Agenda item

To consider an overview of activity by West Northamptonshire Council to support school improvement.

RESOLVED that: the People Overview and Scrutiny Committee:

a)    Requested to be provided with an analysis of the number of academy schools in West Northamptonshire required to become sponsored academies, the length of time since those schools converted and their current Ofsted outcomes.   

b)    Requested to be provided with confirmation of the current number of children missing from education in West Northamptonshire.

c)    Requested to be provided with confirmation of the recent direction of travel concerning permanent exclusions in West Northamptonshire.

d)    Agreed to invite the Regional Schools Commissioner to attend a future Committee meeting to discuss matters relating to the performance of academy schools in West Northamptonshire.

The Cabinet Member for Children, Families and Education introduced the Interim Director of Children’s Services, who would be covering this role until March 2022 to give WNC more flexibility regarding the timing of recruitment for a permanent appointment.  

The Interim Director of Children’s Services introduced the report setting out WNC’s legal powers and duties relating to school effectiveness, arrangements to carry out this function and the Ofsted outcomes for local schools.  It was highlighted that WNC monitored the performance of academy schools and would seek to work with them in cases where there were concerns.  The Ofsted outcomes for maintained schools in the authority compared well to national and regional averages.  The position for academy schools was less good, although this reflected that a significant number of these schools became academies in response to concerns about performance.  Assessments in 2022/23 would provide the first validated school data since 2019, which meant that this would be an important year for school effectiveness.

The Committee considered the report and members raised the following points:

·         Did WNC make use of potential complaints about a school when considering effectiveness, particularly when there was no current validated data?

·         Concerns were expressed about children who were missing from education and the quality of education provided to some children who were home-schooled.

·         Further information was requested on the number of academy schools in the area that had been required to become academies and when they had converted.  An academy trust needed to take responsibility for poor performance by a sponsored academy if it had been running it for a reasonable time.

·         The information presented reinforced the need for the Committee to meet with the Regional Schools Commissioner to discuss the performance of local academy schools.   

·         What action did WNC take to address different levels of effectiveness between schools in different parts of the authority?

·         Over half of the 65 maintained primary schools in the authority were in south Northamptonshire.  What were the reasons for this concentration and was it WNC policy to retain the remaining local maintained schools?

The Interim Director of Children’s Services provided additional information during the course of discussion as follows:

·         Complaints about a school should be directed to the school and then to the Department for Education: WNC did not have a role in this process, although it did provide information about how to make a complaint.  WNC did consider soft intelligence as part of its overall approach to school effectiveness.

·         WNC had a statutory duty to know about young people missing from schools and monitored the position carefully.  This would be assisted by a forthcoming cleanse of data to ensure that it was up to date.  WNC also had good data on young people who were on-roll but not attending school full-time.

·         All parents could choose to educate their children at home and local authorities were not able to check the standard of education provided: a local authority could only take action if there was a safeguarding concern.  The statutory duty on local authorities to promote high standards of education and the fulfilment of potential did not cover elective home education.

·         The location of the remaining maintained primary schools in West Northamptonshire was likely to be the result of schools becoming academies in response to concerns about performance and a small number of cases where schools had chosen to convert.  WNC had the capacity to support all of the remaining maintained schools.  It did not have a policy to seek to retain existing maintained schools or to encourage them to convert.  Government policy between 2010-16 had been for all schools to become academies but this was no longer being pursued. 

RESOLVED that: the People Overview and Scrutiny Committee:

a)    Requested to be provided with an analysis of the number of academy schools in West Northamptonshire required to become sponsored academies, the length of time since those schools converted and their current Ofsted outcomes.   

b)    Requested to be provided with confirmation of the current number of children missing from education in West Northamptonshire.

c)    Requested to be provided with confirmation of the recent direction of travel concerning permanent exclusions in West Northamptonshire.

d)    Agreed to invite the Regional Schools Commissioner to attend a future Committee meeting to discuss matters relating to the performance of academy schools in West Northamptonshire.