Archived decisions

HAMPSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL

Report for Information

1 Purpose of Report:

1.1. The Apprenticeships, Children, Skills and Learning Bill is currently making its way through parliament. The national consultation on 21^st Century Schools has recently finished and government will shortly bring forward a White Paper. Both are likely to have important implications for Hampshire schools, for the education system within Children's Services, and for the way in which the performance of schools, and the system of which each is a part, is measured in the future.

2 Background:

2.1. This report provides members of the Panel with an overview of how these two separate, but inter-related, initiatives are likely to develop and how the work of schools may be expected to change over time. The obvious caveat is that none of the proposals set out here is enshrined in legislation.

3 The Apprenticeships, Skills, Learning and Children Bill:

3.1 As its name might suggest, the Bill is a legislative rag-bag setting out provisions relating to a very wide range of children's and, indeed, adults' services. It:

· provides for a statutory framework for apprenticeships and creates a right to an apprenticeship for suitably qualified 16-18 year olds

· introduces a right for employees to request time away from their duties to undertake training, and places a corresponding duty on employers to consider such requests seriously and to be able to refuse them only for specified business reasons

· dissolves the Learning and Skills Council

· transfers the responsibility for the commissioning of places in education and training for 16-18-year-olds to local authorities

· makes provisions with respect to the education of offenders

· creates the Young Person's Learning Agency, the Skills Funding Agency, a new regulatory body for qualifications (Ofqual), and a new agency to carry out the  non-regulatory functions currently performed by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority

· strengthens the accountability of children's services

· amends intervention powers in respect of schools which are causing concern

· establishes a new parental complaints service

· changes the school inspection arrangements

· creates a new negotiating body for pay and conditions for school support staff

· makes provisions in respect of pupil and student behaviour.

3.2 Only those provisions that specifically relate to schools are covered in detail in this report. Those relating to apprenticeships, the transfer of responsibilities from the Learning and Skills Council to local authorities and the Young People's Learning Agency or the Skills Funding Agency, are covered elsewhere; as are those relating to employee rights, and pay and conditions for school support staff.

4 Key Provisions of the Bill as they affect Schools:

4.1. The Duty to Co-operate

4.1.1 All maintained schools, including aided schools, foundation schools, trust schools and academies, will have a duty to co-operate with other partners, under the leadership of the Director of Children's Services, to improve the well-being of children and young people. This duty is also extended to all colleges in the local area in the further education sector, including sixth form colleges. Colleges will also have to `have regard to' promoting the economic and social well-being of the local area. Schools and colleges were omitted from the list of other partners who were given this `duty to co-operate' in the 2004 Children Act, and placing schools and colleges under this duty now is an important step forward.

4.2. The Children's Trust Board

4.2.1 All Children's Services authorities will have to establish a Children's Trust Board if they do not have one already. In practice, Hampshire's Trust Board has been the Children and Young People's Strategic Partnership, but arrangements will require strengthening at the local level around the county. Partners working together in a Children's Trust will have a statutory duty to provide information needed for the effective discharge of the Trust's duty in improving well-being. This may make data gathering easier in future. Partners working together in a Trust will be able to pool budgets to pursue agreed strategies to improve well-being. This is potentially problematic in terms of schools, although a later clause in the Bill provides that each Schools Forum will need to `have regard to' the local Children's and Young People's Plan (CYPP) - which is the key commissioning tool of the Children's Trust. Further, all partners in the Children's Trust will have a duty to implement the agreed CYPP and the contribution of each - including schools - will need to be monitored and reported on annually.

4.2.2 The essential thrust of this part of the Bill is to stitch all schools more tightly to the Children's Trust; make the CYPP more central in determining the direction to improve well-being; and ensure that all schools - as well as other partners - recognise their role in meeting the objectives of the CYPP.

4.3. Schools causing concern

4.3.1 The Bill provides for the Secretary of State's powers to intervene to be strengthened in those authorities where:

· there is a disproportionate number of low-performing schools; and

· the authority has not been effective in securing an improvement in the standards in those schools; or

· the authority is unlikely to be effective in securing an improvement in the standards in other schools that may become under-performing.

4.3.2 Low performance is defined, here, as happening in those schools where children are not reaching the standards that might reasonably be expected; where standards are declining; or where standards are below those of children at comparable schools.

4.3.3 Track record suggests that Hampshire is unlikely to be one of the authorities where the Secretary of State's powers of intervention will be needed.

4.4. School inspections

4.4.1 The Bill provides for a change in the law so that Ofsted may make an interim statement, between inspections, saying that the school does not require an inspection for at least a year from the date of the issue of the statement. Effectively, this provision will mean that schools judged to be good or outstanding are likely to have fewer inspections in the future and not be part of the normal 3 year cycle. This is likely to mean that a relatively large number of Hampshire schools will be inspected by Ofsted less frequently. There is no indication in the Bill of the measures that will be used to judge which schools will receive interim statements.

4.5. Powers to Search Pupils for Prohibited Items

4.5.1 The Bill provides for staff in schools to search pupils suspected of carrying prohibited items. These are defined as: knives; offensive weapons; alcohol; a controlled drug; stolen items. The conditions that need to apply when such a search is carried out are precisely defined.

4.6. Recording and Reporting the Use of Force

4.6.1 The 2006 Act clarified how force might be used by staff in schools. This Bill sets out how any such incidents must be recorded and reported.

4.7. School Behaviour Partnerships

4.7.1 All governor bodies, and proprietors of academies, must join a partnership with at least one other school in their area, for the purposes of promoting good behaviour and discipline on the part of pupils and reducing persistent absence by them. It is already common practice in most areas of Hampshire for secondary schools to be in such partnerships for the purpose of improving behaviour and, particularly, to reduce the number of pupils permanently excluded from schools; less so to reduce persistent absence. Primary schools are less likely to have either. Both, however, are increasingly likely to be part of local partnerships of schools, and other partners, to improve the well-being locally of children and young people. If this Bill is enacted, schools will have to be clear about the range of partnerships they are part of and the purpose of each of them.

4.8. Short Stay Schools

4.8.1 `Pupil referral units', known as Education Centres in Hampshire, are to be called `short stay schools' in future and more power given to the Secretary of State to give directions to local authorities about the exercise of their functions relating to these schools.

5 21^st Century Schools Consultation:

5.1.1 The Department for Children, Schools and Families has undertaken an extensive consultation exercise relating to its plans for changes to schools and the school system. This ended on 31 March 2009 and it is anticipated that, more quickly than usual, a White Paper will be brought forward setting out proposed legislation.

5.1.2 The national consultation was broadly positive about the government's proposals and it is reasonable to expect the White Paper to follow government statements made towards the latter end of the consultation period. The key features of the likely proposals are set out below and, taken together, they have the potential to radically affect the way in which the education system - which is at the heart of children's services - develops.

5.1.3 The thrust for a change to the school system has come from two different, but related, sources: the needs of the future economy and the need for social justice. The arguments are simple and well rehearsed. There will be far fewer unskilled jobs in the economy by 2020 and we need our workforce to be more highly skilled. The population is ageing and we will need all our young people to be prepared for the future economy, if we are to retain our competitiveness and pay for the care of older people. Currently, too many young people fail to achieve what is needed - and this lack of achievement impacts differentially. Some ethnic groups perform badly; some young people who experience difficulties in their lives in adolescence do so too; but most of the failure occurring in the system happens because people live in conditions of relative poverty and its effects are not mitigated. The various national strategies have made a difference. Standards in literacy and numeracy in primary schools in England, for example, have improved much faster than in Wales and Scotland where the strategies were not pursued. However, an unacceptable degree of failure - in narrow educational outcomes and in the well-being of children and young people - continues, despite these improvements. That failure is bad for the children and young people concerned and bad for the wider society of which they are a part.

5.1.4 To make a bigger difference, a step change is needed. If all we do is what we have done then all we will get is what we have got. The step change is the concept of the 21^st century school - highly professional and successful institutions working as part of a collaborative system within wider children's services.

5.2 A Continuing Focus on Teaching and Learning

5.2.1 Whatever changes are made to the system as a whole, it is recognised that the highest quality of curriculum, teaching and learning will remain a core pursuit of all schools. There is likely to be less prescription within the primary school curriculum, and a growing emphasis on `personalisation' through the age ranges, but particularly within secondary schools. `Personalisation' is really about schools finding a relevant curriculum and appropriate teaching that will continue to engage and inspire young people and allow them to achieve.

5.2.2 There is likely to be more one-to-one tuition. This clearly works where it is well targeted and used for specific purposes - for helping a child to catch up on reading for example. Obviously, however, one-to-one tuition is heavily resource intensive.

5.3 A Broader Set of Outcomes

5.3.1 There will be no departure from the accountability that schools have grown used to in the last fifteen years. Government is convinced that accountable schools do better than those that are not called to account and there is international research to support that conclusion. However, perhaps for the first time, there is now recognition that schools need to be held to account for a broader set of outcomes. They need to be accountable, for example, as much for pupils' progress as their headline standards and they need to be held to account for each of the five outcomes, not just achievement.

5.3.2 Some steps have already been taken by Ofsted in this direction, in its new inspection arrangements, but the government is planning to take more, specifically in the form of an annual Report Card for each school. This will replace the School Profile and contain judgements on how successfully the school ensures wider well-being for its children and young people, and on the degree to which the school works in partnership with others to achieve good outcomes for all the children in the local community.

5.4 Re-thinking School Improvement

5.4.1 Government is proud of its investment in education over the last ten years, but is already warning that we are moving into a different period where resources will be scarcer. It wants to ensure that as much resource as possible continues to get to schools, and its contribution to that is to commit to reducing the amount it spends on its national strategies. There is a vast army of people who, in one way or another, work for government to implement its various national education strategies; people who rarely see a child or go into a school and, rather than maintaining this army, government is now talking of `building capacity in schools themselves'. Hampshire has always been strong in this area.

5.4.2 Government also wishes to re-define the work of School Improvement Partners so that the `single conversation' covers more than academic progress. Hampshire's SIPs already do this, but there will be further work to do and further training required.

5.5 Supporting 21^st Century schools

5.5.1 Government intends to strengthen its efforts to secure the best possible teaching force and is setting great store by its Masters degree in Teaching and Learning.

5.5.2 It is already working with the National College for School Leadership to develop its programmes for serving headteachers. There is universal recognition that the quality of leadership provided by headteachers continues to be of huge importance to the outcomes achieved by children and young people, and that the skills needed by the headteachers of the future will be greater than those needed in the 20^th century; particularly those concerned with partnership working.

5.5.3 DCSF believes that it provides considerable additional resource for children and young people who live in conditions of relative poverty. Equally, it believes that the financial schemes for Local Management of Schools, agreed in each authority by its Schools Forum, `flatten' the resource so that these children and young people do not get the resources to support them that they need. Government intends to make sure that they do. Hampshire's Schools Forum has recently put more resource into areas of deprivation, but this may not be enough given what government is now saying.

5 Re-configuring the School System

5.1 Government intends to promote collaboration between schools, and between schools and other agencies and services.

5.2 The legislative changes proposed in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill will create the legal conditions for collaboration and allow the system to develop local structures so that all providers of education in a local area, working with all other partners in that area, can together take responsibility for improving the outcomes for all the children and young people who live in that area. This is the fundamental change that the 21^st Century school system brings about - that, for the first time, each school is held to account not just for the success of children and young people who go through its gates each day, but for its contribution to all the outcomes achieved by all the other children and young people in its local area.

5.3 In Hampshire this will mean the development of local partnerships of schools, other education providers, and all other partners in a local area, and that these partnerships will be subsets of the Hampshire Children's Trust, pursuing the same priorities as the Hampshire Children and Young People's Plan but within the local area. These partnerships will organise extended services together and pursue actions that will allow the priorities to be achieved. They will have a particular focus, as the CYPP does, on improving outcomes for vulnerable children and young people and for mitigating the effects of relative poverty, wherever they are seen. The challenge for each of these local partnerships will be to plan and take forward action which will meet the six over-arching priorities of the new CYPP:

· Reducing the incidence and impact of poverty on the achievement and life chances of children and young people

· Securing children and young people's physical, spiritual, social, emotional and mental health, promoting healthy lifestyles and reducing inequalities

· Providing opportunities that raise children and young people's aspirations, encourage excellence and enable them to enjoy and achieve beyond their expectations

· Ensuring that children and young people are safe and feel safe, enabling them to build resilience and personal confidence

· Providing vocational, leisure and recreational activities that provide opportunities for children and young people to experience success and make a positive contribution

· Removing barriers to access, participation and achievement, and not tolerating discrimination and abuse.

5.4 Schools will still need to work in partnership with other schools for particular `purely educational' purposes - managing secondary aged children at risk of exclusion, developing 14-19 diploma lines, planning and delivering programmes of continuing professional development to improve pedagogy, sharing staff in shortage curriculum areas, for example - but these partnerships will run alongside the local partnership that has wider priorities which relate more to deeper social issues: childhood obesity, the mental health of young people, teenage pregnancy, entrants to the youth justice system, and young people not in education, employment or training, for example.

6 Conclusions:

6.1 Many partnerships have emerged in Hampshire over the last three years but the challenge to bring all schools into a 21^st century system, where they work purposefully and productively with one another, and all the other partners who work for an improvement in outcomes for children and young people, should not be underestimated. The climate is right and the relationships, generally, are right. The county is well placed. The work to achieve this will be hard and long but, given the potential prize, essential.