Agenda item

Report of Jon Rouse, Chief Executive Portfolio Lead for Children, Young People and Cohesion. Meeting attendance by Jane Forrest, Assistant Director, Public Service reform, GMCA.

Jane Forrest, Assistant Director Reform, introduced a report which provided an update on the School Readiness programme, in light of the recent approval of £2.1m investment, from the Health and Social Care Partnership (H&SCP), to accelerate progress.

Members were informed that the challenges to improving school readiness outcomes at a locality and GM level, had been considered by the Committee’s School Readiness Task and Finish group, and their findings had subsequently been used to inform the GM programme of work as detailed at paragraph 1.4 within the report.

The Task Group’s findings were tabled at the meeting, and presented by Councillors Stella Smith and Colin McLaren. It was acknowledged that the findings demonstrated the value of task groups in deep diving into issues in more detail. 

The following key points were highlighted:

·         Rates of child poverty were important to bear in mind when contextualising GM’s GLD results; the proportion of children living in income-deprived households is higher in GM than the national average.

·         There had been a positive improvement in outcomes for disadvantaged children and outcomes for pupils eligible for Free School Meals. This had improved by 4 percentage points since 2015, and provisional DfE data showed that we had now closed the gap between the GM and England GLD average, for pupils eligible for free school meals.

·         Although the gap between GM and national performance has narrowed slightly in recent years, the trend towards a plateau in performance was a feature of the national trend data as well as the GM data. There was an ambitious objective for GM to reach the national level for GLD within 2 years.    

·         Performance across GM varied, but results in Tameside and Oldham had improved by 1% and 4% respectively. Over the last 3 years, the proportion of 5 years olds reaching GLD in Oldham had increased by over 7 percentage points, and they were the most improved local authority in the North West, and one of the most improved in the country. Oldham had benefited from additional investment as a DfE funded, Opportunity Area; early years initiatives funded as part of this programme would inform further improvement work across GM.

·         Work to embed best practice pathways, had included the recent soft launched ‘Tiny, Happy, People website across GM’ by the BBC; the website provides resources that can be used by parents and front line professionals to help improve a child’s speech, language and communication. GMCA has worked closely with the BBC to develop resources and provided marketing materials, which were being given out by Midwives and Health Visitors to raise awareness with parents.

·         GM had been recognised nationally for its work to develop a GM pathway for antenatal parenting support, aligned to the wider work taking place to implement the perinatal and infant mental health (PIMH) strategy across GM. Work was underway with CCG’s to ensure that the pathway was embedded within future commissioning plans.

·         A roundtable event had taken place (in November 2019), with potential investors and delivery partners, to support the development of the GM Early Years Workforce Academy. The Academy would aim to take a regional approach to enhance the practice, knowledge and skills of the diverse range of professionals, working in early years services and the wider professionals within place-based teams.

·         The recent mobilisation of the new phase of work for the GM School Readiness Programme, and the additional transformation funding from the H&SCP, would seek to address remaining gaps and challenges that had been identified by localities as barriers to improving early years outcomes. A structured 24 month GM programme of work was now progressing at pace.

·         Additional performance data, and GM level data tools were supporting the development of evidence informed strategies and the identification of best practice, to scale and spread across GM.

Members raised the following questions and comments:

·         Members welcomed the update and explored why there was an apparent mismatch between the Ofsted ratings and actual GLD scores for children.

Jane Forrest advised that GM was progressing well in terms of the number of education settings, which were rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ within GM. It was noted that there was clear evidence to suggest, that a child who goes to a high quality education setting was more likely to do better in school. There are wider family factors to consider, with the home learning environment important.

·         A Member explored whether there were any lessons which could be taken from the number of children from poorer backgrounds who actually achieved better grades, because they worked extra hard to get out of their environment. Also, multi lingual children who tended to speak later.

It was advised that there were some really high performing groups/ communities, and the development of the data dashboard, providing data at a granular level, was supporting the identification of those examples, so that the right questions were being asked in the right places. For many children, entering reception class, is the first time they have spoken English, but they still perform well. The importance of defining the measurements were noted in effectively predicting future attainment. 

The robust analytical tools, enabled GLD data, to be disaggregated by demographic cohort, and recent results indicated that there had been some successes in GM. Bury had demonstrated strong examples, of how the home learning environment, and working holistically with families could improve outcomes, noting that GM was looking to learn from these examples.

·         A Member requested further information regarding the role out of the Early Years Digital Record.

It was confirmed that phase one, would provide Health Visitors and parents with a digital platform to complete the Ages and Stages assessments in stages 2 and 5, using the Wellcomm tool. It was envisaged that digitisation would provide health visitors with additional time to support families.  The resource was being rolled out in a phased way (starting with early adopters), to ensure that the right support was in place. Discussions had taken place with Health Visitor leads, in order to identify the teams who were in the right place to adopt, and those with a significant deficit in skills, which needed to be addressed. In the longer term, digital would be embedded within the Workforce Academy models, and discussions were taking place with universities and training providers regarding their pre-qualifying training programmes. Work was also ongoing with the Work and Skills Team within the GMCA.

·         A Member explored whether there were early messages identified through the ward level analysis, in relation to what was and was not working.

It was confirmed that initial discussions had taken place, noting that the Early Years Leads within localities, were best placed to understand, the locality factors at play, which were influencing the results, such as cultural capital, or children’s centre offer within the area. It was envisaged that more robust evidence would be defined in 2020.

·         A Member explored whether ‘predicted grades’ had a negative impact on children’s progress. It was confirmed that the predictive analytics aimed to support early identification, so that the right support and resource could be put in place to support the child.

RESOLVED:

1.      That the update be noted.

2.      That a further update be arranged in the next municipal year as appropriate.