Agenda item

The Strategic Commissioner – Education and Skills and the Interim Lead Commissioner attended the meeting to discuss the measures and resources in place within the Council's Education & Skills Intelligent Client Unit (E&S ICU) to monitor and manage the delivery of the education services commissioned to Babcock Prime. The E&S ICU has a Lead Commissioner, Commissioning Manager and Commissioning Officer.

The majority of the Council's Learning and Achievement Services were commissioned to Babcock Prime on 1 October 2015 on a 5 year contract. The services transferred to Babcock Prime from the Council were:

·       School Admissions

·       Children Missing in Education

·       Elective Home Education

·       Exclusions

·       Post-16

·       Specialist Inclusion Services

·       The Virtual School (not the Headteacher role)

·       School Improvement

·       Governor Services

·       Early Years & Childcare

·       Education Investigation Service/Children in Entertainment & Employment

·       Education Welfare Service

·       Workforce Development

The Council retained some services which were previously within the Learning and Achievement Service:

·       Place planning and provision

·       The role of the Virtual Headteacher

·       The strategic lead for services for learners with Special Educational Needs (SEN)

The County Council monitors the Contract under a strict and robust governance structure and had:

·     Weekly commissioning meetings with the Babcock Regional Manager

·     Monthly Review Meetings with Council and Babcock senior managers, which included Council commissioners and Babcock leads

·     Quarterly Review Meetings with senior Council officers and Cabinet Member, and senior Babcock Prime; and also had

·     A suite of programme processes which had been introduced to ensure robust contract monitoring:

–       Reporting and contract monitoring tools

–       Issues log and Early Warning Register

–       Data management protocols

–       Evidence of continued measurable improvements in standards e.g. Ofsted inspections

During the discussion the following main points were made:

·       The Commissioning Team co-ordinated and quality assured all data used to monitor the KPIs and each KPI was accompanied by a narrative giving detailed background on each indicator.  It was difficult to measure the County Council's 2016 performance in comparison to 2015 as the KPIs were changing. The performance however, could be compared nationally.

·       It was suggested that although the national indicators had changed, consideration should be given to running a parallel system for a period of time to compare like with like data and thus County Council year on year performance.

·       Looking to the future, it was suggested that performance data could be broken down by district level, an approach which was welcomed by Members.

·       In response to the concern that the turnover of School Improvement staff was having an impact on the poor performance of KPI 3 in relation to KS2 (The proportion of schools below the government's floor standards and those deemed to be 'coasting' is below national or statistical neighbours performance, whichever is lower) it was felt that although there had been some changes in staff since Babcock were appointed and the demise of the National Strategy, the gap was in fact narrowing.

·       It was suggested that the deficit of primary school places for September 2016 in Worcestershire was due to a bulge year (a one-off situation) and managing parental choice v parental preference.   It was confirmed that the County Council retained responsibility for school place planning.

In conclusion, the Chairman thanked the Cabinet Member and Officers for attending the Meeting and requested that:

·       KPI's were regularly sent out to the Panel to enable them to keep a watching brief; and

·       The Babcock Action Plan on KPI's also be sent to the Panel.

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It was suggested that scrutiny should look at:

·         Attainment by area

·         The attainment journey  to give each young person the opportunity to achieve their full potential

·         Vulnerable groups.