Agenda item

Carmel Littleton, Corporate Director of Children’s Services; Finola Culbert, Director of Targeted and Specialist Children and Families Services; and Mark Taylor, Director of Learning and Schools, introduced the report which set out the performance of Children’s Services in quarter three 2016/17.

The following main points were noted in the discussion:

·         It was clarified that data related to engagement in early years services related to children accessing services by age five.

·         The Committee expressed concern at the increase in the number of children missing from care, commenting that children could not be safeguarded whilst they were missing, and noting that these children were vulnerable to gang and criminal activity. In response, it was advised that the council had dedicated officer support to this issue. It was commented that children missing from care were generally staying with someone known to the young person. It was also noted that some young people repeatedly went missing from care and therefore would be counted multiple times in the data. All young people who go missing were offered return home interviews.

·         It was advised that a small minority of young people who go missing were involved in criminal activity, and whilst the council worked to divert these young people to other activities, the risk of criminals exploiting vulnerable young people could not be eradicated completely.

·         Two young people were subject to secure accommodation orders granted by the courts. It was advised that the courts tended to grant secure accommodation orders for children and younger teenagers and once a child reached age 16 it was unlikely that a request for a secure accommodation order would be granted.

·         It was queried if parental permission was required to make a secure accommodation order. In response, it was advised that parental permission was often sought, but not in all circumstances as this was not a legal requirement.

·         It was advised that some young people had agreed to be accommodated outside of London as an alternative to secure accommodation. Officers summarised the concept of ‘Gillick Competency’, which related to the age at which a young person could make their own decisions without reference to their parents.

·         The Committee queried why no comparative trend data was available for the performance of Black-Caribbean pupils at Key Stage 2.  In response, it was advised that this was due to how data was collected nationally. It was noted that a report on the educational attainment of BME pupils would be reported to the next meeting. Members requested that the report include a breakdown of performance by school; however it was acknowledged that identifying information may need to be obscured for reasons of confidentiality.

·         A member of the public highlighted the attainment gap between Black-Caribbean pupils and the Islington-average at KS4; and in light of this queried the proposal to replace monitoring 5+ A*-C grades with the Progress 8 measure, noting that there was no historic trend data for Progress 8 to track if this attainment gap was wider or narrower than before. In response, officers confirmed that the measure would not allow historic comparison, however it was acknowledged that attainment gap was too wide and work was underway to reduce this.

·         A member of the public queried the effectiveness of return home interviews for missing children.

·         The Committee welcomed that Islington was performing well for pupils achieving the expected level in Reading, Writing and Maths at the end of KS2; that GCSE results were above the national average; and that all Islington schools were performing above floor standards.

RESOLVED:

That Children’s Services performance in Q3 2015/16, the revised format of the Data Dashboard, and the proposed changes to performance indicators be noted.