Meeting documents

Apologies were received from Dev Dhillon and Mark Shaw.  Members were also advised that Rebecca Burchell, the Secondary School Parent Governor representative on the Committee had resigned.  The Chairman expressed her gratitude to Rebbeca Burchell for her contribution to the work of the Committee over the past two years.

To declare any Personal or Disclosable Pecuniary Interests.

There were none.

Minutes of the meeting held on 27^th May 2014 to be confirmed.

The minutes of the meeting held on 27^th May 2014 were confirmed as a correct record, subject to the following amendment under item 10 The Munro Programme –

‘David Johnston reported that Cambridgeshire were the only other local authority’ was amended to read ‘David Johnston reported that Cambridgeshire was an example of another local authority.’

The Chairman reported that the Ofsted inspection of Children’s Services began a week or so after the last Committee meeting.  Mrs Sue Imbriano, Strategic Director – Children and Young People advised members that the Ofsted report would not be published until August. The County Council would receive a report in Mid-July, so at this stage she could make no further comments.

Public Questions is an opportunity for people who live, work or study in the county to put a question to a Scrutiny Committee about any issue that has an impact on their local community or the county as a whole.

Member of public, who have given prior notice, will be invited to put their question in person.

The Cabinet Member and responsible officers will then be invited to respond. 

Further information and details on how to register can be found through the following link and by then clicking on ‘Public Questions’.

http://democracy.buckscc.gov.uk/mgCommitteeDetails.aspx?ID=788

There were none.

For the chairman of the Committee to provide an update to the Committee on recent scrutiny related activity.

The Chairman reported that she has recently attended the Public Scrutiny Conference in London and the Bucks Budget Scrutiny work led by Andrew Brown had been nominated for an award.  Buckinghamshire was commended for the transparency and strength of its Scrutiny Committees.  The Chairman also commented that she had enjoyed the in-house Select Committee training session and it was interesting to draw the parallels between our Select Committees and those of Parliament. 

The Chairman and also several other members had enjoyed visits to the PACE centre, which supports children with cerebral palsy and other sensory motor disabilities. 

The Buckinghamshire Safeguarding Children Board had held some briefing sessions for members and staff on the lessons learned from recent Serious Case Reviews.

The Chairman had also visited Thomas Hickman School to learn more about their Pupil Premium work and attended the United Nations Day with school pupils.  

For members of the Committee to update the Committee on any issue they are investigating on behalf of the Committee.

The Chairman invited other members to update the Committee on their recent visits.  All members who had visited the PACE centre had found it very inspiring and interesting.  A member also commented that the Serious Case Review briefings had been thought provoking.  Members were also impressed with the debating skills and the suggested solutions of the school children involved in the United Nations Day.

An opportunity for the Committee to present questions to the Cabinet Member. 

Contributors

Mr Mike Appleyard, Cabinet Member for Education and Skills

Mr Chris Munday – Service Director, Learning, Skills and Prevention

The Chairman welcomed Mr Mike Appleyard, Cabinet Member for Education and Skills, Mr Bill Bendyshe-Brown, Deputy Cabinet Member for Education and Skills and Mr Chris Munday, Service Director, Learning, Skills and Prevention to the meeting.  The Chairman invited member’s questions for the Cabinet Member:

Are you confident that you can deal with the pressure over changes to home to school transport and are you happy that children are free to choose schools according to their needs, rather than their parent’s ability to pay for their transport?

Parents will obviously always do the best for their children.  The Council are working under financial constraints and home to school transport is an area for savings, rather than cutting areas which might affect educational performance.  I am also now looking at Special Educational Needs (SEN).  We cannot do everything that we used to be able to do.  I have received a clear steer from parents to retain home to school transport and the discretionary transport arrangements.  I am trying hard to retain the service and limit cost increases.

There are growing pressures on school places due to housing developments in the county.  Does the fact that Aylesbury Vale District Council has not accepted the Aylesbury Vale Plan make school place planning even more difficult?

The lack of an agreed plan for Aylesbury Vale does represent a challenge for Buckinghamshire County Council (BCC) going forward, but to date BCC has met its statutory responsibilities.  Planning is important and for larger developments Section 106 monies could be accessed.  BCC does have a robust system for analysing housing development.

A member commented that there were issues with school buildings being able to accommodate an increase in pupil numbers.  In response, Chris Munday noted that Cressex School had been built over-sized in anticipation of the future increase and BCC had identified a need to expand some other Secondary schools. 

Following the Committee’s Readiness for Work Inquiry, could members have a further update on Apprenticeships within the Council and generally across Bucks.

Mr Bill Bendyshe-Brown has led on developing apprenticeships which has been a priority for the skills agenda.  Currently there were more companies requesting apprentices, than young people expressing interest in the roles.  Concerns had been expressed that there was no quality assurance for companies willing to take on apprentices, so a ‘Going for Gold’ initiative had been introduced in order to address this.  A member asked why there was a shortage of young people coming forward and Mr Bendyshe-Brown commented that often young people were not aware of the opportunities.  However now that Ofsted were looking at skills in school inspections, he hoped that schools would promote opportunities like apprenticeships as an alternative to university.  He had attended meetings of the Bucks Association of Secondary Heads (BASH) to promote the skills agenda and through the Local Economic Partnership (LEP) skills group, employers were having more opportunity to influence the school curriculum. 

The Chairman thanked Mr Appleyard, Mr Bendyshe-Brown and Chris Munday for their contributions.

An opportunity for the Committee to ask questions to the Cabinet Member on the Children and Young People Services Portfolio Plan 2014-15.

Contributors

Mr Mike Appleyard - Cabinet Member for Education and Skills

Mr Chris Munday – Service Director, Learning, Skills and Prevention

Papers

Children and Young People’s Services Portfolio Plan 2014-15

Mr Mike Appleyard, Cabinet Member for Education and Skills and Mr Chris Munday, Service Director – Learning, Skills and Prevention suggested that it might be sensible to consider Items 8 and 9 together. 

The Chairman invited members’ questions on the Children and Young People’s Services Portfolio Plan 2014-15 and the Children and Young People’s Plan 2014-18.

What are the priorities for the Education and Skills area within the Portfolio this coming year?

A major priority is to engage with more children in Early Years therefore Children’s Centres are a priority, as we are not reaching enough children aged two and three years currently.  Through Children’s Centres, we can support children’s early development, even preparing parents pre-birth and then at the other end, it is important to prepare children for adult life.  I want young people leaving school to be better equipped in presenting themselves for university places and the world of work.  Alongside these two priorities, we also want to deliver high quality academic education.

A member took the opportunity to remind the Committee that all elected members have a responsibility to Looked After Children as Corporate Parents. Mrs Sue Imbriano, Strategic Director, Children and Young People reinforced this comment, explaining that whilst the Corporate Parenting Panel membership included elected members, who focus on looking at the quality of services provided for Looked After Children, it is the responsibility of all elected members and officers of the Council to be Corporate Parents.  A training course was being offered on 9^th October for all members to help them gain a greater understanding of their responsibilities in this area. 

With additional large housing developments in the county, will the local authority be able to meet the additional demand for primary school places and will Children’s Centres be able to expand? How can Children’s Centres engage more with their communities?

Children’s Centres are crucial to giving children the best start in life. We want to improve the current offer and hopefully improve outcomes. Children’s Centres should be maintained to deliver a range of services and we need to ensure that there is good quality provision in deprived areas.  A new Government initiative to introduce 15 hours of free child care for two year olds in disadvantaged areas has led to 803 two year old places being created in Bucks.  We need to encourage good quality providers into our more deprived areas. There have been challenges with the level of early years funding from Government, but fortunately Schools Forum had agreed to move budgets in order to support early years work. 

We need to consider where our growth areas are and generally this is in our more urban deprived areas. We must also look at how best our provision can fit the communities it is serving.  There is a mixed picture in how the well the Children’s Centres are engaging with their communities. I visited Burnham Children’s Centre and was very impressed by their close links to the GP surgery opposite, offering Baby  ...  view the full minutes text for item 8.

The Committee will receive the Children and Young People’s Plan 2014-18.

Contributors

Mr Mike Appleyard – Cabinet Member for Education and Skills

Mrs Sue Imbriano – Strategic Director, Children and Young People

Mr Chris Munday – Service Director, Learning, Skills and Prevention

Mr Ed Mallam – Head of Children’s Partnerships

Mr Donald McPhail – Independent Chairman, Bucks Safeguarding Children Board

Papers

Children and Young People’s Plan 2014-18

This item was covered under Item 8.

An opportunity for the Committee to put questions to the Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Children’s Safeguarding Board and the Strategic Director, Children and Young People.

Contributors

Mr Donald McPhail, Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Children’s Safeguarding Board

Mrs Sue Imbriano, Strategic Director, Children and Young People

The Chairman welcomed Mr Donald McPhail, Independent Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Safeguarding Children Board (BSCB) to the meeting.  The Chairman asked Mr McPhail to provide the Committee with a brief explanation of the role of the Board.  Mr McPhail explained that the BSCB’s statutory role had two elements – the first was to co-ordinate arrangements between agencies in the area to ensure that they are safeguarding children and promoting safeguarding and the second is to monitor the effectiveness of the agencies and these arrangements.  It was noted that the work of the Board had been considered by Ofsted as part of the recent inspection of Children’s Services.

The Chairman commented that when she had attended meetings of BSCB in the past, she felt that the membership of the Board was very large and she asked if it was necessary for all the agencies to be represented.  Mr McPhail explained that the membership of the Board was prescribed by the statutory guidance, ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’.  BSCB did not have many agencies over and above what was set out in the guidance, although the Chairs of the seven Sub-Committees of the Board also attend.  In terms of Education representatives BSCB had only two representatives when the statutory guidance recommends four.  BSCB were in the process of developing a secondary concept – BSCB hoped to set up a Reference Group which would run parallel to BSCB for those agencies who do not need to be on the main board, but who BSCB do need to communicate with.

The Chairman asked how BSCB would link in with the MASH (Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub). In response Mr McPhail reported that BSCB had been receiving regular updates on the implementation of the MASH and monitoring the effectiveness of the MASH was one of the Board’s top priorities.  The Board had agreed 17 priorities but Mr McPhail listed the top ones as follows: - i) promoting a shared understanding of thresholds across all agencies ii) monitoring the effectiveness of Early Help/Early Intervention iii) monitoring the effectiveness of information sharing iv) monitoring the effectiveness of the MASH v) raising awareness of female genital mutilation vi) to extend section 11 auditing beyond statutory agencies and vii) monitor the quality of practice in relation to neglect across Early Years, Children in Need and Child Protection teams.

The Chairman invited members’ questions.

Do we use the Local Government Association’s Toolkit in schools to help raise awareness of child sexual exploitation? Young People in these situations naturally seem to feel that they are at fault and we need to get a clear message out to children and young people that this is not the case.

The key message in Safeguarding services is that abuse of a child is never a child’s fault.  Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) is far more complex.  If a young person has been groomed into situations they are unaware of, they can then feel more responsible for getting into that situation.  We now have a  ...  view the full minutes text for item 10.

The Committee will receive an update on the Families First programme and will have an opportunity to ask questions.

Contributors

Mrs Sue Imbriano, Strategic Director, Children and Young People

Mrs Joy Shakespeare , Head of Family Resilience

Mr Gordon Vincent, Consultant

The Chairman welcomed Mrs Sue Imbriano, Strategic Director, Children and Young People, Mrs Joy Shakespeare, Head of Family Resilience and Mr Gordon Vincent, Consultant to the meeting.  A copy of York Consulting’s Interim Report on Buckinghamshire: Families First: The Journey March 2014 and a copy of the Payment by Results figures were tabled at the meeting.  Mr Vincent gave an overview of the progress of Families First in Buckinghamshire.  Bucks had initially undertaken a pilot project with 11 families in Chesham to test the new practice model.  This helped to inform the whole project and Families First was rolled out to the whole of the county from June 2013. 

There were four key considerations when working with the identified troubled families.  The family might encompass different households and would be multi-generational – often some of the problems within families had been faced by the parents and today their children were demonstrating similar behaviours.  Troubled families had multiple issues which could only be resolved by effective multiagency work.  There had to be an agreement of what success would look like for each family and there was a real drive to make this change sustainable, which meant a change in attitudes.

Families First appears to be delivering results.  One professional takes the lead with a family winning their trust and agreeing with them a plan to move forward.  This worker needs to be able to identify all the issues within the family, prioritise where to start, gain their trust and manage other professionals effectively.

Professor Montgomery from Oxford University is proposing to undertake a three year study with a limited number of families to look at how interventions are delivered and managed, the impact and relative costs of the interventions, consider what other factors might influence outcomes for the families and to agree how success can be measured effectively.  There will be learning from the agency representatives, the parents or carer’s stories and also from the children’s stories.

The Chairman invited members’ questions.

You mention that previously there was an issue with too many professionals trying to engage with these families.  How do you decide who should be the lead professional?

We do this in agreement with each family and the agencies involved.  Often there is one agency who has a particularly good relationship with the family and so far there have been no issues in deciding who is the right person to take the lead.

What is the definition of a ‘family’?

The Government’s definition is a household where at least one person is under 18 years of age.  Sometimes the families we deal with stretch across two households.

Families First seems like a great example of preventative work. How do families access Families First?

Initially we identified a number of families and others are referred to us from other agencies.  Obviously there are lots of families out there who can manage with lower levels of support or who can help themselves with the right signposting. 

Do you have sufficient resources  ...  view the full minutes text for item 11.

A report on the attainment of Buckinghamshire Schools at various Key Stages in 2012-13.

Contributors

Mr Mike Appleyard – Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Education and Skills

Mr Chris Munday – Service Director, Learning, Skills and Prevention

Mr Raza Khan – Chief Executive, Bucks Learning Trust

Mrs Amanda Hopkins – Director of Education, Bucks Learning Trust

The Muslim Parents Association

Papers

The Chairman welcomed Mr Mike Appleyard, Cabinet Member for Education and Skills, Mr Chris Munday, Service Director, Learning, Skills and Prevention, Mr Raza Khan, Chief Executive, Bucks Learning Trust and Mrs Amanda Hopkins, Director of Education, Bucks Learning Trust to the meeting. The annual report on Educational Standards was included in the agenda papers and the Chairman asked the contributors for the key headlines.

Mr Appleyard explained that that the report contained the traditional measures of academic achievement in Bucks schools, but he believed that it was important to measure and celebrate success in other areas of the curriculum and school life too.  He wanted to see excellence across the whole of the education system. Mr Munday reiterated that the statutory responsibility for standards in all schools which are state funded rests with Buckinghamshire County Council and as with the previous year’s Educational Standards report, there were both positive and negative trends. 

Mrs Amanda Hopkins, Director of Education, Bucks Learning Trust (BLT) advised that BLT were using these results to drive their work programme.  One area for consideration was how best to approach Phonics, as there appeared to be a discrepancy in the Phonics results.  BLT were carrying out an audit to see how Phonics are delivered across the county with a view to sharing expertise from schools with strong Phonics performance.  There were a number of different Phonics programmes and the BLT would look at what specific cohorts of children need.

For Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, BLT had appointed high quality English and Maths Leads for both Primary and Secondary to improve results. BLT were also aiming to tackle underperforming groups and had outlined to the Committee previously their narrowing the gap initiatives. 

A member asked for information on Grammar school admissions, particularly what percentage of children securing a Grammar school place had been privately educated and what percentage were from out of county primary schools.  Mr Munday explained that this was a report on Standards and he would supply the Committee with data on the latest round of admissions at another meeting. Grammar schools were not the only way of driving up attainment – we want improving standards in all our schools. The member commented that he could see from the report that there had been improvements in the Primary sector and it would be interesting to see if children in receipt of Free School Meals (FSM) who had early intervention to support them at Primary level, were then gaining Grammar school places. 

Mr Appleyard reported that any child who qualifies for a Grammar school place in Bucks will get one, this guarantee does not apply to children who live outside of the county. Upper Schools were improving their performance and it was important to recognise this.  Mr Raza Khan, Chief Executive, Bucks Learning Trust added that they could have a great impact in Key Stage 3 and 4 and significant progress was already being seen in upper schools which should then be translated into  ...  view the full minutes text for item 12.

Members will review and plan the Committee’s Work Programme.

Contributors

Mrs Val Letheren – Chairman of the ESCS Select Committee

Mr Mike Appleyard – Cabinet Member for Education and Skills

Mr David Martin – Deputy Cabinet Member for Children’s Services

Mr Michael Carr – Scrutiny Policy Officer

The Chairman welcomed Mr Simon Billenness, Senior Practitioner - Participation to the meeting.  Mr Billenness would be contributing to both the proposed Select Committee Inquiries.  As a Senior Practitioner - Participation, he is involved in running various projects to encourage engagement with children and young people including the Youth Parliament, Young Inspectors and We Do Care! the Children in Care Council in Bucks.  In addition, he chairs the BSCB Internet Safety Sub-Committee which has undertaken work looking at how children and young people conduct themselves online and how they can do this safely.

Members considered the draft terms of reference for both Inquiries and were asked which inquiry they would like to take part in.  Val Letheren, Paul Irwin, Robin Stuchbury, Margaret Aston and David Watson volunteered for Children’s Voices and Val Letheren, Paul Irwin, Robin Stuchbury, Phil Gomm, Katrina Wood and Monique Nowers volunteered for Internet Safety.

RESOLVED

That the draft terms of reference and membership for the Internet Safety Inquiry and Children’s Voices Inquiry be agreed.

To note the next meeting of the Education, Skills and Children’s Services Select Committee on Tuesday 7^th October 2014 at 10am, venue to be confirmed. 

To note the next meeting of the Education, Skills and Children’s Services Select Committee on Tuesday 7^th October 2014 at 10am,in Mezzanine Room 2