Agenda and minutes

County Councillors Noordad Aziz and John Shedwick replaced County Councillors Jennifer Mein and Stephen Clarke respectively.

Also welcomed to the meeting were Mairead Graham and Mariam Hassouna, representing the Youth Council.

Apologies were received from Mrs Janet Hamid, Co-Optee Voting Member, representing Parent Governors (Secondary).

Members are asked to consider any Pecuniary and Non-Pecuniary Interests they may have to disclose to the meeting in relation to matters under consideration on the Agenda.

None were disclosed.

Resolved: The minutes from the meeting held on 5 October 2021 were confirmed as an accurate record.

The Chair welcomed to the meeting Delyth Mathieson, Head of Service Education Improvement.

The report to the committee presented the draft Lancashire Education Strategy 2022-25 for consideration. The Strategy was due to be reported to a future meeting of Cabinet for approval.

The Education Strategy set out the authority's priorities for Education for the next three years. It was anticipated that an annual report would be presented to the Education and Children's Services Scrutiny Committee against the key priorities within the Strategy.

The Strategy linked with the following Corporate Priorities which were agreed at Cabinet on 7 October 2021:

·  Delivering better services

·  Caring for the vulnerable

·  Protecting our environment

·  Supporting economic growth

The ambition of the Strategy was to support integration across services so that barriers to learning could be overcome, particularly in vulnerable groups.

The Strategy focused on five priorities aligned to the four corporate priorities. These were:

·  Improved outcomes in early years

·  Further reduce exclusions, both permanent and suspensions

·  Address risks associated with rising numbers of Elective Home Education (EHE) where this was not in the best interests of the child

·  Improve outcomes for vulnerable groups including those eligible for Free School Meals, Children in Need, children with a Care Plan, and Children Looked After, as well as those with SEN support and those with an EHCP

·  Increase the number of children and young people in Education, Employment or Training (EET)

In terms of delivering improvement it was important that the county council works in collaboration with its partners including locality boards. The county council also had to work proactively with its district councils and governor services.

A current recommendation as part of this Strategy was for an annual report to be submitted to the committee. Once this Strategy had been approved at Cabinet, it was confirmed that the annual report would be included as part of the committee's work programme.

Comments and questions raised were as follows:

·  It was pointed out that mental health and wellbeing was highlighted in the report but was not mentioned in the five priorities. Members were assured that mental health and wellbeing was threaded through everything that the county council was doing. It was also discussed at locality boards and through the Integrated Care Partnerships (ICPs).

·  Members were informed that there would be an ongoing development of the Strategy and plans would be driven by the locality boards as each locality board had a different set of needs for their area.

·  There was concern about what success would look like regarding suspended and excluded pupils. It was highlighted that there were a series of development programmes in place for staff in schools in terms of exclusions and suspensions. In addition, there were behaviour hubs and inclusion hubs in place to provide support and guidance. Schools had their own behaviour policies which they set. The county council provided a model policy but it was a decision for the school whether to use it.

·  There had been an initial rise in Elective Home Education  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

The Chair welcomed to the meeting Mel Ormesher, Head of Asset Management.

The report presented explained that as an education authority for Lancashire, the county council had a range of statutory duties to fulfil. The county council's ambition to provide good access, quality and outcomes in education was set out in the Lancashire Education Strategy 2022-25.

The School Planning Strategy 2022-25 delivered on this ambition with the aim to provide the right number of school places, in the right areas, at the right time to meet need. It set out a series of priorities for improvement, areas of growth and reduction in the need for school places, and areas for future action.

The Strategy supported the Corporate Priorities for 2021-2025:

·  Delivering better services

·  Caring for the vulnerable

·  Protecting our environment

·  Supporting economic growth

Lancashire County Council had a strategic responsibility for commissioning education provision in the county. It was its statutory duty to provide a school place for every Lancashire child who wanted one. The focus of the Strategy was the provision of mainstream school places for children and young people aged between 4 and 16 and aligned closely with the Inclusion Strategy for children with special education needs and also the Alternative Provision Strategy.

There were 628 schools in Lancashire of which 482 were primaries and 82 were secondaries which provided mainstream school places across the county. This Strategy was primarily concerned with ensuring that there enough places at primary and secondary schools, identifying where more were needed and where in some cases a planned reduction was necessary.

Lancashire had a mixed economy of schools (academy, voluntary aided, voluntary controlled, foundation, grammar, etc) where many determined their own admission arrangements. This relied on effective collaboration with and between maintained schools and academies in the county to ensure sufficiency of places.

An increasing number of schools were becoming academies which operated independently from the county council. New academies had to be part of an academy trust, which were operated by not-for-profit companies and were funded directly by the DfE. The county council would cooperate with the conversion of any school which was becoming an academy, whether this was a conversion directed by the Secretary of State for Education, or where the governing body of a school chose to do so.

Comments and questions raised were as follows:

·  The county council would reduce the number of children missing education by improving the time taken to secure a place for in-year admissions. This would be managed through a new pupil access system that came in to effect in November 2021, to quicken the pace at which pupils were able to secure a place in a Lancashire school.

·  Learning from success in other parts of the country, the authority would adopt a cultural relocation model of support for families, to gain a sense of belonging and the opportunity to settle. Through the principle of warranted variation, the authority has implemented this way of working in East Lancashire initially, to reduce the cultural shock  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

The Committee received a report which provided information on the work programme for the Education and Children's Services Scrutiny Committee.

The topics included in the work programme were identified at the work planning workshop held on 5 July 2021 and at subsequent meetings.

Members were informed that the following topics were added as potential items to be included on the work programme:

·  Child Poverty (date TBC)

·  PHSE and life planning in schools (date TBC)

·  Education catch up funding (February 2022)

It was noted that the Lancashire Youth Council had been working on a child poverty campaign for quite a while and would be interested in working with the county council regarding this.

Also a request was made to look at the financial budgets for children and young people in care of the authority when they started to look ahead regarding education and apprenticeships. It was agreed that this could form part of the item on looked after children due to come to the January meeting of the committee.

Resolved: That;

i. The report presented be noted.

ii. Additional topics identified be included in the work programme.

An item of urgent business may only be considered under this heading where, by reason of special circumstances to be recorded in the Minutes, the Chair of the meeting is of the opinion that the item should be considered at the meeting as a matter of urgency.  Wherever possible, the Chief Executive should be given advance warning of any Member’s intention to raise a matter under this heading.

There were no items of Urgent Business.

The next meeting of the Education and Children's Services Scrutiny Committee will be held on Tuesday 7 December 2021 at 10.30am at County Hall, Preston.

The next meeting of the Education and Children's Services Scrutiny Committee will be held on Tuesday 7 December 2021 at 10.30am at County Hall, Preston.