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Eason, please can you also put that in the chat so we can make sure that's reflected in the minutes. And our recommendation is if you lose connection at any point, just end and leave the meeting and then rejoin and we'll admit you as quickly as possible. If we do have any problems with the live stream, which we've already had, but if we have it again, then we might have to adjourn the meeting for a short space of time until we can get that up and running. So over to you, Tom, to do the register of who's with us today. Thank you. Thank you, chair, and if we could just have a yes for your attendance, Amy Stancer. [BLANKAUDIO] Janet Kennedy. Yes. Alan Howe. Yes, hi people, good afternoon. Thank you, Tony Stevens. [BLANKAUDIO] And Calum Clay. [BLANKAUDIO] Laura Martin. Yes, hi. You, Michelle Anderson. Hello. You, Andrew Everard. [BLANKAUDIO] Steven Baraguana. [BLANKAUDIO] Yes, thanks. Philip Dickinson. Hello, good afternoon. Thanks, Gavin Booth. Yes. Tristan Revel. Yes. You, Josh Greaves. Hi. You, Andy Watts. [BLANKAUDIO] Julia Merivale. [BLANKAUDIO] Peter Tomlinson. [BLANKAUDIO] That concludes the roll call, German. [BLANKAUDIO] Thank you very much. Is there anybody that's on the call that's not had their name called? [BLANKAUDIO] Are you happy to go through the offices that are in attendance, Tom? Have you got that list? Yeah, I believe we should have Mark Popperwell, their strategic finance lead. I'm not sure if we have Elizabeth Bowe, strategic finance manager, Geraldine O'Neill, sustainability and development manager, Martin Smith, assistant director for children's education, and Katie Marston, head of service, special educational needs and disabilities. If there's any corrections to be made there, indicate please. Yeah, and if anybody's joined us and has missed the roll call or such, then just make sure that you put your name in the chat and we'll make sure you get added to the minutes. So item one on the agenda, which I will be very quiet for, is the election of the chairman. This is where we have so many hands up and so many people stepping forward that we perhaps haven't got time to do it all, but over to you, Tom, to- [BLANKAUDIO] Thank you, yeah, so if we could have a proposer for any nominations of the chairman. Alan, says Alan Howe, can I propose Gavin Booth for chair if he's still wanting to do it? Thank you, yeah. Thank you so much. [BLANKAUDIO] State Baruch, why don't you second that? [BLANKAUDIO] If that's uncontested, I will take it that Gavin Booth be appointed the chairman at this meeting. [BLANKAUDIO] Thank you so much for that unanimous vote of confidence. And we will move on to the second, and I'm happy to continue for the year. Election of vice chairman, so we'll go to nominations of vice chair. I'm happy to nominate Josh Greaves, if anybody's prepared to second, unless there is a mad rush for vice chair roles. [BLANKAUDIO] Josh, are you happy to accept for another year? I am, thank you. Yeah, thank you very much. So hopefully that's been resolved. So I think we can move on to item three Tom, which is the apologies for absence and any replacement members. [BLANKAUDIO] Yeah, thank you chair. We have apologies from Lee Mason, Dr. Stephen Hoppins, Chris Fitzpatrick, and Simon Pickett. And I believe there is an update to be made that the following members, the following people are no longer members of the committee, and that's Heather Marks and Professor Ken Durand. [BLANKAUDIO] Great, thank you very much. Right, so item four, declarations of members interests. If there are any members that have interest that they wish to declare, can you please type speak in the chat. We'll just give you 30 seconds if they are affected by anything on today's agenda. [BLANKAUDIO] Okay, doesn't appear to be anybody at this point. So we'll move on to item five, which are the minutes of the last meeting, which is those of the 18th of April. I'd like to propose that there are correct record. Is there anybody that's prepared to second that for me? [BLANKAUDIO] Yeah, Gavin, Alan again, no problem. [BLANKAUDIO] Thank you, Alan, much appreciated. And therefore it is a process that's been approved. Anybody wish to abstain from that or vote against? [BLANK_AUDIO] No, I think everyone is happy that they are a fair and accurate record of the last meeting. So we'll accept that. Item six is chairman's announcements. So I'd like to welcome Jeanette Kennedy, special schools maintained rep, and Laura Martin, primary maintained head teacher to the forum. Thank you both very much for giving up your time and coming on board with the schools forum. Just a matter of note to share with colleagues. As you've heard, Professor Ken Durand has had to step down from the schools forum and also from his governance role at King's due to ill health. I'm sure many of you will know that Ken has been a stalwart of the schools forum for a very, very long time and has given an enormous amount to the forum and more broadly to education in links. So we will make sure that our kind of best wishes are passed along to him ASAP. And we want to on the record ready to thank him greatly for the contribution that he's made over the significant period of time that he's been working with us. So we wish him well. OK, item seven then is Lincolnshire schools forum constitution and membership update. That's pages 9 to 56 in your pack. This is something we need to look at annually. So we're going to invite Mark Popwell just to kind of present us and walk us through this paper. We're going to be asked to kind of note the contents of the report and give ourselves an opportunity to ask any questions. So this really is kind of how we go about doing our business as a schools forum. And one of the key things that we introduced, I think it was last year, was that it's kind of making sure that we're regularly reflecting on are we meeting our requirements as a forum. So over to you, Mark, and I'll let you walk us through it. Yeah, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, chair. Yeah, as the chair has outlined, so this is talking about the constitution and the membership arrangements of the schools forum. So schools forums are required to operate on the various sets of regulations. Those regulations include the schools forum, regulations 2012, and then the schools and the earliest financial regulations also. So the forum governance and operation remit is described in the constitution, which is within our appendices, appendix A, relating to the terms of reference document. And that is designed to reflect the contents of the legislation and guidance information, to ensure that the forum conduct its activities on the basis of compliance and in accordance with the legislation requirements. No revisions have been made to the schools forum, regulations 2012, and it is anticipated that the schools and earliest financial regulations 2024 will only reflect the funding formula changes and at the moment in time, those have not been published. In summary, no changes have been made to the regulations that will change the current operation framework of the schools forum. The membership composition has been reviewed and updated to reflect the current composition outlined and the projected composition going forward, taking account of any planned academy conversions. The actual membership arrangements actually remain unchanged for 24/25. And the terms of reference document has been updated to reflect the annual review of this composition as I've described, it's in appendix A. This will then be taken forward to the Executive Councillor, the Children's Social Security Council, and for her support for the contents of this report to be noted by schools forum and also in laws. Just to add, in terms of the appendices, the appendices, that is the terms of reference in terms of appendix A, and that talks through each of those constitutional requirements and how the schools forum operates, as indeed it shows the composition and in terms of the membership. So, the overall membership is 24 representatives, which 24 schools are representatives, overall 28 representatives, including the four that represent the sector overall from other groups. We've then got an appendix B, which is the Education Skills Funding Agency document in terms of the guidance for your reference. And then we've got appendix C, which then annually we reflect on in terms of a school forum assessment, self-assessment toolkit, and it talks through a number of questions at which then we've been reflective in terms of whether we're meeting those requirements or where we've got some learning points to take from it. Overall, from our perspective, we are compliant with that. There is still an area that we do want to take forward in terms of training to support school forum members, particularly with new individuals starting on the forum. It's important that we provide that additionality in terms of support and training in addition to what we provide, and that is in process at this moment in time. Other than that, the chair, I don't know if I can be further to work. Thank you. Thanks, Mark. Anybody got any questions about constitution or what Mark just walked us through there in terms of the way that we conduct schools forum business? Nothing significant changing for us moving forward into the next year, so we'll continue to be mindful of that. Obviously, as the proportion of Maintained Schools Academy has changed and shifts, we need to look at, to keep that under review. And I'd say the one key point for update is that induction process for new members and how we continue to improve that going forward. I can't see any questions or comments in the chat, so I kind of propose that we've heard that and that we are happy with the content and that we'll continue with that into the next academic year. Okay, on to item eight, which is a bit more chunky, I think, in terms of its content. And we're going to hand over to Martin. I think he's going to provide us with an annual report. We've got a number of annual reports on today's agenda, including this one and the early years one, and also the school centre-led update. I think we were hoping to have Katie, but she's not available today. So Martin's stepping into the breach and we know he knows his business when it comes to SEND. He's lived and breathed it now for quite some time. So Martin, we're asked to look at this and there's some recommendations for the forums to note the content and address any questions to you. If they have anything on the content of today's report. So over to you, Martin. Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon everybody and apologies for Katie being unable to make it due to a family emergency. So I present to you today the annual report for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities to the Schools Forum to cover off some key updates around activity and performance, our overview demand levels, and an update around our capital programmes and system priorities. You will all be really familiar with the transition in 2014 to 2015 of the SEND regulations that introduced the new support framework for children, young people, and certainly that intention of those changes were to create a more ambitious and aspirational system for children, young people with special educational needs and disabilities. How that's transpired over the last few years is that there's been a significant increase in demand nationally as well as locally and in terms of where Lincolnshire is at at the moment, it's worthwhile noting that we are above national in terms of the identification of children and young people with SEND needs including SEND support. We're at 13.08 compared to a national of 12.89 percent. The demand for EHCP requests for assessment has increased significantly over the last three years. In 2023 we had a 23, sorry a 36 percent increase and in 2024 up to May we've had an increase again of up to 36 percent in year request to assess. We've currently got 7,899 EHCPs in Lincolnshire and with approximately 15,000 children being supported at SEND support level. Unfortunately we don't have any SEND 2 data to compare to so that survey takes place in January and that is released approximately in June time but hasn't been released as of yet. In terms of our performance in terms of time scales we're getting 172 requests for assessment each month. That's a significant increase compared to previous years and has an impact on the deliverability of EPs and caseworkers to be able to meet need. We have seen an increase in conversion rates of assessments going through and we've also seen an increase in mediations overturning those original decisions so we do see more requests to assess going through requiring that resource to support them. You can see in the paper it talks about the detail around how the data accounts for certain perspectives but doesn't always account for mediations and overturns. So within the report we've also shared with you the locality district data so you can see where the demand is. You'll see that the predominant demand-free HCPs comes from NK, North West, Lincoln, West Lindsay as well. In terms of primary need within the paper we show that the increases in primary need in Lincolnshire have increased somewhat and we can see that SEMH and ASD are considerably higher than in the past. So Lincolnshire is an outlier potentially until we get that send to data around where things are at. We know that demand is high and this demand is putting a pressure on placements, schools and school staff to being able to meet need and the local authority is developing its strategy around sufficiency and improvement activity to support our colleagues in doing the absolute best for children. In terms of sufficiency you'll be aware that the local authority applied for a free school a little while ago and that was declined. I'm pleased to report to the schools forum that on reconsideration in the second round we've now been successful. So 156-place SEMH school which links in with where the demand is has been agreed and will now be progressing through build etc over the next year or two. So that's really helpful but still one of our pressing issues is the ability to be able to find placements that are cost effective, high quality and close to home and I'll come on to that in a few moments. Our 20-week time scale for EHC assessments is strong at 78.2%. It is decreased from the previous year mainly because of volume and our response to managing that volume has been secure some additional capacity to casework those cases but you will note that the national in last year's CEN2 was 49.2 so the 20-week time scale for Lincolnshire is still above as far as we can see the national comparisons. As a local authority as well we're putting our attention towards annual reviews and making sure that annual reviews are conducted in a timely way and so although not collected and published by national data sets we've decided that we will be pushing through with monitoring annual reviews the timeliness, the two-week decisions, turning that round in terms of a MAC decision within four weeks and making sure that any amendments are done within eight weeks and we'll bring that information to the schools forum over the next year or so. To support efficiencies in the past the paperwork side and the liaison and the collation of information has been very manual it's been emails, attachments, word documents so we've introduced and set up our electronic hub so that the vast majority of information can be funneled through a portal compiled with a reduced demand on our offices and also make it more accessible to colleagues and parents and families out there in the system. Ninety percent of our historical EHCPs have now been uploaded onto the hub which has been no mean feat whilst managing the day-to-day demands of the work so we're really hopeful that that will provide a better way of communicating an improved process for sharing information and making sure that information is transparent and across all of the partners. In terms of placements, I mentioned the SEMH school but what you will see from the report is that the number of young people who are in independent non-maintained settings which are on average £70,000 per place has significantly increased so we are turning our attention more so than ever to develop our next steps to try and avoid the costly placements, find the cost effective placements that are good quality to support children and young people. This is a significant cost to the high needs block and the high needs block is under pressure according to the forecasts and so we feel it's imperative to be creative in finding new ways of finding placements that are close to home for children and young people so they're part of their community but also received in that education that's much needed. In terms of our capital programme, you'll be aware that we are in the final stages of our building specialist communities programme and we're now entering into a phase two. It's going through our decision-making process internally. Part of that is the SEMH free school but also looking to expand a provision in the Grantham area by a significant number of classes and also looking at the development of SEND and AP hubs across localities. This will give us an additional 425 schools, sorry 425 places, not schools, so that we can manage some of the demand and the finances. You will also be aware that the local area SEND inspection is likely to take place soon and this is a partnership-wide inspection of local authority, health, schools, earlier settings and anybody who contributes to the lived experiences of young people. We're one of the few local authorities in the region who have not yet been inspected so it's very likely that we will be soon and our self-evaluation is quite clear on what our strengths for the local area are, where we want to go next and this is being built into our high need strategy which is currently in draft. We have monthly off-step preparation meetings internally with partners in readiness for that and as many of you as school leaders will know in our forums we often give a brief update around the pressures, where we're going and what we're doing about it next and certainly this is absolutely rooted in our partnership approach that should be embraced as we find solutions for the growing pressures on the high needs block. So that was a whistle-stop tour of the SEND landscape, some positives, definitely we're aware of the challenges financially and placements-wise and the impact on schools and so I present the report to the forum for any consideration, comments or questions. Thank you Chair. Thanks Martin. Anybody want to come back to Martin with any questions or queries? I did see Simon's hand flash up but I don't know if that was accidental and went back down again. I just got to see it. Sorry Gavin it was accidental and then flashed back down again but I do have a question if that's any. Yeah go for it, thank you. Thank you very much and I apologise for being late, thank you. Martin I just didn't understand on page 63 in the pack above the in the in the paragraph entitled placements 46% of the EHC cohort in Lincolnshire educated in LA funded academy or maintained schools, that paragraph added up to 80%. I wonder what the other 20% were. So for some of those young people there will either be in EOTAS packages or in other alternative provisions etc. I think the main point we were trying to highlight there within that paragraph was just to kind of give a feel of what the proportionality of placements are across the system. So I'll double check that paragraph and bring out clarification Simon to schools forum for the purposes of the minutes. Brilliant thank you, thank you for that. Yeah thanks for your question Simon. And I was just going to say thank you very much as well because I had communicated with Kate as well and been very very impressed so thank you very much. Thank you. Any other questions for Martin or Josh? Thank you. Just there's been such impactful work done around growing capacity and reorganising the special school estate and we you know that that bears fruit in terms of outcomes and experiences for kids as well as financially. And one of those big cost drivers is residential independent as well as just independent. I don't think the DFE framework is too supportive of this but I just wondered whether there's been any consideration to maintained or academy residential provision rather than independent. Good question Josh. I think colleagues who are working in that space of residential care have been looking at different options. So an example of which the local authorities opened two local children's homes, two new ones and part of their work streams is to keep adapting and looking at where our significant trends are and our response to that. Obviously we're limited by capital and opportunities but it is in our line of sight for our care work streams as well. Yeah anything further? I've just got a little question Martin if that's okay. So page 61 where we talk about the table and we talk about Lincolnshire being an outlier with regards of identification of ASD and SEMH. Do we know how much of an outlier we are or are we waiting on that data being published or are we just saying we're an outlier because we're above regional and national? So in terms of predominant need we need the CEN2 data to come through to be absolutely crystal clear on whether we're an outlier. We are an outlier on per head of population so our data would suggest we are identifying more children with SCL sorry with special educational needs than compared to national. Now I think there's a contextual argument and debate within all of that but as an indicator one of the questions that we would reflect on is why is that what do we need to do and that's where I'd bring in the workforce development programs that we've developed and our approach to behaviour support with our schools etc. So I think it's to note a question would be asked of the partnership in an inspection why do we think we are above national and I think locally schools would articulate contextual information factors that are contributing to this as well but it's a question that we need to keep asking ourselves as what are we doing are we over identifying are we missing are we over identifying SEND for some other reason do we need to rethink our approach to that or is there a support service that needs to be put into place to manage and support demand more effectively? Yeah I was just thinking just by the nature of it being an average figure somebody somewhere has got to be above the above the national average in order for it to to end up at that place so it's it's that you know what is that span and I suppose when that data becomes available we'll see kind of you know how how low those figures are in some places and how how much further above the national they go to know how far out of an outlier we really are so no thank you for that. Any further questions for Den? Right don't think so so the recommendation is for the forum to note the content of the report and raise any questions which I think we've done I propose that we've done that so if everyone is happy we will move on to item nine which is the schools sector led update which I believe is Martin again you can never have too much of a good thing Martin that's what I say and so that's on pages 67 to 74 of your pack again we're asked to note the contents of the report and ask any questions as we go along so over to you. Thank you chair much appreciated so this is the annual report on schools sector led many of you will be aware and in contact with our sector led model in in Lincolnshire but just want to give you a flavor of the impact that it is having so as of April 24 you'll notice that Lincolnshire's good and outstanding schools is the best it has been since 2018. That's something to be really pleased and proud about and certainly something I think we need to acknowledge that school leaders across the county have been working really hard upon. Our highest proportion of secondary schools just as good and outstanding is in south of Stephen with the lowest in Boston. In terms of primary schools our strongest area is Boston compared with the lowest number of good and outstanding schools in South Holland so we are doing a targeted piece of work and that information is part of the factors of what we do and where we target energy and resources to supporting where things go next. In terms of outcomes just very briefly our early years outcomes have improved on the previous year and are slightly above national which again is a celebration of the work that's been going on in early years and to our early years teachers and leaders and something to be celebrated. At key stage one there is still improvement but you'll all be aware that key stage one assessments are moving away from being statutory and so it'll be difficult to track that moving forward as they may or may not be taken part of across the system. Our key stage two results in 2023 did improve for reading writing maths combined but so did the national average so the gap has remained the same however if you look at reading and writing that gap has narrowed and maths has become a point of improvement. Key stage four an area of absolute success cites that our children at the end of year 11 are exceeding the national average around attainment eight and a progress eight so a huge celebration to one of our secondary colleagues in the system for their commitment to improving outcomes for those young people. The sector-led system in Lincolnshire has refined so everybody on the schools form will be aware of the Lincolnshire Learning Partnership board. The board after a number of years have reflected and decided that we needed to take a new approach to the sector-led model and restructure it so we now have the Lincolnshire Education Group. This is strategic leaders from the county council the Diocese of Lincoln and the Partnership of Schools group and the teaching school hub. They are working across the sector to identify those priorities and manage the briefings to make sure that our response to the issues and the needs of the system are being picked up through that. The legacy of the LLPB was the remaining funding and that remaining funding was committed to some projects across the county. The first one was a leadership development project and that was rooted in the case of making sure that there was a good quality supply of leaders who were ready confident and able to move forward with that next step of taking a school on and developing a culture of improvement. The effective leadership program started off with a conference in October it also has elements of new to headship programs a deputy and assistant headship program and the feedback across those programs has been exemplary really good quality and much appreciated and we're seeing the impact coming through in those offset inspections and in the outcomes for some of those schools. We then commissioned a send project and this was targeted at a number of schools to try and raise the standards of education for those pupils with special educational needs and disabilities. It was also to develop schools understanding of the statutory obligations and also confidently support teachers and teaching assistants to meet the needs of children. We wanted to create a sense of empowering Sencos and schools to be able to meet need and make sure that their overall quality of teaching was supported with the right tools toolkit resources and resilience. There were 32 schools included in this delivered via the Learn Send hub and that included training on Oakland, middle leader development, Sencos and a tiered approach to other leadership within schools. We've seen 10 to 30 percent increase in performance and schools have taken on the advice during the reviews and have got a lot out of that. The next project that was commissioned was the Gainsborough Aspiration Project and this has brought together 21 schools to share their intelligence, their skills, their knowledge, their understanding of the community to harness the power of a community to improve outcomes. They've looked at things such as attendance, working with partners, housing, district councils to remove any barriers to children being able to improve their life chances. One of the outcomes of this has been a strong link with the primary care network and also the fact that the local schools have employed a transition lead to directly spend time in each of the schools in the DN21 area to improve that next step from primary to secondary. Neat figures have been targeted as well and the employment and skills partnership board are really trying to develop that careers offer and that's indicated by the start small dream big primary careers project to try and get that birth to adulthood story in place for that local community to improve life chances. In terms of our teaching school hub, I'm really pleased to be able to inform schools forum that our teaching school hub in Lincolnshire, the lead teaching school hub, has been re-accredited for four years. That happened over the summer period and that's really important to our sector-led model because they're a key strategic partner in bringing the DFE programs to Lincolnshire but also developing programs that the sector would like to engage with. We sit on the local, sorry, the local authority sits on the strategic board but I'm pleased to report to the schools forum that 99.4% of schools are engaged with the hub and 55% of schools are doing three or more programs with that hub. So the sector-led model is working well, it's efficient, it's utilizing resource and feels like it's got the strong backing of our school leaders as they as they engage in the initiatives we bring to the fore. So I recommend the content to school forum for any comments or questions. Okay, anybody wish to ask Mark any questions or reflect on any of the contents of that report? Steve. Hi everyone, I just want to commend the work of the lead teaching school hub. I've had need to approach them for some support for pedagogy and teaching and learning training and they were right. Amanda was able to provide someone with skill and expertise to come to one of our schools and give us support and it's been really helpful. Very, very responsive, so very grateful for that, thought people ought to know. Thank you Steve. Anybody else? I just have one little comment Martin and you know I'm going to say this every time I see it happen, why do we still split out or are we required to split out academy versus maintained data and Ofsted outcomes when we often talk about them all being Lincolnshire's children? And we all know the rhetoric of there's a reason why sometimes academies outcomes are not as much, I know it's something, but we in one breath we talk about them being all our children, the next breath we keep splitting out the data. Yeah, I don't know if that's something we're required to do. That's a good point Gavin. It's a really good point and I think it's in response to a number of different parties, so if the schools forum would like to give a very clear steer that they're interested in just the Lincolnshire data, I would be agreeable to that. Reporting it in separation is not always helpful, particularly it's not really comparable within the secondary sector because there are only two maintained schools. So you know I talk about Lincolnshire children in my reports to other forums, so if that's something that the schools forum would like us to revert to or be clearer on, I'm happy to take that away and action that. I would like that. I would say there's a number of people in the chat, so unless anybody wants to strongly come back in the chat and say no they wish to see that separately, I just think the more we talk with one voice regardless of school makeup and school configuration, I think that the stronger we will be. So yeah I'm a real advocate and a champion for talking about Lincolnshire's children regardless of which sector they're in in this forum and in any other, including heads briefings etc etc. So anybody else want to comment either on that or on anything else that's in the report? Gavin if I may, sorry, I'm nervous with statistics in the first place. I think once you start combining things you might actually hide a trend that would be my concern and particularly because one of the maintained schools I'm involved with is struggling in quite a lot of different things and it's interesting to see it for me what the comparison is against other primary maintained or primary schools and sectors. I just get nervous when statistics are all bundled together that we might hide things, that would just be my observation about this as it stands. I mean as a simple example in the paper it talks about 97% of feedback at the school leadership things but it's only a third of the people that are attending. So that's only 97% of less than 33% in terms of the head teachers and so that's my question to that then would be is if we were in a school we would be challenged with what we're doing with the other two thirds. So the question would be what are we doing with the other two thirds of the school leaders to get them involved for instance. That's a bad example maybe but that's just my thoughts. Yeah thank you, Martin. Yeah I think Alan I understand the point there. I think what we can probably look to do is make sure that we interpret some of these statistics and bring to the schools forum the priority areas rather than the data per se and in terms of head teacher briefings and participation I think that was a snapshot. It's a difficult one to kind of report on because some of our multi-accountal trusts do attend the briefings but they'll send one person to represent seven or eight of their schools but that's quite hard to capture. What I would say is this round of briefings the PSG members some of whom are on this call have been really proactive in trying to get colleagues to engage and attend and it numbers are up but also what isn't in the paper and maybe should have been is I do also maintain contact with my CEOs as well. We do all we can to get that coverage sharing priorities and messages across the system but yeah point taken in terms of just statistics. Yeah that's fine thank you Martin. Yeah thank you for that. Simon's put a comment in here why not report all maintained Matt and Sat that way you can choose what you see. Again it's difficult isn't it you either go all the whole hog and report on every nuance or you keep that together. I think probably what we need to do is to trust officers to try and present the data in the most useful way to the forum and therefore yeah my point was really about that front page and in terms of I didn't see the benefit necessarily of separating those things out but I do take Alan's point that we've got to be careful again about combining stats that sometimes you know can confuse it and I think where numbers are low like always we're almost better if in terms of taking head count and numbers of schools or numbers of people attending rather than trying to create a percentage of a very very small number of people so anything anybody else wants to comment on with regard to the sector led reports we've been asked to note the comment the content. No well I think we know we've done that so thank you very much indeed Martin. We'll move on then to item 10 which I believe is not Martin this time so we'll give him a rest and this is the early years annual report on pages 75 to 82. We're going to invite Geraldine O'Neill sustainability and development manager to present this report to us again we're asked to note the contents of the report and also agree the priorities for 24/25 so over to you Geraldine. Thank you chair good afternoon everyone and yes so this report aims to provide the forum with an update on the support provided to the early years in child care sector in Lincolnshire during 23/24 and outline our priorities for this current financial year so our service provides information support challenge and training opportunities to the early years and child care providers within Lincolnshire and that support enables providers to meet the needs of children and we have a particular emphasis on the most disadvantaged and vulnerable families to reduce inequalities and promotes the school readiness agenda. Our service is funded through the centrally retained element of the early years dedicated schools grant so in January you'll remember we delivered a paper on our indicative budgets for this financial year and we've provided the breakdown of that funding in this report for you just as a reminder. The responsibilities of the early years in child care support service are outlined in this report and our service has increased in terms of responsibilities since we last updated you we've got 10 key areas of responsibilities they do include the earliest entitlement education funding which of course is expanding this year as part of the child care reforms to include two-year-olds of working families and from this September including the children the term after they reach nine months. Deficiency and sustainability of the child care sector ensuring that we have enough child care places for all children and families across Lincolnshire and the delivery of quality provision and those educational outcomes for children within the eYFS framework. We also have a duty to support and provide training and workforce opportunities to the sector a focus on inclusion funding and a wider focus on the SEND agenda advice and support that we're giving to the sector there. We also do a lot of partnership working with relation to school readiness and including health and the quality and delivery of activities within children's centres across the county and we also have the responsibility of the HAP programme, the wraparound child care programme, family hubs and the family and babies project as part of that as well. So we have a large and diverse child care marketplace within Lincolnshire that includes child minders, PBI providers, early years provision also delivered by schools and academies and a large number of those providers deliver the early years educational entitlements as well. This last financial year we had six priorities identified within the report so just to give you a quick update on some of the things that we've been doing. The child care reforms announced in the spring budget in 2023 have dominated a large part of our service plans in the last year that includes the extension of the entitlements and as I say that will increase for children from nine months from this September and that goes right up to school-aged children and that also includes the wraparound child care programme which is to ensure that we've got breakfast and after-school clubs available for all primary school-aged children across the county in all schools and academies. I am pleased to announce that we've had this summer term 92% of all the codes that were issued for the two-year-olds of working families accessing places so far this summer term so that's really promising. One of the concerns with the introduction of the new working entitlements was the reduction potentially in places delivered for those disadvantaged children however we've maintained a minimum of 85% take up for our existing two-year-old entitlement this summer term as well which is also really reassuring. We've successfully recruited into our wraparound child care delivery team and we've just started this week going to the school heads briefings to give an update on that programme further and that team have a number of priority schools that they will be contacting in the coming months to really focus on developing places where we've got gaps in the child care market and we've also recruited some capacity within the team to support with the early years entitlement expansions and quality improvements that we want to make within the early years as part of the child care reforms. Our third priority was around start for life strategy and we have an existing early childhood strategy and we were due to review and develop that further we are doing that in collaboration with a number of partners and that's going through involvement with the family hubs programme and the start for life offer there. Just to provide you with a few stats there we've given you some updates on the children's centre and the family hub data and we have published our start for life offer on our website on the county council's platform and we've had over eight and a half thousand visits to the start for life offer online so far which is really encouraging and we're actually in the process of now developing a brochure that can be that can be given to any families that need that that can't access information online. We have returned to face-to-face antenatal education from February this year and we've got the Solihull antenatal programme is being offered universally to families which is really great. We've also got the family and baby project which has been really really successful the fab team supports all families who are on Lincolnshire neonatal units as well as Lincolnshire families on units outside of the county and we've had 284 fab families seen so far last year which is 98 of all neonatal families so that's a really really promising rate that we've been able to see. In terms of our commitment to continuous professional development for the 0-2 year olds we wanted of course as part of the childcare reforms to really support the need to invest in the development of the workforce in Lincolnshire and we've been working with our locality teams to support that 1001 critical days and Lincolnshire start for life offer and looking at training programs that can support families across the county. Ten of our children's centres are now family hubs which offer universal services for 0-5 year olds and staff in the children's centres and family hubs continue to work with a number of partners on collaborative approaches across Lincolnshire taking a system-wide approach which includes antenatal teams, family health workers, health visitors, early years practitioners and our commissioned providers and that also includes our our Lincolnshire childcare providers and schools. In terms of SEN and communication that's obviously been a huge focus for us and we know that we need a stronger qualified workforce to meet the needs of children with SEND and communication needs in early years is really key. So just provided you in the report there with some stats on inclusive practice training, what was booked in 2023 and also the bookings that we've had on the SEN level two and three in the last year and that has increased significantly and we hope to increase that demand and that training even further in this coming financial year. Our sixth priority was around the consideration for our early years block under spends that we had from the previous year and we have identified some specific programs that we've been focusing on recruitment for in the last few months and this year we will really really hope to drive that forward. So some of that has been around the increase in take-up of the early years entitlements. We want to ensure that as many children access their educational entitlements as possible. We know that we've had a slight reduction in the take-up of early education places. We know that that's partly due to population decreases but we want to focus some outreach activities on finding out any barriers that families might have to access in education places and making sure that we can then mitigate any risks for those families and make sure that we really focus on those most vulnerable children to make sure that they're accessing their entitlements. We've also got a number of programs that we're going to be delivering this year utilizing some of that funding and we've been recruiting into posts to support the sector-led model and Dingley's promise to look at the work that we're doing to really focus on any barriers that we might have for children with SEND accessing their early entitlement places as well. So for this coming financial year I've outlined the 10 priorities that we have as a service area for you. Continuing with the child care reforms we've obviously rolled out the working parent entitlements but we plan to now transition for the nine-month-olds from this September and we will be hoping to come to you with an update on what that looks like in terms of the funding formula and the information that we set out in January for this financial year. We have some capital funding that we want to invest across Lincolnshire where needed to develop new child care places that will include investment with third-party providers and with schools and academies where it's needed to make minor works so that we can increase the number of places that are available to families as part of the child care reforms but also part of the wraparound program. And the wraparound program will really be picking up speed in the coming months where we've got the team who are going to be coming out to schools and speaking to them directly about potential options for development of breakfast and after-school provision where that doesn't exist maybe in collaboration with third parties or maybe delivered directly by the schools and academies. We have been invited to contribute to the government assessment on the holiday activities and food program so we'll be giving some additional information back to the government on the characteristics of children that have been taking up the half program, the places that have been delivered in the last year and we've had a successful Easter program delivered and we're really looking forward to this summer program where we've got more providers signed up to deliver those places. We're really focused on looking at the areas where there may be a need to develop more clubs. We are going to be developing parent-infant relationship and a system-wide infant feeding strategy in this next financial year as part of the family hubs program and we've also got an altitude training pathway for earliest providers again to support the need for quality provision particularly for those babies and those under-2s. We've got a pilot in the NKSK area where we have the earliest specialist teachers now in-house in the earliest and childcare support team so that we can focus their work on increasing the number of early health assessments and reducing hopefully those early education health and care plans in the early years. We are also in terms of pillar two of the Pathfinder we want to again support the increase of tax in early in early years settings recognizing that we're providing the holistic support for families and again reducing the number of the HCPs. We've also got a pilot in Lincoln City for the transition portal which will allow schools and settings to provide information and transfer that consistent detail to one another through robust processes and then finally we want to embed the start-to-life offer and provide evaluation and sustainability for that so that we can ensure that all families are accessing the support that they need in those critical early years. So the service has provided preventative and early intervention support for settings to reduce the number of providers achieving a less than good offset judgment. We also want a particular focus on ensuring that all children access their early entitlement education funded places and where any barriers exist we are looking at resolutions to those to increase the number of children in those places as early as possible. So we'll be doing a lot more in terms of that and looking at that in much more detail in this coming year. Thank you. Thank you very much, lots going on. Fair to say lots of initiative, lots happening in early years so any questions or comments from colleagues for Geraldine? I'm waiting, watching the chat. I'll ask a question to Geraldine because I'm interested in the capital funding program and kind of kind of plans for that and interest in that really. So it's your kind of view on that that there are in terms of sufficiency of places we know we need some some more providers or we need providers that have got better facilities and better places to increase their numbers. Is there an appetite out there to kind of get involved with that capital project do you think from what you've undertaken so far? Yes we are in the middle at the moment of working with some providers that have shown interest in that. We haven't, we've gone out with an open and transparent grant funding process so we are welcoming pre-assessments and then applications from schools and academies directly and third-party child care providers. We've got a number of private providers across the county that have buildings that need more renovation work and so they sent in applications to us and we review those at a panel and then we're really looking at value for money alongside the sufficiency data using our annual child care sufficiency survey to kind of assess right there's a gap in that area we need to develop some places and then when those providers are sending those applications in we're assessing those and then the capital funding that we're awarding is a contribution towards any larger works that they're doing so some interest from the private sector we're looking to do a little bit more work with schools where there might be capacity within the school to offer early years or wraparound provision and it might just need some small renovation works it might be that there's capacity on school site but it might need toilet facilities or something else that just contributes then towards their ability to to offer those places so yes it's been we've had some caution from some providers particularly people that might be needing to invest because obviously then there's personal risk to any investments that they're making so really important that when we're working with them what we're doing is looking at their cash flow forecasting and supporting them with their applications to make sure that if we are investing in this it looks like it's going to be a viable option longer term. Great thank you very much for that can't see any more questions so we'll say we'll say thank you we're asked to note the contents of your report and agree those 10 priorities for 24 25. I think we've done that if you are not happy please put that in the chat but I'm hoping we all are I think we are so we'll consider we've done that so thank you very much Geraldine appreciate your time and the report and we'll move on to item 11 on our agenda which is the academies and trust update pages 83 86 and Lizzie Bowes is going to walk us through this in terms of the changes since the last time we met thanks Lizzie. Thank you afternoon everybody so as you'll know this is a standard agenda item provides an update in terms of the composition of academies and trusts in Lincolnshire the position is at the 1st of June based on the January 2024 census since the date of last report we've had no more academy converters the current status of all schools and academies are detailed in the tables on pages 83 and 84 and you can see currently approximately 53% of our establishments are academies which equates to nearly 74% of pupils we do have a number of schools that are in the process of converting to academy and those detailed on page 84. The projected six months position assuming that those schools convert in the time frame are detailed at the bottom of page 84 and onto page 85. The next section of the report details the trusts of the most Lincolnshire academies and you can see that Lincoln Anglican Academy Trust has the highest number of 16. The report then provides narrative on the breakdown of trust with the Lincolnshire including the split between schools and single and multi-academy trusts and you can see that nearly 87% of primaries and 65% of secondaries are in multi-academy trusts and the largest trust operating nationally that also operates in Lincolnshire is the academies enterprise trust and the form is asked to note the content of the report. Great thank you it's a report that we're growing more and more familiar with every time anybody got any questions they want to raise on that I think it's you know fairly straightforward and we'll just continue to watch the numbers I'm sure like many the the election has slowed down some of those processes for some for some schools we'll wait to see how quickly they pick that back up. So we will then move on to item 12 which is just to share with you the the work programme for the next academic year hopefully you'll see that our next meeting is the 10th of October those dates should already be out and in people's diaries that one is online and then we've got another meeting on the 16th of January which is in person. I think the thing to say before we conclude today is that I think we're all aware of the kind of financial position of education and the challenges that are happening right now in the sector and probably going to increase more so as things go forward because regardless of what happens on the 4th of July I think the cupboard may be bare so I think we are probably going to have to make some fairly fairly challenging decisions as a forum as we go into the coming months and into next year particularly as we've seen in the report from Martin there around the challenges around high needs and send so you know I urge people to kind of make sure that they're really familiar with the detail of the reports going forward into the next year's meetings because we are probably going to be asked to make some fairly fairly significant decisions about how we support our children longer term in the kind of tighter and tighter funding that we're now receiving so I hope you all have a fantastic summer when it arrives I know it's a very very busy term and thank you for your participation and questions today and thanks to those officers that have produced documentation and I will see you the other side of the summer holidays which we don't even want to think about yet take care everybody thank you very much thank you bye bye everyone thank you bye