Cllr Simmons, Chair of the Scrutiny Committee presented the report.

The Chief Executive explained that:

·         The KRM programme had head teachers’ involvement in its procurement, schools volunteers to participate in the programme.

·         Officers had reviewed the County’s education programme and decided the KRM programme was complementary to the County’s programmes rather than conflicting.

·         The KRM programme is challenging as it requires changing teaching styles. Participating schools found it difficult to sustain commitment.

The City Executive Board resolved to AGREE that any future City Council educational programmes are co-designed with schools and are cohesively focused on achieving long term improvements in educational attainment and reductions in inequalities.

Contact Officer: Andrew Brown

Tel: 01865 252230

Email: abrown2@oxford.gov.uk

Dr Jonathan Solity, KRM: Psychological and Educational Research Consultants, made a presentation to the Committee on his findings and conclusions of the KRM strand of the Council’s education attainment programme.

Cllr Kennedy, Board Member for Education Attainment and Youth Ambition said that the turnover of staff was significant as it’s the school management that drives these programme forward.

The Chair thanked KRM for their presentation. He recognised that measuring education attainment was complicated.

The Committee recommended that

All future education funding from the city should focus on improving inequalities and should be designed in collaboration with teachers.

Anna Wright be given the opportunity to respond to KRMs comments through a circulated response to the committee.

Contact Officer: Anna Wright (Education Advisor) 07415 099245 email: akwright@oxford.gov.uk

Councillor Kennedy, Board Member for Education, Crime and Community Safety presented the main points of the report to the Committee.  In addition she added that she is a governor at a school that is part of the Leadership programme and she has seen first-hand the benefits of this.

In addition early discussions are showing that KRM is particularly affective with girls and has proved to be a catalyst for discussions in the staff room on improvement strategies.

Councillor Campbell (Scrutiny Lead Member for Educational Attainment) said that these were very important schemes.  His Panel had been set to try to ascertain the value for money of the investments we are making but this is proving to be very difficult.  He asked how we are going to evaluate overall the impact of the KRM programme and within this how we were going to look at comparator schools to check progress. 

Councillor Pressel said that all 3 programmes outlined in the report were good and going well.  She was interested to know how these schemes compared to other schemes particularly the County Scheme and were any schools participating in both the county and City offer.  Specifically is Matthew Arnold involved in the digital exclusion programme?

Councillor Simmons asked when we will see the evaluation of the Leadership Programme and when could this come to the Committee.  He was also interested to know how we will evaluate the digital exclusion programme.

Councillor Sanders asked how we were going to evaluate the effects of KRM when there are so many different improvements and changes going on in schools.

In response to these questions Anna Wright said:

·         Schools cannot take part in the City and County schemes they were required to make a choice;

·         Accepts the difficulty in evaluation.  The only tangible outcome we have is improvements in the key stage results so these will be used.  We will have un-moderated results in July 2014 and moderated results in December 2014;

·         In terms of the targets and their link to national performance Ms Wright confirmed that our targets will not move upwards with national outcomes but will remain as 10% above the national target achieved in 12/13;

·         The digital inclusion project is being evaluated by Oxford University.  They have a lot of research data and this research will be followed through with each family involved;

·         Matthew Arnold is not involved in the Digital Inclusion project because it said it could not afford to buy the lap tops

Ms Wright added that the other challenges were:

·         To ensure KRM is being implemented consistently day to day in participating schools;

·         The high level of turnover of Heads and also the high level (50%) turnover of teachers.  This produced pressures for training.

Councillor Coulter said that we also have an issue with high pupil turnover which he understood to be about 25%.  His view was that some of this is related to our difficult housing situation and caused a disconnect between school and parent.  He highlighted the work  ...  view the full minutes text for item 68