Agenda item

The Sub-Committee received a report that detailed the service vision to ensure a good start for every child to reach their full potential and our ambition to establish a self-improving education system.

The report updated members of the sub-committee on the progress to improve standards of teaching, learning and leadership across Havering’s schools.

The report indicated that following the published performance measures, it was agreed that a school-led improvement strategy was required to address the shortcomings highlighted by Ofsted data and the Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools (HMCI) annual report.

Further to the previous update to the Sub-Committee, the following steps have been taken:

·         An independently-chaired Improvement Board was established to oversee an agreed improvement strategy and had met regularly. The Board had met termly to monitor the progress and impact of the improvement strategy, holding schools’ leaders to account for improvement.

·         The key indicator of the success of the improvement strategy would be that all schools be judged to be good or better by Ofsted by July 2018, subject to each school’s place in Ofsted’s calendar of inspections.

·         As a measure of the joint commitment to the rapid school improvement required, in April 2017 a budget of £100,000 was allocated to support the work of the improvement strategy: £50,000 from Havering Local Authority and £50,000 from contributions from secondary schools through the Havering Learning Partnership (HLP - the association of secondary schools).

·         The Regional Schools Commissioner had increased the number of monitoring visits to Havering’s secondary schools, remarking on the positive approach the local head teachers group, governors and the local authority have taken in rising to the challenge to improve pupil outcomes.

·         Additional funding of £1.2m had been sought from the Department for Education (DfE) Strategic School Improvement fund. The fund was to help schools use their resources most effectively in order to deliver more good school places.

The Sub-Committee noted the following next steps by the service:

·         That the service continues to monitor the performance of all schools on a regular basis with a refreshed approach to bringing about necessary improvements. This includes forensic evaluation of progress through monthly performance review meetings in those schools identified as being under-performing and a greater use of the powers available to the authority where schools are a cause for concern. To date, there had been no change in the secondary sector to the baseline percentage of schools Good or better. The only two inspections that have taken place since January 2017 resulted in the same Ofsted grading.

·         The independently-chaired Improvement Board continues to meet the school-led governance body which monitors the agreed improvement strategy.

·         A decision was been awaited on the five bids submitted to DfE, the outcome was expected in August to deploy funds from September.

·         It was stated that individual secondary schools would learn of the pupils’ outcomes in late-August 2017. How local schools compare, such as against the Progress 8 measure, would not be known until later in 2017. This is because the measure is a relatively new one and Havering’s outcomes (and the success of the improvement strategy) will be dependent on outcomes of all pupils across London and England. We anticipate the HMI annual report, with data comparing local areas, to be published in December 2017.

The Sub-Committee noted the improvement update report on the schools-led strategy.