Agenda item

The Chair welcomed officers from the Directorate for Children and Young People:

·  Bob Stott, Director for Universal and Early Support Services;

·  Stan Johnson, Head of Development and Innovation; and

·  Jeanette Whitham – Head of Schools HR Team.

The report provided an update on the school facing traded services which were delivered by the county council to education providers within Lancashire and beyond the county. Lancashire had a long history of delivering high quality services to support schools and other educational providers in delivering to children and young people.

It was explained that the 2011 Education White Paper "The importance of teaching" stressed that local authorities should develop a new relationship with their schools around delivering services. Lancashire undertook a major review with all school partners across the Autumn of 2011 and Spring 2012 focussing on the types of traded services which were valued and which schools wanted the county council to deliver. That consultation led to a refinement in the services that were offered through Lancashire Learning Excellence and the way in which services were presented through the schools portal.

The report focused on traded services delivered under the Lancashire learning Excellence "umbrella" as well as those delivered by the Schools Human Resources Service.

Traded services were a key aspect of the support given to schools within the county to improve outcomes for children and young people.

Mr Stott briefly took the Committee through the report, which set out details of Governance arrangements, delivery of services outside Lancashire and statistics which illustrated traded activity in 2013/14 including outcomes.

Jeanette Whitham explained that the Schools Human Resources Team was a centrally funded service, delivered free to maintained schools and was available to academies and schools outside the county council boundary on a traded basis.

Members raised a number of comments and questions the main points of which are summarised below:

·  It was confirmed that, as with other services within the county council, traded services were looking to make efficiencies in an inflationary market; increased income would be regarded as a saving; traded services were run similar to a business and costs / processes were constantly being challenged.

·  It was acknowledged that there was potential for demand for traded services to increase; the Committee was assured that there was capacity to deliver increased demand through secondments from schools.

·  One member emphasised that Voluntary Aided schools would struggle without the excellent service provided by the county council in challenging circumstances.

·  The county council was confident that schools would continue to use human resources services based on the competitive advantage they were able to offer.

·  It was confirmed that fees were graded according to the size of school, but there was a minimum figure chargeable which could make the service more expensive per pupil for particularly small schools.

The Chair thanked officers for the report and presentation and congratulated them on providing a service which was clearly making a positive difference.

Resolved: That a further update report be brought back to the Education Scrutiny Committee at an appropriate point in 2015.