Agenda item

·         Head of the School Effectiveness Service, Schools and Lifelong Learning, Children and Young People’s Services, to report. 

Councillor G. A. Russell introduced the Head of the School Effectiveness Service (Schools and Lifelong Learning, Children and Young People’s Services) who had attended to present Rotherham’s recently revised School Improvement Strategy.

The Head of the School Effectiveness Service provided a brief background to this work, and included information on local and national funding streams, national policy context and the local drivers and input from Rotherham’s schools. 

The Government’s aim was to ‘support the school system to become more effectively self-improving’, and intended to charge the school system with responsibility for their own self-improvement.  As schools and school leaders took on increasing responsibility for school improvement there was a need to ensure suitable safeguards and a support infrastructure so that all children and young people could fulfil their potential. 

An on-going partnership had been established between Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council and the Rotherham School Improvement Partnership in April, 2011.  In September, 2012, this partnership became the Learners First Schools’ Partnership Ltd., set up as a school company by Wickersley School and Sports College in partnership with the Council.  This organisation was the legally constituted successor to the Rotherham School Improvement Partnership.   Further information in relation to the partnership included: -

·         The Learners First Schools’ Partnership Ltd. was a not-for-profit company;

·         The Council, through the Strategic Director for Children and Young People’s Services acted as the supervising authority for the company;

·         The Council’s School Effectiveness Service was working in partnership with the Learners First Schools’ Partnership Ltd.;

·         The Rotherham Schools’ Forum had agreed Delegated Schools Grant funding on 5^th October, 2012 to support the development and delivery of a school-led school improvement model in the 2011/12 financial year, and up to and including 2014/15;

·         All partners were undertaking benchmarking with other local authorities and school improvement partnership models.  

Discussion ensued on the information provided and issues raised and discussed included: -

·         Scrutiny of the performance of the Learners First Schools’ Partnership Ltd.;

·         Previous good progress seen in the past 5/6 years had been built upon in this model;

·         Choice of other local authorities for the benchmarking and the factors that had led to the choice;

·         How would relationships be managed within the new model and ensure that potential issues were managed?;

·          What were the statutory and non-statutory activities of the Learners First Schools’ Partnership Ltd.?;

·         The operation of a buy-back model for the school improvement services provided by the Learners First Schools’ Partnership Ltd.;

·         Was the Learners First Schools’ Partnership Ltd. engaged with all of Rotherham’s schools, including its academies?;

·         Was the Learners First Schools’ Partnership Ltd. engaging and working with Governors and school governing bodies?;

·         The aspiration of achieving ‘Outstanding’, and what could be done to maintain and improve?.

The Chair of this Select Commission thanked the Head of the School Effectiveness Service for her contribution to the meeting and the discussion that had followed. 

Resolved: -  (1)  That the information shared be noted.

(2)  That the scrutiny of the progress and outcomes of the Learners First Schools’ Partnership Ltd. be incorporated onto the Improving Lives Select Commission’s work programme.