The report was presented in turns by the School Improvement Manager and the Head of Virtual School. Officers would pause in between sections of the report to take questions and comments from the Committee.

Stopping at section 7, Officers took questions.

Referring to the disadvantaged gap in 6.9, Councillor Anderson questioned whether the gap would be eliminated if it continued to reduce to which the School Improvement Manager confirmed it would. The Parent Governor Representative 1 sought clarification on the ‘fsm’ terminology in the graph in 3.5. The School Improvement Manager answered it was abbreviated for ‘free school meals’.

Stopping at section 9, Officers took questions.

Councillor Hague queried the fundamental risks of going forward in terms of maintaining a trajectory. The School Improvement Manager replied that Thurrock was doing better than some schools when compared on the Ofsted figures. She stated they were doing well with around 89% of schools that were judged to be good or better, when the national average was 88%. However, some schools’ data in Thurrock had dropped due to recruitment issues. Adding on, the Church of England Representative gave praise to schools and teachers for their hard work. She continued by stating that a straight trajectory of the figures could not be expected every year as each year was a different set of children.

The Chair welcomed the closing of the disadvantaged gap at the end of key stage 1. He asked what the strategy would be on closing the gap at the end of key stage 2. The School Improvement Manager said the learning would come from schools that had closed their disadvantaged gap to develop strategies to support schools with wider disadvantaged gaps. It was not always easy to determine the gap as not all parents would claim the free school meals which was where the figures were pulled from.

Referring to GCSEs on page 51, the Chair noted some schools had improved tremendously well but there were also a number of schools declining e.g. William Edwards. The Chair questioned when the decline would become a cause for concern. Stating that the trend would have been picked up by the school themselves, the School Improvement Manager added that the service would be visiting the schools for discussions on the trend.

As figures could not be reported from Palmer’s College due to it being a part of Southend Council, the Chair stated there had to be a way to report these figures as the young people attending were living in Thurrock. The School Improvement Manager replied the figures could be included but it would not count as Thurrock’s figures.

Referring to 7.2, the Youth Cabinet Member 1 mentioned the figures of the graph and expressed concern on the decrease in Maths 4+ and English 5+. He stated that as the grade bands would move up to 5 being a pass  in GCSEs the following year, it would mean many students would not pass their GCSEs. He asked the service’s strategy on this. The School Improvement Manager explained the grade bands had been introduced to improve standards. The current cohorts had not had much time to be taught the new curriculum whereby future cohorts would have longer to study the more challenging GCSE curriculum.

At the end of the report, Officers took questions.

Pleased to see the closure of the disadvantaged gap, Councillor Okunade asked how the service could sustain the increase and improvement in staffing levels for key stage 2. Councillor Okunade also asked for reasons for non-improvement on some disadvantaged gaps. The Head of Virtual School stated that key stage 4 was improving and in line with the national cohorts. Thurrock’s looked after children were performing better than the national average but they needed to understand why some were not doing better which could be due to previous traumas. The gap may not close for looked after children until they were in later years as some may not have been in schools at an early age or had missed a few years of school. There were many variables that could affect that attainment.

In terms of sustaining staff levels, the Head of Virtual School explained that staff had been agreed for 1 academic year but they were now moving into the second academic year. The service would try to ensure the progress continued but they had to look at the progress that looked after children were making. They hoped to continue to have the staffing in the service, schools and social workers as the service had seen the impact they have had.

The Church of England Representative agreed that the progress of looked after children was important and felt that having the data and figures of their development in education would be good for the Committee to see. The Head of Virtual School explained the data could not be presented in the report as each looked after child had an individual report. However, once the data was released from the Department for Education, the data could be reported.

Continuing on, the Church of England Representative queried whether looked after children were still in care when they reached the end of a stage. Also referring to the middle of paragraph 9.3 in regards to pupils with gaps in their prior learning, she felt that could not be an assumption. The Head of Virtual School explained it was not an assumption as many of those pupils had not attended pre-school or reception prior to year 7. Some looked after children had come into care during those times and these could only be reported in their individual reports.

RESOLVED:

That the Children’s Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee noted the provisional outcomes of the summer 2018 tests and examinations and commended schools, pupils and parents/carers on their achievements.