Meeting documents

At their meeting in January 2017, prior to the election in May, Members of the previous Committee heard about an increase in permanent exclusions in Buckinghamshire, particularly in primary schools.  This item is for the new Committee Members to look into the current position, including permanent exclusions in secondary schools, before deciding whether further in depth work by Members on this subject needs to take place.

Contributors

·         Mr Mike Appleyard, Cabinet Member for Education and Skills

·         Miss Sarah Callaghan, Service Directors, Education

·         Mrs Vivian Trundell,  Education Entitlement Manager

The Chairman welcomed:

·         Mr Mike Appleyard, Cabinet Member for Education and Skills

·         Miss Sarah Callaghan, Service Director Education and

·         Mrs Vivian Trundell, Education Entitlement Manager

The Cabinet Member and Officers:

·         Acknowledged that the level of permanent exclusions was not acceptable.

·         Outlined the need for a robust response which would include a strong focus on prevention and early help.

·         Focussed on the need for strong partnership working with schools and learning from good practice and expertise within Buckinghamshire and elsewhere.

Members questioned the Cabinet Member and Officers on:

·         The speed of the response by the service so far.

·         Schools reporting a lack of support to manage the issue.

·         A lack of communication between schools and the local authority.

·         The sudden rise in numbers of permanent exclusions in 2014/15.

·         The need to act quickly to make improvements so as to positively impact on children and young people affected.

·         Partnership working, including working with the NHS in responding to the issue.

·         Access to better quality data and analysis to help understand the key issues and timelines.

The following responses were made by the Cabinet Member and Officers:

·         It was imperative that the issues that were leading to children and young people being permanently excluded were identified much earlier and needed to be linked to the Early Help programme.

·         Prevention and support panels were being piloted to help support schools by bringing together expertise where good practice was identified and an Inclusion Charter was being developed.

·         Children’s Services had not always acted as quickly as it should have and had been too re-active.  The push to address the issue through the Early Help process would aim to address this.

·         There was a wish to bring Educational Psychologists into schools to provide support earlier but the focus had been on Educational Psychologists doing statutory assessments. The new Early Help approach aimed to reduce the need for statutory assessment by intervening earlier.

·         A number of issues had contributed to the large increase since 2014/15 including:

o   changes to Central Government guidance in 2012.

o   issues relating to children’s mental health impacting nationally.

o   reduced resourcing.

·         There needed to be a culture change and a new approach between schools and the local authority through better joint working and communications which was starting to happen.

·         Central Government policies were making it essential for schools to also take increased responsibility in preventing permanent exclusions.

·         There was recognition that the situation needed to improve quickly with the Cabinet Member and Director of Children’s Services keeping pressure on officers to show numbers reducing.

·         Early identification of issues should happen at a number of points where families interacted with the Council and partners including, pre-birth services, first point of contact, Children’s Centres, pre-schools and nursery schools.

·         Once issues were identified it was important to wrap relevant services around the family to provide support. 

·         It was important that children entered education with the ability to deal with social situations and curriculum expectations that they would be faced with.

·         Although the Early Help programme approach may result in fewer Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) assessments, where appropriate, EHCP would still be used.

·         It was recognised that the current set of data on exclusions and analysis still needed to be improved and work was underway. Any new data would be shared with the Committee.

ACTION: Ms Rhodes White

RESOLVED: The Committee AGREED that:

·         a further in depth review by the Committee would be undertaken on the issue.

·         the Committee would scrutinise the outcomes of the prevention and support panels once the pilot had been completed.