Agenda item

This report is provided to committee members to highlight the work and impact of the School Improvement Team.

D Street provided an introduction to the report and power point presentation which highlighted the work and impact the School Improvement Team (SIT) had, with improvements across the County, and advising that the service was now valued with the majority of maintained schools and some academies also purchasing the service.  The report was endorsed by both Councillor G Renner-Thompson, Cabinet Member for Children’s Services and A Kingham, Interim Co-Director of Children’s Services, who advised that there was also an opportunity for the Council to be part of the Test and Learn Phase of Local Authorities being able to bid for schools to become part of a Multi Academy Trust. 

Councillor Renner-Thompson advised that Cabinet had already been appraised of the removal of Government Funding and had requested the Director of Finance and S151 Officer to look at budgets to enable the service to continue and he hoped that this Committee would also endorse this way forward.

Members welcomed and endorsed the report advising that there had been transformational change since 2013 and the work across partnerships was very pleasing.  There was concern regarding the withdrawal of Government funding and the Committee would support the proposal for this Council to continue to fund the service which would give schools reassurance that improvements would continue to be seen.  It was commented that schools and their staff had felt very supported by the Council during the pandemic.

Members were advised that strong leadership in schools was seen as the best way of achieving good outcomes for learners and there were good examples of this across maintained, academies and Diocese schools within Northumberland.  KS1 results in Northumberland had always been very strong with the challenge being to maintain these going into KS2.  There were currently 19 secondary schools within Northumberland of which 9 were Local Authority schools and 10 Academies and of those 4 were currently rated as inadequate by Ofsted, however whilst the SIT were not working directly with these schools, assurance had been provided that progress was being made at all 4 schools.   The cost of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) for the SIT had not increased in 7 years and it was not thought that the cost of the SLA was a barrier for schools using the service at the current time, however a number of Academies used their own in-house teams. 

The Chair commented that the SIT had a significant impact on education in the County and the service was now respected and recommended by peers.  He asked that this Committee endorse a message to Cabinet that it was imperative that funding for the SIT be provided until the end of this Administration’s term of office and asked that the Cabinet Member take this message back to Cabinet.  Thanks and appreciation were also provided to the whole School Improvement Team for their work.

It was unanimously RESOLVED that:

1.    The performance of the team and their ability to develop the quality of education in Northumberland be noted;

2.    The changes to funding imposed by the DfE and the possible impact of service be noted;

3.    A further report be received once it was known how the reduced funding would be accounted for; and

4.     A recommendation be made to Cabinet for funding of the School Improvement Team to continue until the end of this Administration so that the team could continue to develop and offer support to schools both inside and outside of Northumberland.