Agenda and minutes

Cllr Roy Perry welcomed the board to his first meeting as Chair. He thanked Cllr David Simmonds for his work as the previous Chair and congratulated him on recently becoming a father. He also thanked the officers involved with the organisation of the 2015 National Children and Adults Services Conference (NCAS) Conference for their work.

Declarations of Interest

There were no declarations of interest.

The Executive Director of iMPOWER, Amanda Kelly, will present research due to be published at NCAS which looks at the effectiveness of the current Ofsted Single Inspection Framework.

The Chair introduced the Chief Executive of iMPOWER, Amanda Kelly, to the board. Amanda was asked to present the main findings of iMPOWER’s research on the effectiveness of the current Ofsted Single Inspection Framework. This research was published at the NCAS Conference.

By way of context, the Chair noted that no councils had received ‘outstanding’ ratings under the new Ofsted framework, and the majority are being rated as ‘requires improvement’. The key question for the board is whether the new framework is serving the interests of children.

Amanda Kelly then presented the main findings of iMPOWER’s research. The research focussed on three main issues:

1.    Is inspection helping drive improvement?

·         The research shows that there has been a decline in local authorities’ ratings since Ofsted introduced the Single Inspection Framework in 2012, but that this downward trend began before the introduction of the new framework.

·         This downward trend is exemplified by the fact that not a single authority has got an ‘outstanding’ rating since 2012, and the last authority to be rated outstanding has recently been rated inadequate.

2.    Impact post-inspection

·         The research shows that those authorities that are rated ‘inadequate’ have the worst post-inspection performance and tend to suffer an accelerated decline away from the average. For instance, 25% of authorities that are rated ‘inadequate’ remain at this rating for a 5 year period

·         Amanda noted that this pattern of post-inspection impact on children’s services does not mirror the pattern of post-inspection impact on schools, where ‘inadequate’ ratings tend to quickly improve schools, which revert back towards the average.

3.    The cost of inspection

·         The research shows that the costs to local government of responding to failed inspections ranges between £3m and £10m, but this excludes the costs associated with preparing for and then servicing an inspection, which means that the total costs could be upwards of £30m.

·         The key question is whether this expenditure can be shown to improve the safety of children. As things stand, the sector has a poor record of tracking outcomes and even inspectors cannot tell definitively if things are getting better or worse.

In her summary, Amanda said that the sector needs to work collaboratively to develop a new way of dealing with local authorities who are rated ‘inadequate’, because at the moment they tend to remain ‘inadequate’ for years. The research highlighted the risk of the sector making policy to promote improvement on the back of a flawed system for assessing performance.

In the ensuing question and answer session, members raised the following points:

·         The need to broaden the research to take into account the views of members as well as officers and to study similarities and differences between the two sets of views.

·         The need to incorporate into Ofsted’s approach the wider lesson that negative sanctions do not tend to induce positive change.

·         The need for local authorities to innovate in the face of likely further funding cuts, and to think about how an inspection regime can be organised to spur  ...  view the full minutes text for item 9.

The Chair asked members to note the Board’s new membership and agree its Terms of Reference for 2015/16.

Decision

Members noted the Board’s new membership and agreed its Terms of Reference for 2015/16.

The Chair introduced a report setting out the Board’s priorities for the year ahead, which were discussed by the Board at the meeting on 17 June and refined and agreed by the Board’s Office holders on 14 September.

The Chair said that, although he agreed with the content of the report, he had some remaining reservations about the number of priorities. He asked for members input on whether 14 priorities are too many, and where there might be opportunities to streamline or revise the proposed priorities.

Members raised the following points:

·         Perhaps careers advice should be decoupled from point 7 in the priorities, which focuses on devolution, and instead treated as a separate issue that goes beyond the devolution agenda

·         Point 6, which looks at councils roles in relation to free schools, should be developed in a pragmatic way, accepting that new free schools will be part of the future education landscape.

·         The board should ensure that point 8, which looks at joined-up approaches to education and childcare provision, leads to an emphasis on the educational prospects of children rather than the employment prospects of adults

·         Regarding point 13, which looks at fostering and adoption outcomes, the board welcomed a wide approach that also focussed on children over the age of 11

·         The board were keen for young people’s mental health to be have a clearer role among in the priorities

·         Members also asked whether there should be explicit mention of financial issues, such as the funding of schools and transparency of funding

·         The board also asked for the links between education and devolution to be made clearer, most likely in terms of a focus on the devolution of training for skills that will boost local economic development.

The Chair noted the main points of the discussion. He concluded that the core priorities of the board going forward will remain a focus on early years, Ofsted and education. However, this should be complemented by a focus on the importance of local skills training for successful devolution. In addition, it was suggested that the board should continue to discuss whether to give careers advice a more prominent role in their future work, perhaps by commissioning research on different models of careers advice.

Action

Officers to follow members’ steer on revisions to the Board’s priorities and present an updated report for discussion at a future meeting

Members agreed the Minutes of the previous meeting on Wednesday 17 June 2015.

Following on from these minutes, the Chair asked for members to send any further examples of free schools that were in inappropriate places or buildings to Ian Keating.