Contact: John Clarke, Deputy County Education Officer, Tel 01962 846459 [email protected] or

Gerry Price, Strategic School Improvement Manager, Tel 023 8081 6127 [email protected]

1 Summary

1.1 The LEA is required to provide challenge and support for all schools and to allocate resources held centrally to support school improvement in inverse proportion to schools' success. To enable this, all schools are categorised as a result of an annual conversation with their attached inspector. This report outlines changes proposed to the arrangements for categorisation to be introduced this autumn.

1.2 This report to the Panel supports Aim 1 of the Corporate Strategy (maximising life opportunities).

2 Context

2.1 Schools are categorised according to criteria and procedures that have wide support among heads and governors. The present arrangements have operated since 2001 and need revision in the light of experience and changing national and county policies and priorities. This process was initiated in January 2004 with the involvement of representatives of primary and secondary heads.

2.2 Subsequently the government announced its intention to establish a New Relationship with Schools (NRwS), with a School Improvement Partner (SIP) appointed jointly by the DfES and the LEA to take over the function of the attached inspector, initially for secondary schools. Hampshire is piloting this arrangement with ten secondary schools. It has since become clear that similar arrangements are likely to be introduced for primary schools and Hampshire is also involved in a pilot for this development. It is intended that the pilot arrangements will replace categorisation for these schools.

2.3 After the pilot, criteria and procedures for judging school performance are likely to be determined at national level. Nevertheless, there is a need to address some weaknesses of the present categorisation system. Rather than a full scale overhaul it has been agreed with headteacher representatives that more modest adjustments will be made as an interim step towards full implementation of government policy, once lessons have been learned from the NRWS pilot.

3 Main features of the revised arrangements

3.1 A final draft of the revised arrangements is attached as appendix 1.

3.2 The key changes made from the present arrangements are:

· the addition of a criterion that relates to the schools commitment to serving the needs of all pupils in the local community (inclusion);

· greater emphasis on a school's own evaluation of its performance and its validation by the attached inspector;

· the introduction of grade descriptors that enable a `best fit' approach to the judgement made on the school's performance.

3.3 The decision to make a limited change to the categorisation arrangements has been endorsed by the headteachers' executives. In view of the interim nature of the revised arrangements, a more limited consultation procedure than normal has been followed. The proposed changes appear to enjoy the strong support of schools.

3.4 In large part, the revised arrangements will be familiar to schools. They have been drafted so as to enable valid comparison with schools' performance in previous years so that continuing high performance and improvements in schools can be recognised. The proposed changes will enable all Hampshire schools to adjust to the new national arrangements with minimal disruption to well established and effective practice.

4 Legal implications

4.1 None.

5 Financial implications

6.1 None.

6 Personnel implications

6.1 None.

7 Impact assessment

7.1 Race and equality impact assessment has been considered in the development of this report and no adverse impact has been identified.

8 Crime prevention issues

8.1 None.

9 Views of the Local County Councillor

10.1 Not sought in the drafting of this report.

Recommendations

1 That the report be noted and the revised arrangements for school categorisation be endorsed.

2 That a report on the outcomes of categorisation in 2004/05 be received by the panel in Spring 2005.

Section 100 D - Local Government Act 1972 - background documents

The following documents discuss facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and have been relied upon to a material extent in the preparation of this report.

NB: the list excludes

1. Published works

2. Documents which disclose exempt or confidential information as defined in the Act

None