Agenda item

The Sub-Committee received an update report that outlined the plans to review services provided by the Local Authority to schools over the next academic year.

The report detailed that the relationship between Education Services and schools continues to evolve.

It was stated that against a backdrop of academisation and proposed changes to schools funding it was important for schools to receive timely, coherent and quality services from the borough to enable schools to deliver quality teaching, learning and support to children locally.

The Sub-Committee noted that traded services were experiencing challenging economic conditions and this was anticipated to continue. The Local Authority’s statutory duties to schools reduced further as more schools become academies.

The Sub-Committee was informed that it was imperative to find financial savings across Children’s Services and as such it was timely for the service to undertake a wholescale review of both statutory and traded services available to schools and reshape our relationship locally.

The Sub-Committee was informed that in order to develop new structures and models of service delivery, it was necessary to look at three broad groups of services during the period of the review:

Group 1: Services with exclusively statutory roles

In broad terms, the following education functions remain with the local authority on a statutory basis:

·         The provision of sufficient high quality early years and school places, and provision for vulnerable children and adults (up to the age of 25);

·         Appropriate assessment and support for the borough’s most vulnerable children and young people; and

·         Appropriate and prompt intervention to prevent school failure in respect of maintained schools.

Group 2: Services that have no statutory functions

These are (broadly) services where the local authority does not have a statutory duty to provide a function, for example the provision of school governor training to academies, or the provision of school improvement quality assurance services to academies.

Group 3: Services that have both statutory and non-statutory functions.

In broad terms, these are services and functions where the local authority has a duty and schools and / or the local authority fund services at or beyond a statutory minimum. For example, behavioural support to schools potentially falls into this category.

The following objectives of a review of education services were outlined:

The approach to reviewing education services is proposed to be conducted using the following objectives:

·         The reconfiguration and streamlining of statutory and essential in-house services will reflect a new role for the local authority at reduced cost and with increased efficiency. To achieve this objective we will look for greater synergy between some elements of children’s social care and education services, to be focused on the more vulnerable young people and families in the borough;

·         Ensure that schools in Havering continue to thrive by retaining/securing high-quality non-statutory services. This objective will be achieved at significantly reduced (or zero) cost to the authority by creating financially sustainable commercial services which could remain within the council, or be part of partnership arrangements with other local authorities or ‘spin out’ into external organisations to trade with schools.

·         Increasing the capacity and capability of schools, teaching schools and multi-academy trusts to provide support to one another via a sustainable self-improving education system.

The review of all services provided to schools will identify:

·         what is potentially no longer statutory provision that can be stopped or traded;

·         which currently traded services are not recovering costs and assess their future viability to become commercially viable;

·         efficiencies in processes and procedures;

·         the most appropriate future delivery model for services in the context of the education community’s shared vision for education across the borough; and

·         a plan to implement the agreed delivery model by September 2018, which is sustainable, of quality and financially sound.

The Sub-Committee noted the importance to continuing to provide services to schools whilst managing a sustainable financial position, the Chief Executive and Director of Children’s services would oversee a phased programme of reviews of services, commencing in September 2017.

The review would be carried out internally by managers and staff in the Education and Learning Department. The intention was to phase the programme in order to enable engagement with staff groups and schools throughout the review and also ensure minimal disruption to services provided to schools during this period. 

The Sub-Committee noted the update report.