Archived decisions

HAMPSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL

Proposed Executive Decision:

1) Summary:

The following decision is proposed:

1.1. that the Executive Lead Member for Children's Services notes the assessment, test and examination results for 2008 and endorses the priorities for future work that stem from them, in particular that the Children's Services Department:

· Makes sure that everyone involved with the early years foundation stage understands the implications of it being a statutory stage of education and development, and uses the information provided by the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile to improve outcomes for young children.

· Aligns the work of Children Centres, as they begin to operate, with that of other early years foundation stage providers, and helps providers to improve the communication, language and literacy and the personal, social and emotional skills of children in deprived areas with a particular focus on developing early writing skills for all children and closing the gender gap.

· Makes sure that the implementation of the Early Years Foundation Stage is aligned with the parenting strategy, and that early years practitioners work alongside parent support colleagues to ensure that their work reaches those parents who need most help and support.

· Continues to work to ensure that more children make appropriate progress between the age of 7 and the age of 11, especially in mathematics.

· Targets resource more surgically to those districts where progress, or headline results, are least strong, and the gap in attainment most wide, and develops better support for learning through new, more local, Children's Trust arrangements.

· Ensures that there are no schools that score below 30% 5 A* - C at GCSE including English and mathematics by 2010.

· Improves progress in English in the early years of secondary education.

· Improves progress in mathematics in the later years of secondary education.

· Continues to narrow the gap between the percentage who achieve 5 A* - C and those who achieve 5 A* - C including English and mathematics.

· Continues to work on whole system solutions so that the gap between the attainment of those young people who live in relative poverty and the rest keeps narrowing while, at the same time, overall attainment remains on a rising trend.

· Finds whole system solutions so that the attendance of children and young people in care and their attainment continue to improve.

2) Reasons for the decision:

2.1. In line with `Maximising wellbeing', the Children's Services Department has a responsibility to make sure that educational attainment is as good as it can be. Careful analysis has been undertaken of the 2008 results and a series of actions identified, which are likely to impact positively upon attainment in future.

3) Other options considered and rejected:

3.1. Option 1: Do nothing.

a) Risk Assessment: this was rejected because, in certain areas, educational attainment needs to be improved.

3.2. Option 2: A variety of other actions than those in the proposed decision.

a) Risk Assessment: other actions were considered, but rejected because those actions would not have had the same impact upon educational attainment.

4) Conflicts of Interest:

4.1. Conflicts of interest declared by the Decision-Maker:

a) None

4.2. Conflicts of interest declared by other Executive members consulted:

a) None

5) Dispensation granted by the Standards Committee:

None

6) Any reasons for the matter being dealt with urgently:

None

7) Statement from the Decision Maker: