation and challenge remains a key priority for school improvement going forward and this builds strongly on the work behind the Aspiration Network initiative. What else did you consider and reject? Why was this considered the better option? Government education policy provides a clear direction from which we have remodelled our school improvement team to address the ending of grants which have previously supported national strategy intervention and the school improvement partner programme. Key points are that: The primary responsibility for improvement rests with schools. The LA will play a critical role as the champion for pupils and parents. The LA will continue to challenge schools which are causing concern and to focus on issues needing attention which cut across more than one school. The government has ended the requirement for every school to have a local authority school improvement partner (SIP). The LA will have the freedom to define what role they will play in supporting school improvement for local schools. Schools are being given back the freedom to determine their own destiny and to become more accountable. Impact of the proposal on service users and their local communities The possible impact on specific groups are: Service and Community Impact Assessment Page 2 of 7

3 Rural Communities: Good/Outstanding schools in rural areas will have reduced LA involvement. Older People: The current proposals are unlikely to impact specifically on this group. Disabilities: The reduction in challenge and support in good and outstanding schools may mean less external support and intervention for some groups of young people. However the establishment of hubs throughout the County should provide schools with access to localised multi-agency support. The vulnerable learners support team will also be using data analysis of underperforming pupil groups to determine additional intervention even where schools are deemed overall good or outstanding. Gender: Though there is a gap in general attainment between boys and girls in Oxfordshire, this remains less than the gap nationally and has been reducing. Though these proposals are not targeted at specific groups there is a likely impact here which will become the prime responsibility of the schools involved. We will broker support from Local Leaders in Education (LLEs) to ensure that through sharing of information, the peer challenge and support between schools and governing bodies, we are able to establish the continuing effectiveness of these schools in our role as the champion for pupils and parents. Deprivation: The new Pupil Premium is specifically targeted at young people whose parents income is low. The funding source will follow the pupil to their school, which will then be responsible for ensuring that this resource supports these pupils progress. We will work with schools to ensure that the achievement of underperforming groups is recognised, challenged and supported. Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME): The reduction in challenge and support in good and outstanding schools may mean less external support and intervention for some groups of young people. This may be a risk for some BAME groups where attainment has been lower than peer groups in other counties. However, these groups of young people are a particular focus for a specific part of our service, namely the Equality and Diversity Achievement Service. Service and Community Impact Assessment Page 3 of 7

4 This service has just undergone further reorganisation and is now focused on building school capacity to support identified underperformance of identified pupil groups. Support is available to skill up staff teams and to provide additional ongoing support through web-based resources and advice. Along with our particularly focussed support and challenge for schools and leadership that are deemed satisfactory or requiring improvement, our key mitigations for these groups of young people are provided by the Equality and Diversity Achievement Service (EDAS). Further details are contained in the Service and Community Impact Assessment for this service in Business Plan Reference 18. Children and Young Adults There is potential risk with a reduction in LA intervention and contact with particular schools that more schools may experience difficulties. Furthermore in the absence of an LA consultancy team in core subjects, whilst the capacity of schools to support and challenge each other grows, there may be a risk to standards in core subjects. The following summary gives an outline of current LA progress in key measures together with areas for improvement. Results cover all primary schools in Oxfordshire (there has been no boycott in 2011) Overall Figures for % of pupils achieving level 4 Oxfordshire National English and Maths: 75% 74% English 82% 81% Reading 85% 84% Writing 75% 75% Maths 81% 80% We remain 1% above national for Level 4+ English & Maths. Although our performance has not increased this year, neither has the national level. We are 1% above national for English, Reading and Maths, even though Reading and Maths have decreased 1% in Oxfordshire. Writing has increased 3% from 2010, and we match the national level, which has increased 4% from Statistical Neighbour (SN) comparisons: English - we are joint 4th with 4 other SNs, just below the median Reading - we are joint 4th out of 5, just below the median Writing - we are joint 6 along with three other LAs scoring lowest figures Maths - we are joint 4th just below the median English & Maths - we are joint 4th just below the median Service and Community Impact Assessment Page 4 of 7

5 We are improving on getting nearer to the average of our SNs - never more than 2% below, and in 3 out of 5 measures only 1% below. Statistically the overall picture is improving for KS2 tests. However, the local picture remains varied across the county with some unpredicted changes this year. KS2 Tests Level 4+ English and Writing are exactly the same as for the South-East region; Reading and Maths we are 1% higher than the SE English and Maths - we are 1% higher than SE region (and national) KS2 Tests Level 5+ English - we are 1% higher than national, and exactly in line with the SE region Reading - we are 2% higher than national and exactly in line with the SE region Writing - we are 1% below both national and SE region Maths - we are 1% higher than national and exactly in line with SE region KS2 Teacher Assessments Level 4+ English - 1% above national and in line with SE region Maths - 1% below national and SE region Science - in line with national and SE region Below floor standard There has been an increase in the number of schools below the floor standard, from 13 to of the 13 schools below floor standard in 2010 are not below in LA Intervention We can see a good correlation with schools supported in and improving results, notably those schools involved in the Improving Schools Programme (ISP) and the Developing Success Project as well as specific programmes that contribute to school improvement such as ECAW Every Child A Writer, ECAR Every Child A Reader and ECC Every Child Counts. Our Developing Success project demonstrates clearly that the determination of the leadership of a school to improve results is a key factor to that improvement happening. In particular we can see two schools which were below floor in 2010: St Christopher s, Cowley up to 71.8% and Longfields up to 79.4% in English and Maths at Level 4+. The two big issues consistently reported in Ofsted inspection reports are teaching and learning and leadership and management. Recently released national data indicates that though improving we are still not performing as well as many of our statistical neighbours for Asian pupils or those young people with English as an additional language whose results are around percentage points lower than pupils across the county as a whole. In summer 2011, 56.8% of pupils in Oxfordshire achieved five good passes including English and mathematics at GCSE. This was a small reduction from 57.3% in the previous year. However, there was a clear correlation between some satisfactory schools which had significant LA intervention in 2010/11 and their levels of improvement in attainment. Some schools where there was light touch LA intervention did not do as well as expected. Service and Community Impact Assessment Page 5 of 7

6 The 2009 results showed that Black and Asian ethnic groups performed less well than the overall cohort, and less well than the national averages for those groups. Over 10% of Pakistani and Black African Caribbean GCSE cohorts would need improved results to close the gap between themselves and the mainstream. The results showed that Black and most Asian groups performed less well than the overall cohort, and the national averages. We will work with schools to ensure that the achievement of underperforming groups is recognised, challenged and supported. We will work with schools to develop a clear data set and shared information to underpin judgements with regard to a schools overall performance, in particular for good and outstanding schools. For these schools we will ensure that an appropriate level of data analysis and sharing of information is available to support healthy levels of challenge and motivation for continued improvement. We will work with other parts of the directorate to ensure that the information which establishes an appropriate level of intervention for individual schools is accurate and effective. We will provide challenge, support and intervention for all schools that are either deemed satisfactory or in need of improvement by the LA or Ofsted. This will be achieved in part through a core group of school improvement officers providing consistent and robust challenge and support for school leadership, in particular for those schools that require improvement. We will work to develop a team of Local and National Leaders of Education (LLEs and NLEs) who will be commissioned to provide additional and necessary levels of challenge and support to schools in need of improvement. We are planning to expand the number of colleagues in these roles in line with DFE expectations. We will need to ensure robust quality assurance as to the effectiveness of this work. We will work with schools and school partnerships to promote leadership development at all levels and enable self improving school systems (SISS) David Hargreaves, 2010 Impact on providers (local small or medium enterprises and voluntary, community and faith sector) There is no specific or direct impact on such providers beyond that already outlined above. Service and Community Impact Assessment Page 6 of 7

7 Impact of the proposal on other council services There has been a reduction in the number and therefore overall capacity of LA colleagues to continue with the current level of service provision. Schools as a consequence have increasing responsibility as providers of both challenge and support across the education system. This will require different, more varied levels of funding, leadership and partnership structures to enable the capacity for these developing roles and expectations. Impact of the proposal on staff There has been high impact on staff with targets for staff reductions achieved in line with organised change. Capital implications of proposed change With staff reductions there has been a reduction in office space. This situation remains under review. The Cricket Road Centre closed in the summer of Remaining staff have been allocated to various alternative locations. Conclusion All interested parties and groups affected by the changes were consulted. This Impact Assessment builds on the initial SCIA of December 2010 and will need further re-visiting in due course. Service and Community Impact Assessment Page 7 of 7