Contact: John Coughlan, (01962) 846516; [email protected]

1. Summary

1.1 The Annual Performance Assessment (APA) is Ofsted's Annual Report on the performance for children's services by the local authority. This year's APA letter is attached as Appendix 1. The letter scores our performance against all measures as good (3 out of 4). The letter was published at the end of November and is being reported formally to Members accordingly.

1.2 The table attached as Appendix 2 compares last year's APA report in summary with this year's.

1.3 Cabinet will be aware that the Joint Area Review (JAR) also gave scores of consistent 3 when it reported earlier in the year. The two mechanisms are connected but they are different in that the JAR is a detailed report primarily on services for the most vulnerable children delivered by the local authority and partners, whereas the APA is a more general but regular report covering all services for all children delivered by the local authority, universal and targeted. The Children's Services Authority is responsible for producing an Action Plan which must be submitted to Ofsted. The Action Plan was compiled through consultation with a wide range of children's services providers. The Plan lays out in one place recommendations, important weaknesses areas for development and major strengths identified in the Joint Area Review and the Enhanced Youth Service Inspection that took place between January - May 2007. It also details the areas for development identified in the draft Annual Performance Assessment letter which was received on 5 October 2007, as many of those highlighted in the Annual Performance Assessment align with the recommendations in the Joint Area Review report.

1.4 The reports from the Joint Area Review and the Enhanced Youth Service Inspection were published on 14 August 2007 and are available on the web at http://www3.hants.gov.uk/hampshirejarreport250707-2.pdf. The 2007 Children's Services Annual Performance Assessment will be published in December 2007.

1.5 The Children & Young People's Partnership Management Board are receiving quarterly reports on progress against the measure of the improvements identified in the Plan.

1.6 The content of the APA letter is clear and speaks for itself. It represents a significant summary of where we need to focus our attention in the forthcoming year. The most notable change between this year's report and last year's is that we have moved from outstanding to good for the section concerning enjoy and achieve. This is primarily because there has been a subtle but significant shift in the criteria affecting this outcome. This outcome primarily relates to school standards and the achievement of pupils. Whereas actually there has been an improvement in achievement for the majority of pupils at all key stages, including an improvement in the critical measure of 5 GCSE's A*-C, there is also now more evidence to indicate that the gap between the highest achieving pupils and the lowest achieving pupils is wider than it should be. This is not to suggest that we should be compromising standards for the mainstream and for high achieving pupils. It is because there is evidence to suggest that we can do more to improve standards for more disadvantaged groups such as particular children in care.

1.7 The APA letter makes a series of recommendations about areas for development in connection with each section. These areas for development also relate to the JAR action plan which is being separately reported. We are now in the process of agreeing a series of departmental priorities which will also link into the Local Area Agreement as a number of these priorities will have corporate and inter-agency implications. This represents an interesting development for the Local Area Agreement as, for example, we have received a strong steer from Government Office in our priorities discussions that the indicator concerning placement stability for children in care should be reflected within the Local Area Agreement, even though technically this is an indicator which has been the concern of the Children's Services Department alone. We are in the process of developing the priorities together with the Children and Young People's Strategic Partnership and these will be fed into the wider process for the establishment of the Local Area Agreement.

2. Recommendations

2.1 Cabinet are asked to note the APA letter, the JAR Action Plan, and endorse the forthcoming setting of priorities on behalf of the department and in connection with the Local Area Agreement.