Agenda item

This paper provides an overview of the progress of Brent Council in securing sufficient integrated early childhood services through children’s centres. 

Susan Gates (Head of Early Years and Family Support) introduced a detailed report to the committee setting out the progress achieved by the council in securing sufficient integrated early childhood services through children’s centres. The report described the movement from 2011/12 to a locality model of children centres in accordance with the requirement to reduce expenditure on Children’s Centres by £1.2m. This model introduced shared management and the operation of staff across multiple sites under a single locality advisory board. It was noted that this was a model being increasingly adopted by local authorities. An outline of the most recent guidance and direction from central government was provided and Members’ were apprised of the impact of the new Ofsted inspection framework which came into force in April 2013. The committee heard that the focus of Ofsted inspection had shifted to three areas of judgement (previously twenty) with significant implications for partnership working, information sharing, definition, identification and engagement of target group households and the planning and delivery of services. It was noted that Willesden locality had been amongst the first children’s centre localities nationally to be inspected under the revised framework. The Willow nursery which was attached to the Willow Children’s centre had also been inspected as an early years setting. The outcomes of these inspections (requires improvement and inadequate respectively) were considered disappointing and not reflective of the improvement in quality of provision. Sue Gates highlighted the required actions identified and work undertaken in response to the judgements. 

Members discussed the report and raised a number of issues. Councillor Gladbaum advised that she had reviewed the Ofsted reports for Brent’s children’s centres and highlighted to the meeting that under the old framework there had been 7 children’s centres inspected, 3 of which had received good ratings; in contrast, 8 centres had been inspected under the new framework and of those 8, only 1 had received a good rating. Additional explanation was therefore sought regarding the changed inspection framework and the mapping of progress across this. The committee further queried the number of qualified teachers employed in children’s centres. 

Addressing the issues raised, Susan Gates emphasised that there had been improvement achieved across all of Brent's Children's Centres. However, the Ofsted inspection requirements had changed in April 2013 and it would take time to adjust to these and embed the new regime. Members were advised that local authorities across London had similarly struggled to do well under the new arrangements. A particular feature of these arrangements was the focus on data analysis which placed a new requirement on staff and would take time to assimilate. Susan Gates further explained that the requirement to have a qualified teacher had been removed two years previously. Qualified teacher input was an expensive resource but was provided as a shared resource within localities. It was noted that it was very rare to have qualified teacher input in PVI sector nurseries.

The committee thanked the officer for the report and for her contribution to the meeting; however, it was noted that the meeting had been presented with an overview of progress achieved by the Early Years Team, rather than a focussed analysis of its strengths and weaknesses as had been requested. The committee therefore agreed that a subsequent report providing this analysis  be submitted to its meeting in March 2014 and that this analysis reflect the points raised in the relevant Ofsted reports.

RESOLVED:

    (i)        that the report before the committee be noted;

  (ii)        that a report analysing the strengths and weaknesses of the Early Years Team be provided to the committee at its meeting in March 2014.