Meeting documents

1 THE ISSUE

1.1 This report invites the Executive to note the progress of the Education Service from December 2004-February 2005.

2 RECOMMENDATION

2.1 The Executive notes and approves the progress and achievements of the Education Service, particularly the progress towards the Corporate priorities of improving the learning environment and, through the reduction in `NEETs' (not in education employment or training), improving life chances for the vulnerable. The Executive is also asked to note the fact that we may soon have no schools with serious weaknesses or in special measures as judged by Ofsted.

3 FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

3.1 The report does not, in itself, propose any new expenditure.

4

THE REPORT

4.1 The Education Director reports under the appropriate headings progress made and work still to be done to achieve goals. Performance Indicators are also reported, many of which, in Education, track a national annual cycle.

4.2 A number of achievement indicators are red against our national targets; this can give a rather false impression of performance where we are consistently in the top 20% of all local authorities and have been praised by the Minister for improving more than most authorities. Our high performance results in even higher targets. I have therefore provided a local indicator in the `Comment' box for the first ten targets (Examination Results) to give a truer indication of where we believe targets are actually red or amber, or where improvement against the national background would lead us to consider a target green even though a national target is not reached.

5 RISK MANAGEMENT

6 RATIONALE

6.1 This report to the Executive forms part of the Council's performance management system.

7 OTHER OPTIONS CONSIDERED

7.1 Not applicable.

8 CONSULTATION

8.1 The report is formed by all Team Leaders within Education reporting to their Head of Service, who in turn report to the Director.