Questions to CM Education & Young People

Member Question: Councillor D Fouweather

Subject: Indicator of Looked After Children

The number of young people who were formally looked after and with whom the authority is still in contact and are known to be in education, employment or training places us ninth from bottom of all other local authorities. Why is this indicator so poor?

Date received: 7 September 2016

Response:

The indicator refers to a very small cohort of children so if just two or three young people are experiencing difficulties with education, employment and training places this can have a significant impact on the indicator. If a young person is in custody this will not count as education, employment or training and this year this has impacted on the final position.

Over the course of 2015/16 there has been a body of work undertaken to improve the offer of support for looked after children throughout their education, care leavers and young people involved with the youth offending services. We hope to build on this work in the coming year and thus improve on this indicator.

Date issued: 22 September 2016

Member Question: Councillor D Fouweather

Subject: Looked After Children Placements

The percentage of looked after children who have had three or more placements during the year is in mid table. This shows that some children may not be being placed in an appropriate setting. What are you doing to reduce this worrying trend?

Date received: 7 September 2016

 

Response:

There are a range of reasons why children experience placement moves. Sadly sometimes this will be because the placement breaks down. However, Children’s Services does have in place a comprehensive package of support for children and their carers. Foster carers report feeling well supported and place a high value on the work of their link workers and the package offered to them.

Analysis of our placements moves reveals there are a number of moves for positive reasons.

We will always seek to place siblings together in placement. When children first come into care in a crisis we sometimes need to place children apart from their siblings and then move them to once again be reunited. Such a move will be supported and we will ensure for the short period siblings are apart they have regular contact.

The planning for children in care always involves a period of assessment to understand a child’s needs and fully be able to source the support and type of placement. This again may lead to a move from a short term to a long term placement. This is especially true for children involved in court proceedings. Newport has been very successful in placing children for adoption. This will count as a move for a child despite it clearly being a positive and welcome outcome.

We continue to analyse our placements and ensure support is in place and the needs of children are identified and then met.

Date issued: 22 September 2016

Member Question: Councillor D Fouweather

Subject: Looked After Children Changes of School

11.9% of looked after children experienced one or more changes of school in the last 12 months. This figure is high and will be unsettling for the children. Why has this happened?

Date received: 7 September 2016

Response:

As with placement moves school move happen for a range of reasons. While on occasion these can be negative there are also positive reasons for a school move. This includes a move to a permanent placement, a return to mainstream education or a move to specialist education provision. While the figure is high compared to some other Las it reflects the age profile and of the care population in Newport. The work to support the education of looked after children includes ensuring a robust understanding of their education needs and this will on occasion include proactive education moves. Having choices available to meet education needs is a positive for children and does help to support children with effective education.

Date issued: 22 September 2016

Member Question: Councillor D Fouweather

Subject: Children Achieving Level 2 Threshold

There has been an increase from 55.5% to 58.3% in the number of pupils who achieved the level 2 threshold. This places Newport 5th from bottom of all other local authorities. Why is this so poor?

Date received: 7 September 2016

Response:

The 2015-16 Level 2 Inclusive outcome for Newport is 58% and is the best ever achieved by pupils in the City. This figure will not be validated until December 2016 and is likely to rise. Preliminary all Wales data shows that Newport is currently ranked at 15th position (this is in fact 8 eight places from the bottom local authority). However, Newport is also ranked as 16th out of the 22 local authorities for ‘deprivation and Free School Meals’. Therefore at 15th position, Newport will achieve higher than its natural ranking position, clearly there is always a focus on maximising the attainment and achievement of pupils but this provides context.

Date issued: 22 September 2016

Member Question: Councillor D Fouweather

Subject: Welsh (First Language) Key Stage 3

Newport is at the bottom with regards the percentage of pupils assessed receiving a teacher assessment in Welsh {First Language} at the end of key stage 3. This is very poor. Can you tell me how you plan to improve this?

Date received: 7 September 2016

Response:

There are no first language welsh speaking pupils in Key Stage 3 in a Newport School at present. Therefore the % of pupils achieving is 0%.

Date issued: 22 September 2016

Member Question: Councillor D Fouweather

Subject: Final Special Educational Needs (SEN) Statements

With regards to the percentage of final statements of special educational needs issued within 26 weeks Newport is still below all other local authorities. Why?

Date received: 7 September 2016

Response:

Published performance within this indicator is linked to the 2015 calendar year.  At the start of 2015 it was confirmed by Welsh Audit Office that NCC had measured its performance incorrectly. As a result the performance for this indicator declined significantly.

In response a detailed action plan was put in place, ensuring the method of measuring and recording was correct.  Unfortunately, performance for the first three months of the year was seriously impacted upon and was not recoverable within the period, hence the poor annual performance.

Visits to other local authorities have taken place (with others planned) to ensure Newport actions match best practice.  This has already resulted in process changes and a review of resource requirements.

Inadequate performance for this indicator and the cause has been acknowledged and questioned in several key Newport City Council fora, including Scrutiny.  The actions taken should result in a significant improvement in performance in 2016.

There have always been delays in receiving information from Health which has impeded on the completion date of statements. Other authorities, it would appear, have been issuing statements prior to receiving health advice (where appropriate). This approach has now been adopted by Newport City Council; this has had a positive impact. Health partners are also reviewing their processes following a joint meeting.

A range of additional factors still make it difficult for Newport to meet the same level of statementing performance as other local authorities. For example, some authorities have a higher level of staffing in their SEN and Educational Psychology (EP) teams, in recent years a shortage in EPs has resulted in Appendix Ds being delayed which has impacted on performance. Staffing levels have now improved in Newport.

Protocols are different throughout Wales and some authorities issue very few statements. The SEN team are currently researching practices in authorities that issue a similar number of statements, namely Bridgend, Caerphilly, RCT, Swansea and Cardiff . The SEN team are also exploring ways to reduce the number of requests for Statutory Assessment via delegation of funding to schools, the Person Centred Planning process and the tightening of the criteria for assessment.

Date issued: 22 September 2016

Member Question: Councillor M Evans

Subject: School Community Police Officers

I understand from Gwent Police that between 1st January 2015 and 1st January 2017 there were 235 incidents dealt with by School Community Police Officers at Secondary Schools in Newport.  124 of these related to bullying, assault or violence.  I have been shocked by the high numbers which required Police action.  Can you tell me what measures have Newport City Council put in place to address these serious situations?

Date received: 24 January 2017

Response:

Newport City Council has a wide range of actions in place to promote community cohesion and the well-being of pupils and staff in primary and secondary schools across the city.  These range from proactive strategies aimed to reduce the incidence of such events occurring to strategies that effectively handle any events that do take place.

The data regarding exclusions and use of restrictive physical interventions demonstrates a positive trend over the last four full academic years:

  • The number of restrictive physical interventions that have taken place decreased from 154 in 2012/13 to 94 in 2015/16
  • The number of permanent exclusions has reduced from 17 in 2012/13 to 10 in 2015/16
  • The number of incidents of fixed term exclusions has reduced from 1206 in 2012/13 to 94 in  2015/16
  • The number of days lost due to fixed term exclusions has reduced from 3152.5 in 2012/13 to 2016 in 2015/16

The Additional Learning Needs (ALN) team provides a regular rolling programme of Team Teach training to schools and a range of other settings.  Team Teach is an accredited behaviour management programme that focuses on the promotion of de-escalation strategies and the reduction of risk and restraint in order to support teaching, learning and caring.  The programme aims to increase staff confidence and competence in responding to behaviours that challenge, whilst promoting and protecting positive relationships.  The ALN and NCC Health and Safety Teams also share data to coordinate support to schools that have reported incidents requiring restrictive physical intervention.

The ALN Team and Youth Offending Service have jointly worked with schools for a number of years to promote Restorative Approaches to conflict.  Restorative Approaches is a tool that supports the repair of relationships between individuals or small groups through a guided conversation.  Schools have been trained to facilitate these conversations independently but members of the ALN team will also facilitate the conversations on behalf of schools when appropriate.

A further support strategy commissioned through Education Services is school-based counselling which enables pupils to access support within school. This provides individual support for pupils reducing the risk of individual challenges leading to atypical behaviours within school.  School-based counselling complements training delivered to schools by the Educational Psychology Service to accredit staff as Emotional Learning Support Assistants (ELSAs).

Early-intervention support delivered through the Preventions Team and coordinated by Team Around the Cluster is a significant focus within Newport.  Multi-agency panels comprising of a wide range of other partners help identify and direct resources families and individual pupils who could benefit from support and are not at a level that requires formal social services intervention.  Team Around the Cluster also provides a forum for discussing wider issues affecting the local community and to support the coordination of efforts to address these.

The weekly Managed Move panel comprises of senior secondary school staff, including the pupil referral unit, and local authority officers representing the needs of youth offenders, looked after children and pupils with additional learning needs.  This panel aims to prevent permanent exclusions of young people from Newport school through the regular sharing of information on specific pupils and by schools working in partnership to appropriately transfer between settings and reduce the likelihood of a pupil disengaging from education which will impact on their long term future.

Newport City Council values the support of School Community Police Officers in promoting positive relationships within communities and acting as a link between schools and the wider community.  Working in partnership with schools they support the promotion of community cohesion and help reduce the risk of challenges that may arise in the community or within schools from escalating.

Schools have been provided with an electronic tool to record and report any bullying or one-off incidents that take place using.  In addition to being used by schools to inform their anti-bullying approaches and the content of their Equalities Actions plans, the information is also examined each term by the Equalities Monitoring Group.  This cross-Council group is then able to direct resources into the specific schools depending on the nature of any incidents that may have taken place.  For example, GEMS ‘See The World Through Their Eyes’ project and PREVENT training have been delivered to schools following analysis of the data. 

Date issued: 1 February 2017

Member Question: Councillor D Fouweather

Subject: School Funding

The extra funding that you have given to education is welcomed. However, there is an element of smoke and mirrors here.

The units in the high schools that support children with behavioural issues now have to be funded by the schools themselves. This will swallow up any additional funds.

Therefore you have left headteachers in a difficult position

1 Do they fund these units and then make cuts elsewhere, for example cutting support workers in the units?

2 Do they make a decision and not fund them and move the disruptive children into mainstream with the risk of disrupting teaching and learning for other students?

I suspect that headteachers will run a slimmed down version of the units and any additional pupils who cannot be accommodated will end up in the PRU or excluded adding to your already struggling NEET numbers.

If the PRU reaches capacity which I believe it will you will then have to consider out of county placements which will remove completely any savings that you have made.

Date received: 03 March 2017

Response:

Governing Bodies and Head Teachers together make an extensive set of funding decisions each year when they set the school budget.  Schools will decide on whether to maintain the funding for the Learning Support Centres in the context of these many and varied funding decisions across the full range of school activities.  The 1.2% increase in the schools budget will give secondary schools greater flexibility within which to make these decisions.  The Local Authority will continue to work with schools to identify the best available learning environment and support for all pupils.

Staff from Learning Support Centres have received an extensive range of training from the local authority to manage challenging behaviour and cascade their skills to mainstream staff. Training, advice and support will continue to be provided by the local authority Additional Educational Needs and Educational Psychology Team. In addition, there will be increased outreach support from the Pupil Referral Unit (PRU) in to mainstream. However mainstream staff within Newport schools are already skilled and take enormous pride in their behaviour management ability.

The local authority continues to quality assure specialist out of county provision and is committed to reducing these placements and reinvesting in local provision for pupils with Social, Emotional Behavioural Difficulties.

Due to the positive reduction in permanent exclusion across the city, Newport PRU is not at full capacity and has places available to support young people should the situation arise. However the PRU is only one example of an intervention used to support pupils with challenging behaviour and should fundamentally be used as a turnaround facility which enable young people to be re-integrated back in to mainstream settings successfully. Pupils within the PRU have access to and are supported with a wide range of recognised qualifications.

Date issued: 17 March 2017