Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from Nick Turpin, Councillor McHugh and Councillor Zammit.

Councillor Convery substituted for Councillor Zammit.

There were no declarations of interest.

RESOLVED:

That the minutes of the meeting held on 23^rd July 2024 be confirmed as an accurate record of proceedings and the Chair be authorised to sign them.

The Chair reported that they and the Vice Chair were invited to the new youth hub, VYBZ, which was managed by YMCA London City and North, and spoke at length with the CEO of YMCA about the committee’s current scrutiny topic. It was suggested that evidence gathering sessions could take place there.

The Chair then reminded members that the first evidence gathering session was scheduled for Wednesday 18^th September at Lift Youth Centre.

There were no public questions.

This item was presented to the committee. In the presentation and discussion, the following points were raised:

• Officers told members that the presentation had been prepared to ensure that the committee had the relevant context and data to begin their review, and to also inform potential lines of enquiry around what is and isn’t working.
• Officers had sought to highlight vulnerable groups within the data of the report. The data included was both published and live data, but national and regional comparators were only available for the published data only.
• All schools were now required from this year to upload data centrally to the Department for Education (DfE), from whom Islington’s officers could download and access to produce more comprehensive reporting in future.
• Persistent absence was classified as a child missing between 10% and 49% of their attendance, and absence at or above 50% was classified as severe absence.
• Officers advised that they have an attendance support team, with each school allocated an officer that would review their attendance data termly, and that the data team would produce a report based on this data for both officers and the school.
• Officers noted there were challenges to schools reporting twice a day, requiring some information to be analysed retrospectively. 
• There had been variability in the use of attendance codes between schools, which was part of the reason why the government had introduced new attendance codes. Prior to September 2024 there were twenty-five codes to describe non-attendance, now there were thirty-four. 
• In response to members’ questions regarding training of the officers that liaise with the schools on attendance, the committee was advised that a common standard of best practice is enforced among officers where required.
• Officers stated that there were regular meetings with school heads and inclusion leads to understand trends and variability across the school estate.
• Officers expressed their desire for members to visit some of the borough’s higher performing schools as part of their review in addition to those that were struggling.
• In response to members questions, officers confirmed that the persistent absence and total absence by year graph on page twenty-eight of the agenda, was comparing the autumn term in each school year and not just 2023-24.
• Members noted that the rapid increase of persistent and total absence had now plateaued and would hopefully decline, but that the other indicators of the dashboard seemed to indicate that Islington was the worst borough for persistent absence in inner London.
• Members sought clarification as to whether the data included the borough’s Pupil Referral Unit (PRU), to which officers confirmed that it was.
• Members also noted that the dashboard data is the enormous range between attendance rates at schools in the borough and that there was a current year average of 20%. Officers acknowledged there was scope for improvement, specifically in spreading the good practice of some schools across the school estate but stated that when analysing the issue of attendance for each school, it shouldn’t be looked at in isolation from  ...  view the full minutes text for item 27.

This item was presented to the committee. In the presentation and discussion, the following points were raised:

• Officers stated that school leaders across Islington were focused on high quality learning and that a child being and successful in school and was essential for high attendance.
• Officers outlined that the headline for Key Stage Two results was that its key performance indicators were above the national average and higher than in 2022-23.
• Key Stage Four was also stated by officers to have shown similar improvement on 2022-23 and on the national average.
• Officers further informed members that the cohorts of these results were each affected by the COVID-19 Pandemic at different stages; Key Stage Two pupils were those that were nearing the end of Key Stage One in primary school; Key Stage Four pupils had started secondary education at the height of the pandemic and Key Stage Five pupils were coming to the end of their education during the pandemic. It was stated that fantastic progress had been made against the baseline.
• In terms of early year foundation state schools, it was acknowledged that there were some that were below 55% on early learning goals, and some that were below 65% on phonics, but officers stated that through the professional partners and identification and sharing of best practice, this could be addressed.
• Members noted that the borough had recorded strong attainment results, at the same time that it also recorded an overall poor attendance rate. Officers acknowledged that any child absent from education would suffer from poorer outcomes and it was important to ensure that more children were attending school for more of the time.
• Officers confirmed that it was possible to track the attainment of Islington children in other boroughs but that it was very difficult. Early indicators were that the average attainment score of pupils in Islington schools is plus 0.5 against a baseline of 0. Anything above 0 was a positive, and an overall attainment eight score of plus 1 indicated a child had performed a grade better than predicted in all of their GCSEs.

RESOLVED:

That the Headline/Provisional School Results be noted.

The Chair informed officers that it would be to the committee’s benefit to have some case studies on the transition points and how effective they have been, in future updates.

RESOLVED:

That the SEND Framework / Transitions update be noted.

This item was presented to the committee. In the presentation and discussion, the following points were raised:

• Officers noted that the report focused heavily on attendance heavily, as well as incorporating youth services data.
• Islington’s Youth Justice Service had scored 34 out of 36 in the recent inspection report from the HM Inspectorate of Probation (HMIP), the highest score in London and third highest nationally.
• Metrics on referrals and re-referrals, regarding Children’s Social Care had been included at the request of members.
• Members were informed that officers were expecting an ILACS inspection from Ofsted into Children’s Social Care at some point this year. Islington currently held an Outstanding rating. 
• Members noted the disproportionality between cohorts on suspensions and exclusions. In response, officers noted that the rate for Islington was not positive, but that this was also part of a national issue, in which there were national taskforces looking at this. Officers further noted that permanent exclusions were recorded twelve months in arrears, that there were proposals and plans in place this year for monitoring and tracking schools where exclusions were high, and that there will be a half-term strategic review of each school locally and identify the underlying factors affecting each school. Officers reiterated that 70% of total suspensions were accounted for by three schools, which had been escalated to the regional director and also the local network of deputy heads.
• In response to members questions about whether the three schools were trauma-informed, officers confirmed that one was and two were not.
• Officers noted that scrutiny committees in other local authorities had invited some of the heads themselves to account for poor performance.
• Beacon High was cited as a school that had transformed their performance and culture to where it was now an Inclusion Quality Mark centre of excellence, and source of best practice.
• Officers were receptive to inviting the committee to meet with the Education Board and for more representation.
• Officers advised that FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) was a difficult offence to detect and prosecute, and that it was a matter of engaging with schools, health and enforcement partners to obtain that information. It was stated that there may be other cases of FGM that are categorised differently, such as sexual abuse or harmful sexual behaviour. Members noted that they would like to see the work further evidenced in greater detail where possible.
• Officers advised that there was a national spending gap on SEND services which many local authorities had overspent on, and that the government were currently considering reform of this area.
• Officers stated that members were welcome to join the local alternative provision board if they wished to do so.
• Officers highlighted that a key challenge was to continue the strong engagement of parents and families at primary school level into secondary school, to enable necessary and vulnerable conversations to be had with them.
• In response to the highlighting of placement instability of care placements by members, officers stated that there was a national placement sufficiency  ...  view the full minutes text for item 30.

RESOLVED:

That the 2024-25 Work Programme be noted.