Meeting documents

To consider presentation from Amelia Walker, Assistant Director Education, Partnerships and Skills

Note: The Chair will be allowing 1 hour for this agenda item to allow for discussion.

The Committee received an update and PowerPoint presentation from the Council’s Assistant Director for Education, Partnerships and Skills, Amelia Walker who set out the changes to education and governance arrangements in Somerset.

Details around Schools Forum reform were set out to the committee in addition to key findings of the effectiveness of the Somerset Schools Forum. The key principles of the new constitution were set out, with the constitution being a live document and reviewed annually. The membership, draft timeline and funding, financial reporting, meeting cycle and relationships with other groups were included as part of the presentation.

Following the presentation, the Committee asked detailed questions and made comments, which were responded to by officers, as follows: -

·         Greater collaboration was required with capacity through sharing resource and connectivity, educational settings were encouraged to share where economies of scale were needed and can be facilitated.

·         Standalone Academies were able to facilitate sharing that suited the community and school.

·         Reform of the Schools Forum aimed to create greater focus in achieving objectives, findings from the auditors set out the need with the ability to manage the deficit, which was a key area sought to be enabled through the reforms.

·         The creation of the Strategy Board aimed to develop a clear strategy and allowed finance to enable this. Finance wouldn’t drive strategy and was designed to help aid it enabling the process of challenge and decision making.

·         The new Schools Forum Constitution will be shared following this session.

·         The membership structure would be aligned to the regulations, with a key area of focus around behaviours and cultures.

·         An election communication had been sent out to invite those who wished to stand to become a member of the Forum. There were 2 weeks for those to respond with membership to be decided for first formal meeting of School Forum in November, at which the Chair will be elected.

·         The new annual reporting cycle set out 4 informal meetings with informal meetings to take place as a sounding board.

·         The new Board would provide oversight of education in Somerset, no consultation had been made with children in Somerset at this stage, at the point the board was place this would include consultation with children and parents.

·         Concern was expressed that there would not be meetings scheduled between October and January.

·         Committee members had been impressed with progress that had been made in Schools in Ilminster and Crewkerne. Progress was long overdue and look forward to updates on future improvements.

·         An agreed area of development was with governing bodies in effectively challenging school leadership and rationale behind decisions.

·         Transparency and legitimacy of the recruitment process of the Chair and board members was considered key, it was contended that this was made by elected members but not those within the education system.

·         It was questioned who carried out the Schools Forum audit and what were the Terms of Reference’s. This was undertaken by SWAP, which undertakes internal audits.

·         The relationship with Schools Forum and Education Strategy Board was considered relatively new and a developmental area with ongoing dialogue between the two key to the success to inform financial decisions and what is achievable.

·         Concern expressed that informal meetings were not public meetings.

·         The independent sector had not been purposefully missed out, the board hadn’t had representation in independent non maintained schools, recruitment hadn’t been successful.

·         Representation from the Board and structure was questioned, upper schools were represented. There were reps from the geography of Somerset, but the one marginally overrepresented area was Frome. There was not representation from West Somerset and were working extensively with West Somerset educational settings.

·         It was within the gift of the Board to decide where the meetings would be held but it was considered important to allow meetings to be held virtually.

·         Regular conversations were held with colleagues in Essex, Plymouth and Herefordshire in relation to their Schools Forum and learning from their experiences.

·         Reviews were built into the meeting schedule to review the Schools Forum. The Strategy Board would be more iterative and facilitate the outcomes.

The Vice Chair thanked the Assistant Director for the detailed update.

The Scrutiny for Children’s and Families Committee noted the changes to education governance arrangements in Somerset.