Agenda item

The Committee will consider a report giving details of the current attainment gap in schools, the Buckinghamshire versus national levels; key actions to address the gap and the delivery plan for the next academic year.

Contributors:

Richard Nash, Corporate Director Children’s Services

Simon James, Service Director – Education

Gareth Drawmer, Head of Achievement and Learning.

The Chairman noted that Buckinghamshire was known for its high standards of education but closing the attainment gap for those disadvantaged was a priority for the service.

Councillor Cranmer reported this was a long-standing issue, and that the Covid pandemic had made the situation worse.  The report gave details of the size of the gap in the different age groups and the actions being taken to close it. The strengthening of the partnership working between schools and the council during the pandemic was very positive. The service would continue to support schools to help children achieve their potential.

Richard Nash noted that the report highlights that the service is in a good place to narrow the gap. The Buckinghamshire Challenge Board noted that the council has been working on reducing the gap for several years.

Simon James reported that the focus was on the attainment gap between the disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged children in Buckinghamshire over the assessed points of key stage 2, GCSE stage and early years. Data was available up to 2019 and some indicative data was available for 2020. Headteachers and local authority officers and were working well collaboratively on the Buckinghamshire Challenge Board. The board had agreed five evidence-based approaches to target work to the most in-need pupils, focussing on inclusive teaching, issue assessment and the evaluation of intervention. Five outcomes were focussed on namely; the maintenance of the gap from 2019, a target of at least 90 % of schools to access training, 100% of schools to access to focus sessions, aiming for a reduction in the gap of ½% by 2023 across all age groups and to support schools further over the next few years.

The gap slightly narrows as children become older, illustrating how interventions benefit the children.

In response to a question, it was noted that school attendance was good across the pandemic and where attendance is lower than should be, the attendance team are on hand to encourage parents to return children to school. Schools are keen to persist in getting the children in school. There are 101 children who are electively home schooled in the county.

Gareth Drawmer noted the teams on-going hard work to increase attendance. Many schools develop their own resources. Sanctions are in place if required. The team worked closely with the Department of Education for example on the issue of  children who went abroad last March and have not returned  to school here as yet.

A Member enquired as to how the department directs attention to those more highly disadvantaged and it was noted that the definition of disadvantaged was those looked after by the local authority, those adopted and those accessing free school meals. 38% of children were in the BME category and 18% were children whose first language was not English. The latter can access extra support for the language issue.

Focus schools were defined by three criteria across the range of schools. The “Quality First Teaching” programme aimed to empower teachers to be the best they could. It also assessed children holistically and reassessed them further on. Another part of the work was around regulated self-learning. A teaching school hub was run by Dr Challoners with responsibility to increase standards across the system. As a result of the good partnership working with schools, communication had increased and best practice was shared.

Action: to bring information back to committee on how the Quality First Project is working as part of the data set on the Education Standards report.

A significant training offer was being made with the Education Endowment Foundation. The main focus was on delivering the best quality teaching in the classroom. Many conferences had been run over the last year online with high attendance levels. These included looking at peer-to -peer working and best practice.

The Chairman thanked the Officers and requested a report back to committee on the work of the Buckinghamshire Challenge Board and for those on universal funding and work of Dr Challenors.