Agenda item

• Helen Barre, Service Lead - School Admissions, Organisation and SEN Assessment Service, to report. 

Report attached. 

Consideration was given to the report and presentation of the Service Lead, School Admissions, Organisation and Special Educational Needs Assessment Service, Schools and Lifelong Leaning, Children and Young People’s Services.

The report informed members of the Select Commission on the recent and future projects being undertaken to increase school place availability within the Borough in response to pressures on primary school provision and in certain areas of the Borough. 

The Service Lead referred to a number of legal background considerations: -

·         The School Organisation (Prescribed Alterations to Maintained Schools) (England) Regulations 2007 and Department for Education guidance ‘Expanding a maintained mainstream school by enlargement or adding a sixth form’ stated that local authorities had a duty to: -

o       Ensure there were sufficient school places;

o       Promote diversity;

o       Increase parental choice;

o       There should be a system where all parents felt that they had the same opportunities to apply for the school they wanted for their child;

o       Provide quality provision for all children that was responsive to the needs of parents and children.

·         The Department for Education advised that the proposals to extend successful and popular schools should be approved and that the existence of surplus capacity in neighbouring schools should not in itself be sufficient to prevent expansion. 

The Service Lead’s presentation made reference to: -

1.            Update on the schedule of primary school organisation proposals;

2.            Admissions, Appeals and Catchment Areas;

3.            New Arrivals. 

Locally and nationally, preparation for children to start in Foundation Stage 2 (FS2) (Reception) in September, 2012, had been the most challenging ever:-

·         53 of the Borough’s schools for FS2 were full or over subscribed;

·         There were 109 children whose first, second or third preference could not be met.  In these cases, the next nearest school with places had been offered;

·         During the year 2012/13, in FS2 only, 75 additional places had been created;  

·         For September, 2013, 455-805 proposed FS2 places would be created across 11 schools, dependent on discussions with Headteachers and Governing Bodies;

·         The Local Authority was a net gainer of pupils from other Local Authorities;

·         Two schools were unable to accommodate children from their catchment area where a preference had been made (13 children);

·         School expansions – Department for Education allocations and Section 106 agreements;

·         For the 2012/13 school year, there had been a total of 538 School Admission Appeals logged with Committee Services;

·         Consultations on catchment areas would not take place until September, 2013, at the earliest due to linking up with communications in respect of the Local Development Framework;

·         Lessons learned included the greater emphasis on multi-agency cross-service intelligence being used to consider birth statistics, parental preferences and attendance at nursery provision to plan FS2 provision;

·         Support networks had been put in place in relation to Slovakian and Roma families, including a developing Special Educational Needs pathway to ensure that assessment took place quickly, admissions and support from GCSE level into accessing Further Education courses. 

Discussion ensued, and members of the Improving Lives Select Commission raised the following salient issues: - 

·         Provision of Section 106 monies from developers – there were concerns that these funds could automatically lead to Free Schools or Academies being built, removing the Local Authority from using the funding to address the issues of need in the area.

·         Were there any children who were not in education and did not have an offer of a place? (anecdotal evidence suggested that this was the case for some families).

·         There were numbers of siblings who did not have places in the same school, and the impact this could have on families.

·         Travel costs to families in these situations. 

Resolved: - (1)  That the report be received and the content noted.  

(2)  That the Improving Lives Select Committee receive a report in relation to the scrutiny review undertaken by the Improving Places Select Committee into Section 106 agreements. 

(3)  That the Admissions Team be supported in their efforts to ensure that all of Rotherham’s children and young people have an allocated school that they are attending particularly in terms of working with them to identify any children perceived to be slipping through the net.

(4)  That the Improving Lives Select Commission receives further progress updates in relation to this issue.