The Portfolio Holder
for Children, Education and Families, Cllr Peter Fortune, attended
the meeting to respond to questions from the Committee. The
Portfolio Holder gave a brief introduction highlighting the
following issues –
- The temporary site
for Bullers’ Wood School for Boys
had opened in September and the boys had settled in
well. A Public Enquiry to determine the
second planning application had taken place and the outcome of the
Enquiry was expected by 16th January 2019.
- A new Director of
Education had been appointed and would start in January
2019. The Portfolio Holder thanked the
Interim Director of Education, Gillian Palmer, for her exceptional
work over the past year.
- A meeting had taken
place with the Chairman of the Spring Partnership MAT. Any ongoing work would be fed back to the
Committee.
- The Portfolio Holder
had attended the London Youth Games where Bromley had retained its
title. The Portfolio Holder encouraged
Members of the Committee to attend any future Games if
possible.
- Meetings had been
held with Primary and Secondary Head Teachers to discuss ongoing
funding issues. The Portfolio Holder
stressed the need for the Local Authority to work collaboratively
with schools in order to lobby where necessary.
- The Portfolio Holder
had been in touch with the Education for the 21st
Century Trust and the Regional Schools Commissioner to ask that the
Local Authority be kept updated in relation to ongoing
investigations. The Portfolio Holder
reported that the DfE had appointed
external trustees to monitor the Trust.
- Since the last
meeting the Portfolio Holder had visited a number of schools.
- The Corporate
Parenting Fun Day had been a success and the young people had
really valued the attendance and participation by Members.
- During the Practice
Week that had been held the Portfolio Holder had spent a day with
the Court Team seeing the valuable work that the Team did.
- Social Worker
recruitment was going well and the positive messages coming from
the Local Authority were having an impact.
- The Trailblazer
funding had been secured.
- During November,
Ofsted had come in for an unannounced three week inspection of
Children’s Services. The quality
assurance process was currently underway and until this was
complete the final outcome of the inspection would not be
known. However, during the feedback
session the Inspectors reported that they had found no evidence of
inadequate practice. In addition to
this the inspectors recognised that social workers knew the
children well. Recognising that the
improvements that had been delivered within Children’s
Services were the result of hard work and improvement across the
Council, the Portfolio Holder thanked all Members and staff for
their hard work and support.
Cllr Fortune then
responded to questions, making the following comments –
- The Local Authority
had submitted an application to the Secretary of State for
Education for a disapplication request for the transfer of
£1m from the Schools Block of the DSG to the high Needs
Block. It had been important to explain
to Head Teachers why the transfer of funds was necessary and moving
forward there was an acknowledgement that the Local Authority
needed to be transparent about the process. Nationally there were concerns around High Needs
Funding. The disapplication request for
2018/19 had been approved by the Secretary of State. The imbalance of funding had occurred a few years
before when funds were transferred from the High Needs Block to the
Schools Block, this transfer had then been erroneously set in stone
when the DfE had undertaken a
rebalancing of budgets. The
disapplication request would have no impact on the proposed SEN
facility in the Borough as the provision sat separately from the
funding.
- Feedback from parents
clearly indicated that there was a demand for local
provision. There was no intention to
move children that had been placed in out of borough provision but
children entering the system would be placed in the local provision
where appropriate. At the same time the
Glebe Secondary School had been asked to shift its focus so that
they were the local school of choice for children with
ASD. Whilst Glebe was on the Borough
boundary, Officers did not consider that there would be any overlap
with the new ASD Free School in Croydon.
- The bid for the new
specialist provision had been informed by evidence of
need. During a comprehensive analysis
the needs of all the children in the cohort had been
reviewed. Officers were confident that
that there was a local need and that
children would want to be placed in the new provision.
- The SEND4Change
report had highlighted that in Bromley there were significantly
more children in the Independent Sector than the national average
and this was skewing how funding in the High Needs Block was
spent.
- The Portfolio Holder
had visited Biggin Hill Airport over
half term to see a programme that was being run. There was no further update on the Aeronautical
College at Biggin Hill and the
Portfolio Holder understood that a different site was under
consideration.
- As schools moved to academy status there was no
requirement to follow the RE Syllabus set by the local SACRE
(Standing Advisory Council for Religious Education). The Portfolio Holder noted that Members were
currently committed to SACRE and he could not see that changing any
time soon.
- A date in March had
been agreed for the Pupil Place Planning Working Group. There was a recognition
that there was a need to involve the public in pupil place
planning.
- The Portfolio Holder
was reminded that he was expected at meetings of the Education
Budget and Performance Monitoring Sub-committee.