Agenda item

To consider and comment upon the Education Investment Area and Priority Education Investment Area developments.

The Interim Assistant Director of Education Services provided an update to the Board on the Education Investment Area and Priority Education Investment Area developments.

The Priority Areas Programme was established to challenge and support schools to raise standards in all key stages to close educational gaps and to increase the proportion of schools and academies rated good or better by Ofsted.

The programme aimed to bring about rapid improvement in outcomes for pupils across Sandwell at the end of Key Stage 2 (KS2) and Key Stage 4 (KS4). The additional support would enable students to be better prepared for the next stage in their education or employment and enhance their life chances and choices.

The Government had announced in February 2022 that it would be delivering a package of measures in 55 Education Investment Areas, to further drive school improvement in England, as part of the levelling up agenda. The identified areas were comprised of local authorities where educational outcomes at the end of both KS2 and KS4 were the weakest and containing an Opportunity Area or areas previously identified by the Government for additional school improvement support.

Of the 55 Education Investment Areas, 24 of these had been identified as Priority Education Investment Areas and were set to receive more intensive investment. Sandwell was one of these Priority Education Investment Areas and had been allocated £2.9million in Local Needs Funding to support the initiative and deliver the agreed priorities and improvements within the life of the programme.

A Local Partnership Board had been established to work with Sandwell. The role of the Local Partnership Board included helping to identify the main challenges to improving outcomes for children and young people, identifying a range of interventions to address these challenges, and helping to drive support and activity within the Priority Education Investment Areas. The Board had also contributed to the development of Sandwell’s Local Needs Delivery Plan and would support the monitoring of progress towards the agreed criteria within it.

Sandwell’s Local Needs Delivery Plan was focused on three themes:-

·      maths would focus on improving the quality of provision across targeted schools;

·      English would focus on improving the teaching of literacy to ensure it was of good quality in all schools to enable learners to access the rest of the English curriculum and other subjects across both primary and secondary phases;

·      speech and language would focus on ongoing development due to the impact of the pandemic, resulting in challenges in learning phonics at early years and KS1, which would have a long-term impact on KS2 attainment.

Following comments and questions from members of the Board, the following responses were provided and issues highlighted:-

·      the data presented in the report was from May 2022 based on the academic year and the results from that year;

·      the DfE were positive in taking on board the data from this academic year when considering further measures;

·      the Council would be moving forward with a campaign on attendance and tackling persistent absence, it was important that measures aimed at improving attainment should be impacting those who required it;

·      Early Years and SEND were a priority in addition to the areas identified;

·      the Council had looked to be innovative and was focused on output, working on evidence to deliver results;

·      the Council would work to enhance the digital offer and its use in education and curriculum delivery;

·      work was underway to support young people and families with career aspirations, and a campaign was planned to be launched in the summer of 2023;

·      those children who had taken up an early education place statistically achieve better educational outcomes then those who did not, work was underway to encourage more parents to access that offer.