Agenda item

Report by the Director of Children’s Services.

30.1     The Children’s Services Scrutiny Committee appointed a Scrutiny Review Board to review Educational Attainment at Key Stage 4.  The Review Board focused on the issues and challenges that secondary schools and academies face in relation to the recruitment and retention of teachers and the potential impact this has on educational attainment.  The report updated the Committee on the Action Plan adopted by the Children’s Services Department following the presentation of its final report to Cabinet in June 2017.  

30.2    The Committee welcomed the report and the progress being made. The Committee then discussed a number of questions in relation to the Action Plan (see Appendix 2 of the report) and noted that a revised East Sussex Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy will be available in the autumn.  A summary of the key discussion points, together with responses from the Department is set out below:  

• Availability of keyworker housing.  The Committee discussed keyworker housing and its relevance to teacher recruitment and retention.  The Department agree that affordable housing is an important factor.  As a result, some initial work is being undertaken with local borough and district councils to investigate whether more can be done to provide keyworker housing options.  However, whilst this is an important issue, such housing only usually provides a bridge into the housing market, with new teachers still needing to enter the housing market at some point.  As a result, keyworker housing should only be seen as part of a mix of different responses to the recruitment and retention challenge.  

• Provisional GCSE results table.    The Committee discussed the data set out in the ‘Provisional 2016 GCSE results for East Sussex Schools’ table (page 28 of the agenda).   In response to questions about the new assessment methods and different levels of progress and attainment set out in the table, the Department undertook to provide more detail to Members at the Committee’s ‘Educational Attainment and Performance’ reference group meeting in April.  The Committee were also assured that the

Department’s ambition is that all children, irrespective of their cognitive ability, achieve at least good levels of progress.  So whilst the Department accepted that the variability of outcomes displayed in the table is disappointing, in terms of the review process, it was included so as to provide a factual basis for the Review Board regarding the scope of the attainment challenge in East Sussex.  This helped the Board focus on what might be causing the differences in performance at different schools and academies.  This in turn, ultimately led to the Board’s development of a number of recommendations relating to teacher recruitment and retention which it hoped would help lead to improved outcomes. 

• Leadership in schools.  The importance of leadership in schools was discussed.  This included the importance of leaders not only at the level of Head teacher/Principal, but also at other levels.  In response the Department agreed that quality leadership is vital.  It is for this reason that the Department has put in place a package of support for school leaders, which includes encouragement for applications from women and minority groups.  A balance has to be struck between promoting effective school leaders and ensuring that sufficient quality practitioners remain in class.  With this in mind, one of area of work for the Department is the promotion of school to school support.  This support helps schools both offer and receive expertise and as a result, it is hoped this will help build excellent classroom practice.   The Department also agreed that whilst school leaders need to provide clear direction and be ‘courageous’, they also needed to be approachable.

30.3 RESOLVED - the Committee agreed to:

To note the report and asked that the revised ‘East Sussex Teacher and Recruitment Strategy’ is circulated to the Committee and that this request is added to the Scrutiny Work Programme.