Issue - meetings
Annual School Standards and Achievement 2016-2017
Meeting: 28/03/2018 - Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee (Item 5)
5 Annual School Standards and Achievement 2016-2017 PDF 197 KB
This is the annual report on school standard and achievement. The paper meets Brent Council’s strategic priorities and policies, and affects the wellbeing of the Borough’s communities and residents because school standards are a corporate priority for Brent Council as set out in the Brent Borough Plan 2015-19.
Additional documents:
Minutes:
Gail Tolley (Strategic Director, Children and Young People) introduced the Annual School Standards and Achievement 2016-2017 report and advised that colleagues Rose Ashton (Head teacher – Chalkhill Primary School) and Danny Coyle (Head teacher – Newman Catholic College) were present to help address the committee’s queries, along with John Galligan (Head of Setting and School Effectiveness), and Councillor M Patel (Lead Member, Children and Young People).
John Galligan outlined the key headlines from the report, advising that the quality of education provision in Brent had continued to improve, with overall effectiveness at the highest ever recorded for Brent (96 per cent of schools judged good or outstanding at the end of the last academic year). The committee heard that progress of pupils at primary and secondary was well above the national average, with Brent achieving the second highest measure of progress in England. Commenting on the 2017 to 2020 improvement priorities set out in the report, John Galligan advised that these had been agreed by the Strategic School Effectiveness Partnership Board (SSEPB), following consultation with partners and the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee’s examination of the Annual School Standards and Achievement Report 2015-2016. The priorities included building leadership capacity across the borough, including headteacher succession planning; ensuring that school governance met national quality expectations, and governing boards were equipped to challenge school leaders to address the underperformance of groups in their schools; raising the standards and progress of pupils at the lowest performing schools; and, raising the attainment of priority groups.
John Galligan detailed the actions taken and improvements made in relation to the priorities, highlighting amongst others: the value of school-to-school support; the launch of the council’s “Developing strong governance across all Brent Schools” programme; the designation in 2017 of Chalkhill Primary School as the Brent Schools Partnership’s (BSP’s) specialist centre for the achievement of Black Caribbean pupils and the associated work being undertaken to raise attainment; and, the BSP’s conference “Success for All” held in February 2018. In concluding his presentation, John Galligan emphasised that there had been significant improvements made but there was still work to be done to support improved attainment for all groups and the council and its partners continued to work hard to achieve the improvement priorities.
The Chair thanked the officers for the introduction to the report and invited questions and comments from members of the committee.
Members subsequently sought comment on the target to have 100 per cent of Brent’s schools as rated good or outstanding by Ofsted and sought confirmation of a timeline for achieving this goal. The committee requested an overview of the framework for the education sector including the role of the Regional School Commissioner and the council’s interaction with academy and free schools. Concern was expressed that the improvement in attainment for priority groups had not been achieved to the degree hoped, despite the actions and plans identified in the report for 2015/16. The committee questioned whether these actions were insufficient and whether officers were confident that all ... view the full minutes text for item 5