County Consultative Committee - Minutes

Summary Report

Meeting: County Consultative Committee comprising of Councillors’ and East Sussex Governors’ Forum (ESGF).

Date: Wednesday 20^th March 2024

Present: Councillors – Bob Standley (Chair), Colin Belsey, Alan Shuttleworth.

ESCC Officers:  Clare Cornford, Charlotte Johnstone, Katie Ridgway, Rosie O’Brien (Minutes).

Members of the ESGF: Denise Kong, Jenny Barnard-Langston

Item	Decisions and Outcomes	Action
1	Minutes of the previous meeting The minutes of the previous meeting were approved with no further comments.
2	Apologies for absence Apologies received from Roy Galley, approved by committee members.
3	Disclosure of interests No interests declared.
4	Urgent Items No urgent items raised.
5	Academies Update Verbal update from KR. There have been two conversions since the last County Consultative meeting. Chantry Primary School and Newick Church of England Primary School converted to DCAT on 1^st March 2024. The Pupil Referral Unit College Central is in the process of transferring from Sabden Multi Academy Trust to London South East Academies Trust. ESGF Members expressed an interest in further information on the transfer as it takes place.
6	Local Authority Governor Appointments and Governor Services Update Update from CJ. Since the last County Consultative meeting, there have been 6 Local Authority Governor appointments, 4 of these were new appointments and 2 were reappointments. The Governorhub system continues to work well for Governor Services and East Sussex school governors. Out of 1139 governors, only 95 have not yet signed up, this number was at 185 at the last meeting in November. There has been increased communication with school governors and Governor Services continue to enhance the training programme. Governor Services have received positive feedback on complaints support provided to schools, and three new complaints training and briefing sessions have been added to include: - Handling Complaints for Headteachers and Senior Leaders. - Undertaking a thorough stage 2 complaint investigation. - Managing an effective stage 3 complaint panel. Governor Services recently held a Local Area Forum on SEND. This included 90 Governors from 58 different schools. 124 new governors have been appointed since September 2023 in maintained schools. There has been further success with the governor recruitment campaign with 8 people expressing an interest in becoming a school governor since the last County Consultative meeting. The locum clerking service has supported 20 meetings across 9 schools since September. The Clerk Accreditation has been updated and is now the East Sussex Excellence in Clerking programme. Councillors commented that the numbers for recruitment were positive.
7	ESGF Verbal Update for Councillors Update from DK and JBL JBL confirmed that in recent ESGF sessions there was positive conversations and positive feedback following the sessions. This included SEND local area forums and new governor networking sessions. JBL highlighted the high level of exclusions in schools currently, expressing that this is the way schools are managing difficulties. Chairs of governing boards should be encouraged to read EHCP’s and the needs of children in their schools to allow forward thinking towards SEND and exclusions. Committee members discussed future opportunities to encourage governors to look at exclusions as a last resort, rather than a solution to difficulties. DK asked about the figures on exclusions across the region. Members are aware Eastbourne has the fewest number of exclusions, this is down to the geography and schools close together supporting each other. KR included the exclusion statistics for each area group. See Appendix 2. Members discussed the difficulties schools are dealing with now that were less challenging before Covid. This included gaps in development for different year groups due to missing school, and how this should be considered in schools for each age group. ESGF members discussed the scrutiny review with the Councillors and asked what progress was being made on the recommendations. BS confirmed that the recommendations had gone through Council and Children’s Services had accepted these recommendations. DK discussed the potential opportunities for councillors to undertake therapeutic thinking training. Councillors confirmed they would be interested in undertaking this to understand what therapeutic thinking is, how it is different to other solutions, how it benefits schools and how it works.
8	Feedback from ESGF sessions and Local Area Forums Item covered in item 7.
9	Any other items Councillors confirmed that SACRE recently visited a junior school where the new syllabus has been incorporated with positive feedback.