Agenda item

The Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, Communities will update the Panel on any relevant issues. Panel members may ask questions on the update provided.

Councillor Dine Romero, Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, Communities addressed the Panel, a copy of the update will be attached as an online appendix to these minutes.

Councillor Liz Hardman asked that with the 25% increase in SEND cases nationally and with the scarcity of places in our special needs schools as reported in the media, what are we doing to increase our capacity to provide for these children and should our Special Needs schools only admit children from B&NES.

The Head of Education Inclusion Service replied that this is a recognised issue in B&NES and as such she is leading on increasing the sufficiency of places in B&NES. She said that there are 2 main strands to this, to increase the number of Resource Bases attached to mainstream schools and to submit a bid to the DfE to open a new free special school.

·  Currently B&NES has 5 Resource Bases and the plan is to increase this by an additional 5-7 bases in the next 2 years using the grant money allocated by the DfE.  The places in a Resource Base vary from 10 - 20 places.

·  The DfE have opened the wave to enable LA’s to bid for new free special schools.  In the SEND Green Paper they have committed to opening 60 new schools.  B&NES has submitted the first part - an expression of interest to open 120 place all through generic special school on the Keynsham/Chew side of the authority.

She stated that under the legalities of the SEND system (Children & Families Act 2014) it is not possible for our special schools statutorily to admit only pupils from B&NES. However, the 3 schools in B&NES have a very high percentage of B&NES pupils in comparison to other LA children.  B&NES also places in other LA schools.

·  In Aspire in June 2022 – 92% of the pupils are B&NES pupils

·  In Three Ways in 2020/21 – 84% of the pupils are B&NES pupils

·  In Fosse Way in 2020/21 – 88% of the pupils are B&NES pupils

She said that work will take place with MATs and individual schools to embed SEN support.

Councillor Gerry Curran said that news of a potential new special school was good to hear and asked if any sites had yet been identified and was Keynsham an option.

The Head of Education Inclusion Service replied that no sites had yet been identified and that discussions were ongoing with the Planning department.

Councillor Andy Wait asked what the St John’s Foundation Primary Empowerment Programme look like in practice.

The Director of Children's Services & Education replied that St. John’s are engaged with the 7 primary schools that have 40% of the most disadvantaged primary school children in Bath and North East Somerset to provide pupils with additional support with foundational reading, writing, oracy, and mathematics, as well as emotional support. She added that there was a particular focus on speech and language and narrowing the attainment gap.

Councillor Wait asked if an explanation could be given for what was meant by ‘A safe place outside of school’.

Councillor Gerry Curran replied that he believed that this was provision provided by the voluntary sector, facilitated by St. John’s, within community centres or outside at local parks.

Chris Batten suggested that St. John’s be invited to attend a future meeting of the Panel. He also asked if any update could be given on the former Culverhay site.

Councillor Dine Romero replied that several projects were currently on the site including Secondary Alternative Provision. She said that one possibility could be to consolidate this by bringing the Primary Alternative Provision from Broadlands to this site.

She added that the main site is used by Bath College for some of its vocational courses for pupils aged 14+.

Councillor Paul May asked if an interim report on exam results could be given rather than waiting until March 2023.

The Director of Children's Services & Education replied that information would be available prior to March 2023, but that the results would not be validated.

Councillor May said that this would be welcome.

The Director of Children's Services & Education said that an update report could be submitted from the School’s Standards Board in November 2022.

The Chair thanked Councillor Romero for her update on behalf of the Panel.