Transcript

Please note, we are not expecting a fire alarm this evening, so if the alarm is sounded, please follow my instructions and evacuate the building. Please remember that this meeting is being broadcast live on the council's website. Please turn your microphone on when speaking and remember to turn it off when you have finished. To make sure that you can be heard on the broadcast and in the chamber, please speak clearly and directly into your microphone. I will now ask my fellow members and officers to introduce themselves, starting on my right. Thank you very much. Councillor Safi Ngongo, Lead Member for Children, Young People and Families Clare Shammett, Councillor on Holloway Ward Susie Graves, Parent Governor, Representative for Secondary Schools Ilkay Chinko Ono, Councillor Laycock Ward Sophie McNeil, Parent Governor, Representative for Primary Schools Ernestus de Golovus-Armstrong, Councillor for Highbury Ward Curtis, do you want to introduce? Thank you, good evening, Curtis Ashton, Director for Young Islundsen Candy Holder, Assistant Director of Inclusion Katie Wood, Attendance Lead Hi, Balginda here, Matiana, Assistant Director of Public Health Janine Killogh, Health and Wellbeing Manager in the School Improvement Service Hi everyone, Deborah Idrith, Director for Safeguarding and Family Support Tane Townsend, Head of Strategic Programmes and Strategy Thank you We have apologies from Councillor McHugh and we don't have any substitute members Do members have any interest to declare? Okay, we move on to the minutes of the previous meeting Subject to any amendments that members wish to make through me or the Clerk, can we agree the minutes of the meeting of the former Children's Committee held on Tuesday 7th of January? Agreed Agreed Thank you, we now move on to the chair's report We had two really good, actually three really good evidence gathering sessions We visited COLA, what was previously known as Highbury Grove and we also had a session at Arsenal Hub speaking to youth and thank you Curtis for organising that It was really insightful hearing directly from young people about their experience and why it was difficult for them to come to school and a lot of it was around their experiences at school as well and we had a really good session with the GSEs We don't usually report to a committee so it was quite really insightful to kind of have that national picture and seeing some of the key schemes nationally So yeah, that was all There are no items for calling at the meeting at this meeting, so the next item is public questions I will be taking questions from the public during the discussion items except for the first item because of being conscious of time I will be using my chair's discretion on the number of questions to take from the public this evening to ensure that the committee has enough time to perform its business this evening If there are any questions regarding what the committee has heard from our speakers I would ask that it is submitted and right in And just on that note, I just want to thank St Aloysius and Acklin Burley for joining us today to obviously, as you will be aware, our scrutiny topic is attendance and we are really keen to hear about good practice from secondary schools and I know from Acklin Burley we have a lot of Islington young people that attend the school and St Aloysius have had really good success with their attendance So, if I could start with, is it Owens? Owens? And if you could just give us, I guess, some insight into Yeah, if you just turn it on Hello everyone, my name is Owen Galgee I'm Assistant Head of St Aloysius College and I'm in charge of Behaviour in South Garden I think one of the key things for us in terms of improving attendance is knowing the pupils really well and knowing the issues that affect them and the barriers that are in place for them to come into school and then addressing those barriers that's one of the key elements that we do as part of our safeguarding and inclusion that helps support attendance I think one of the models that we've used that's worked really well is on a Monday we'll have a meeting where we have representatives from various different agencies so we'll have the school support officer we have our CAMHS clinician sometimes we're supported by colleagues from Bright Futures sometimes we're supported we're doing the ITIPs programme at the moment so there's colleagues that come in there and we get a broad picture through social services through the police as well of the kind of family history where their gaps might be or things that we don't know about them and then we're able to use that to put in place appropriate interventions to help support those young people to come into school I think the other thing that makes a real difference is that our attendance team in school is quite dogged in terms of chasing down parents I know one of the things that I noticed when I looked at the statistics that were produced the difference between St Aloysius and many of the other schools was the rate of unauthorised absence and because the families know that we'll chase up on a doctor's note or we'll chase up on a sick note from the doctor or whatever it might be they're less likely then to hope that they'll get away with just not calling in and that'll be forgotten about and because we chase that then it encourages the pupils to come in in terms of our process we use a spreadsheet that the data is directly exported from SIMS where we record our attendance and then that spreadsheet is used to kind of pinpoint where the areas of persistent absence is occurring and then we begin the process of bringing about a formal process of leading down to fines and court orders if necessary to ensure that attendance is high we're quite hot on that obviously we try and balance it out and make sure that we take into account any circumstances that might be in place and we want to make sure that it's fair and that families are given a chance to provide information etc but eventually when it gets to the point where we have to get isn't in council involved by that point we've built up a good case of evidence to show why a fine is justified in this instance and that means that the fines are more likely to go through which again encourages parents because they know that they're going to increase and it does unfortunately get to the case where you might have a family where they get a fine of £1,000 or more and I know the families that we serve in particular some of them live in very difficult economic conditions and £1,000 is an incredible amount of money for those people but it's the education of that young person that they're going to miss out on they're going to lose that £1,000 maybe you could look at it as an investment I guess in a way it's a punishment and a fine for the parent because their child isn't in school but it's an investment in that young person's education because we care about them being in school and if they're in school they're going to have those opportunities that otherwise they're going to lose out on so when it gets to that point it is necessary to fine and I don't know whether it's the case that other schools implement or follow it as strictly as we do perhaps it is or it isn't but it's certainly a driver that the families in our schools they know that if they go on a term time holiday they're going to receive a letter about it they're going to receive a fine and we'll follow it up and if their attendance drops below 96% drops below 90% they're going to start receiving phone calls letters being asked to come in for meetings we'll send our EWO out to go and visit the home to do home visits we'll do everything that we can to try and make sure that that young person is coming into school and it's really important that we are dogged with that because it's what leads to the high attendance you have to meet it on both ends you have to provide what's necessary for the young people to try so we do things like have a breakfast club in the morning so that every child can come in and there's no cost there's no barriers there's no you don't need to be pupil premium you don't need to be anything anyone can come and use it and that means that every child comes in and has a breakfast we know that they're fed before they get into school it's another reason for their parents to want to get them up and get them in early in the morning because it means that there's one less meal that they'll have to provide for them it's good for the young people because they know when they come in they're going to have something hot and then they're going to have an opportunity to socialise with their friends so it's about making sure that we build the opportunities to get them to come into school and then make sure that where we have low attendance or where there is issues that we're meeting those barriers as best we can I hope that gives a kind of broad overview I guess I've spoken about quite a lot of different things thank you so much Aaron if I take if I hear from Martha and Aaron and then we'll take questions directed at thank you so do you mind just turning off your mic thank you we actually had some slides sorry okay sorry now I feel like just slightly over prepared is that is it possible to have those up otherwise we can talk yeah whilst they get the slides shall I start is it alright if I start talking can I stand up that's a teacher I feel like I can't sit down sorry so my name is Martha Collins I'm the head of school at Attenborough and this is Aaron Shuffle who is the deputy head and he is in charge of attendance as of this year I was the attendance lead before that if you don't know Attenborough borders Camden and Islington we only have 40 metres to Islington and about 30% of students in Attenborough are Islington residents we have lots of students from other boroughs as well we are in what we realise is a privileged position because we are a full school and that's like being rich things are easier because of that you don't have the turmoil of in year admissions you don't have turmoil of people moving around as much really unstable housing so we do recognise that we're a kind of very mixed school as well no uniform lots of kind of things that make us a little bit different can you just press on is that alright but the thing I really want you to understand is that Attenborough has above the national around SEM so that did force us to think about attendance in a different way and about seven years ago we restructured what used to be special educational needs behaviour attendance old time kind of pastoral work and made one big faculty which is called the additional educational needs faculty and that's because we think things like attendance is an additional educational need if you are not in school you have an additional need I do agree with what you're saying it's two prongs isn't it so if you look at the numbers so our EHEP numbers actually are the highest the top 3% nationally PP is higher than other schools so we do feel like it's been an uphill battle getting it right for all of the different students can you press on there you'll know this but look in the primary schools around us actually generally have good attendance actually they really do and that's the Evington ones and the Canada ones in comparison to all the secondary they do a really good job so it's forced us to think well what are they doing that we don't if you look at the secondary school I'm really sorry it's obviously on the secondary school one but can you pause this I'm sorry so we are boarded with other boroughs that struggle with attendance that also made us think about how we could work differently students in a Camden school who are Camden residents are entitled to different things than if they are Islington residents in a Camden school it's something that I found absolutely wild when I first realised that but it is things like Camden's all of those things are impacted by that and the other thing that we want you to take into consideration when you think about school like Atkins Burley is special education needs we have really high levels of special education needs and attendance in special educational needs schools do tend to be quite a lot lower than they are so when I show you our attendance we're proud of it because of that context so click on so we haven't mastered this that's not what we're coming to say to you we are it's attendance is basically everyone's business and you need to constantly be thinking about lots of different things that you can be doing which Aaron will talk you through in a minute but what we are proud of is that over the last four years we're getting back to a place which feels more pre-pandemic level even though I still think I'm still embarrassed by 92.6 and the persistent absentee if you think about that four years about 34% of our students were absent at least 10% of the time it's frankly shocking when you think about the impact it has on their education could you just click to the next one this is what we have not quite got right all of the things that Aaron is going to talk to you about or lots of those things who it has impacted is the non-PP students whatever you do in the school it's absorbed often by students that don't come from disadvantaged backgrounds so if you look at the attendance data for non-PP that is better than any borough in England actually but when you look at the PP it's very problematic actually as a whole PP students at Agden Burley are persistent absentees as a whole so when Aaron presents now about our approach what we've chosen to do is spend our money and our resources on PP students it doesn't matter where they've come from what borough they're from but it's the PP students that we're actually focusing on and I'll tell you how we've decided to approach attendance in the same way that we would especially educational needs around assess plan and do review cycles yep thank you if we could move on to the next slide so my role at the school is I'm Aaron Shufflebotham I'm the deputy head teacher in charge of behaviour and attendance but my role has been quite varied at Agden Burley school over the last 10 years I was the timetabler I've been in charge of the sixth form so what my role and my understanding around supporting attendance is about that actually attendance is underpinned by many of the pillars in a school getting the timetable thinking about the staffing model and structure how many double peers there are when maths is timetabled all of those things so there's actually so many parts of a school that come together to affect attendance and so we have got lots of expertise and the way we staff and run the school and we ensure that all colleagues no matter whether they're the timetabler whether they're working in our central administration department understand how important it is for attendance behaviour safeguarding are key parts of our school and how building the structure of the school is really important when it comes to just thinking about your curriculum design your staffing model how many subjects you're delivering whether it's broad and balanced and alongside the curriculum in its nuts and bolts form of the timetable it's also about thinking about the extracurricular provision it's the whole thing of the school it's whether the children are enjoying themselves coming there and I think it's a bit of a broader discussion the point I'm going to make at the beginning about universal provision and it's about building a really excellent school in every part and that includes every lesson being really good so that the curriculum is well designed and it's meeting the needs a lot of time one of this document we've got over here is we're focusing on our 10 signature pedagogies the way every teacher delivers the lesson so that they're consistent so that those students who have been off often know what to expect when they come into lessons so that they're really well supported so lots of our attendance strategy is really quite broad in a lot of ways and covers how good the teaching is because that's a real core part of our school is that lessons are really good and the children are more likely to come if they're able to catch up with missed learning when they have been off that's really helpful because there's an anxiety that builds with students with poor attendance around they've missed so much work they think what's the point so really we've done a lot of work on improving our teaching and learning as part of an attendance strategy and also other house styles that we have so we have a house style for personal development so we talk to the children regularly during their we call it personal development other schools call it PSHCEE or other acronyms we call it personal development because we find it's a bit easier to say that but it covers all of those things and attendance is part of that we have a tutor framework which we ask colleagues to follow as well so that the tutors have got a real clear understanding of what their role is as a pastoral leader and a pastoral colleague in the school and our school because we have got such a high level of especially educational needs and children from various different backgrounds we're a trauma informed school as well so all of our colleagues at the school are trauma informed trauma informed practice trained we've done a lot of work on tracking as well so I know I recognise what Owen was saying about tracking data and being really dogged with particular students and we found a weekly tracking of students data is really helpful our attendance officer works really closely with me really closely with the colleagues across school to update registers daily so attendance is a key thing around attendance is getting the data correct and there are lots of schools that I've been worked in and worked for where actually if the attendance data isn't accurate it's a real uphill battle to try and make improvements there so you wouldn't believe how difficult it is to get teachers to complete the register so when you've got about 100 lessons running on a period one on a Monday morning actually making sure that all those teachers have done a register in the first five minutes it's a safeguarding concern clearly but it's really really important and so what we do is we've got a universal provision that all students get so we try to build an excellent school we want the children to come to enjoy themselves at school and therefore want to come we try and build really strong family relationships as well and then we have a sort of tiered approach just like you would do with the SEND code of practice where you'd have a tiered wave of approach towards intervention we've got our universal provision for every student then we've got universal plus targeted and then specialist interventions and we categorise our students against those things so you can see the universal plus is that they get all of the normal provision that their tutor would provide the pastoral care that they get as well as some extra support from various staff as well so we have a structure in our school where we have a year team leader that's the head of year they're known as heads of years in other schools and we have a student progress leader there basically an assistant head of year but they're non-teaching members of staff and they do a lot of this sort of early intervention work with the universal plus students where they will be contacting families because they don't teach they've got a lot more flexibility in terms of being able to go and do home visits getting alarm clocks delivered to children at home and to families making those regular phone calls which sometimes are heads of year and teaching staff and the teachers are not able to do because of their teaching commitments we also do timetable changes we look at group changes sometimes there's issues within subjects we obviously have got some processes letters that we send home and this is the sort of level where we start to send letters home if the attendants was becoming a concern and we get families in to meet with us as soon as possible the key thing really is relationships with families and I think when things aren't going well it's because for some reason we don't have a good relationship with the family and it could be for a number of reasons but really developing early strong relationships and that's one thing which we plan on doing this year better than we have done before which is we need to find out much earlier when we transition from primary school I think we need to be more explicit when we meet with the primary school colleagues and find out who is it that is already persistently absent and has struggles to get in who are the families that find it difficult to engage with school and really begin from day one we offer quite a comprehensive summer school at the moment where we have lots of new year six years coming in to us come in and we do quite a good summer school but I think that more work for us actually could be done around that transition point and supporting those students so if we could just go on to the targeted support which is the next level so once we've followed the plan do review model which is we have exhausted all of the universal plus approach we're still finding we're not getting anywhere then we do some more in-school interventions so there might be further timetable changes it might be we adapt the curriculum or the timetable temporarily for a student it might be that they are supported for some of them if they've got some mental health needs so they might do some ELSA sessions with various colleagues in the school and this is when we've got another colleague who we work very closely with so we have our non-teaching assistant head but we've got our lead SEND practitioners so they are quite a really high level support member of staff at our school so we call them LSP LSP's leads SEND practitioners and they aren't like a higher level teaching assistant either they're real real senior middle leaders in our support structure within the school so they're non-teaching but they are really skilled practitioners and they focus on the four areas of SEND so cognition learning SEMH issues and the other areas as well and they work specifically with groups of students and they train other colleagues as well on how to run EPSA or emotional based school avoidance training with other colleagues so they are able to do that sort of extra capacity in the school as a result of those LSPs they're really key members of our school and that's one thing we've really thought about is the additional funding that we get for students through the premium funding but how do we restructure the school in such a way that it's got the staff in place and the staffing model in place to support attendance and behaviour and safeguarding across the whole school but particularly with the families and the students that really need it one of the things we've started this year with varying success at the moment which I have to say is working with the Brandon Centre which is a parent session where the parents come and do some workshops in school with us with colleagues from the Brandon Centre it's called Getting Your Child Back to School programme as with all interventions we found that one or two of the families at the beginning didn't really engage with it and it wasn't quite right for them but now we've got the right families attending those sessions and that is really having a good impact particularly I think the families feel sometimes it's helpful to have someone who's not the school like a third party if you'd like to do some sort of brokering and sort of relationship building with parents on attendance and working with them in a sort of we're sending out fine letters and sometimes our relationship can break down a little and that's been a really helpful thing it hasn't worked for all of our families but getting the right families onto the various interventions is the key thing and making sure the families are on board with those interventions I think is what we're finding is really really helpful and then we've got our last is the specialist level and I guess this is for some students where actually they're finding that our school potentially is not necessarily quite working as the best setting for them and it might be that we are beginning to explore other provisions for them so it might be that we look at these students are students that might be on alternative provision so they might be part time with us and go on to some alternative provisions and they could be quite varied and bespoke in terms of what they are so some students might go and do a mechanic course for a couple of days a week whereas we've got some other students that don't come back dual enrolled with us but are doing other hair and beauty courses at other places as well and various different kinds of alternative provision as well and we've got you can see from the list here these are sort of much more bespoke pathways that some of those students start to attend and that's led by more senior colleagues in the school such as our SENCOR and our designated safeguarding lead member of the senior leadership team I think I'm just going to pass Just before going on to the next steps you'll see that it says about funding because of course all of these things do cost money and we have we've chosen to invest quite a lot of the school budget in for example additional EP time educational psychologist time we do make a lot of referrals any additional pots of money you can find we will be asking for it so fair access panel money every single time we have any concerns we go to that in Camden you have an exceptional needs grant for students so you don't need any HEP but you might need some money to support for a period of time and we do that our parent teacher association actually they give a lot of our money to support students to get into school but that is that's hard the funding is a tough one because you have a limited amount of resource our kind of the last little bit that we want to just kind of finish with is really around our next steps because the thing about attendance is whatever you do you always need to be looking kind of almost for the next thing as well so our communication with families isn't as good as it should be in fact I'm a parent at an Islington primary school and they are better at communicating with us than we are so we want to develop that we do actually have a working party in school around attendance testing out different approaches to supporting families and young people to attend and we're only halfway through that work transition Aaron mentioned we actually do a lot around transition but it's all around getting children to feel kind of safe and want to be in school I think we haven't quite nailed the expectation bit yet and actually we need to do both of those things simultaneously source further interventions we're always looking for that we actually have we have applied to have a counsellor for two days a week but they will also do training for families staff do group work and then the other thing is we don't use fines as much as we think we should we kind of threaten a lot of fines but we actually our experience is that it hasn't made it doesn't make a big difference but for non-engagement with all the things that we've talked about that's where we are going to start using the fines if you're engaging and it's not going well that's okay we can work together but if you're not engaging I think we are going to talk about that and that's it and then obviously the last thing I do have to say as is LinkedIn is how we work with other boroughs and how can we all be supporting just the students across boroughs to access whatever it is that they need and that's it thank you thank you very much thank you I'm going to take questions from the committee to any of our guest speakers do you want to Mary sorry sorry Owen how much is the breakfast club how much do you allocate can you say that if you don't know it's okay well we're really lucky that we try and find every way we can to get funded so we use we've got funded there's a charity called the breakfast club and they help quite a bit so it costs us about £1200 a year and when we pay that then they provide bagels they provide cereal they provide jam everything for the breakfast club more or less and they tailor it a little bit with us as well so we try and access what we can to make sure that we can provide it for as cheaply as we can because we don't have the funds to pay if we had to pay for that out of our own well it wouldn't be our own pockets but out of the school budget we wouldn't be able to afford it it would close down straight away so it just relies on external funding to be honest okay thank you thank you councillor thank you chair so last week we had a meeting with department for education and one of the things that was mentioned about getting good success outcomes was great leadership and I think we've got great presence there of that an example but they also talked about governance as well so it'd be great to know whether your schools have got an attendance school governor link that you kind of report to and how that relationship exists and if I can just follow up specifically because the thing has been mentioned twice and I think it's at least my understanding was that this wasn't part of the culture in Islington which was to with regards to use of fines because I think again from my understanding is that it's got negligible impact and again personally slightly concerned to hear that there are four figure fines that residents are experiencing potentially just again maybe what is the frequency of these and is there any impact from that thank you so last year we issued eight fines so it's you might have come across that we're issuing hundreds of fines it's not the case it was eight in total this year there was one fine of a thousand pounds so it doesn't go straight to that it's because of non-payment and various other maybe not non-payment I'm not sure but it's the courts to decide the amount but it can go upwards to five thousand pounds and custodial sentence as well so it is you know it's a criminal offence when the pupil isn't in school that's what the courts are deciding it's not really for us to decide what that amount is and it can have a negative effect it can lead to maybe a pupil being withdrawn from the school and being sent to another school because the parent knows if we change the school maybe the fine won't come so yeah I hope that answers your question somewhat in terms of in governance yes of course we do we have an attendance officer for governance sorry governor for attendance and then we have half term we have one meeting each half term for quality of education where attendance is one of the issues and we discuss where persistent absence is and what are the barriers maybe that are causing persistent absence for particular pupils and what we're going to do to address it so yeah it is in place so our governor for safeguarding is Sheila Chapman sorry and she does exactly the same for the attendance the only other thing that they do is they'll come in and get student voice sometimes they will speak to families if you ask and then run attendance panels as well where they'll see if we haven't been able to get to the bottom of why the non-attendance then they'll run those to varying success thank you I just have a question on the work that the Brandon Centre does and I think just coming back on your point about working collaboratively with other boroughs so I think one of the things that they raise is obviously because Camden I think funds Brandon Centre but some of the children that am I correct that the children that live in Islington don't access that support from Brandon Centre because and I'm just thinking in terms of what we could do moving forward in that kind of joint approach it might be yeah is that right so in the past yes but the Brandon Centre is now being funded in a different way so they have a project a two year project where they're working with us to work with families just to improve attendance and actually that isn't subject to where you are resident we haven't interpreted it that way so but we're very much at the beginning of that we're only six months into a two year project and like Aaron said there's been kind of varying success but that is applicable to things for example like CAMs if an Islington child is in our school they can only access six CAMs sessions they wouldn't be able to get 12 like a Camden resident would it's those things the same problem affects pupils who are not and isn't in resident and isn't in schools in reverse so if they're an isn't in resident they get an extended CAMs provision but if they're not an isn't in resident then they only get six sessions that's interesting thank you councillor Valerie I mean councillor Wesley thanks chair I heard you mention about the trauma informed training I was just wondering is that in house in terms of who trains you and what is I guess what has been like the reflection on having that specific training and any data sort of granular granular data that we can also look into and then a question to yourself was because I'm a bit concerned about the find as well even though one is just too many we just don't want any find but like just the demographics in terms of the parents that are having these persistent absentees or just not being in school because I think there is sometimes that culture of maybe holidays which I understand that's obviously deliberate but discretion of the head would obviously want that to sort of play into action and last point is about the same so in terms of your find how many are from likes thank you oh sorry in terms of the trauma informed practice training that we've done as our school it's come through the educational psychology service and they come and run the sessions for us initially but we do run in house trauma informed practice training for newer colleagues or colleagues that join us at other points in the year so that was an initial whole school training that we did for all the staff and we will rerun at later points otherwise we do run in house trauma informed practice as well and is that for all staff including LSAs yes everyone and then there's aspects of it that we would be doing briefings and trainings whether it is restorative practice working with maybe parents who found school difficult themselves there's a series of sessions that we run under that as well it's also helpful our school is very inclusive and we have a really as Martha said a very high number of EHCP and K students and so it's very helpful if we use that trauma informed practice in all of our lessons and how we approach students around the school so the other question part of the correct second okay yeah so just in regards to the eight fines so I only have the details on the on three of the students Whitney in regards to the ethnicity so there two well yeah there's two black African and one that has mixed race as ethnicity that would be representative of our school community it's a school that's predominantly black African is the largest ethnic group in the school so that wouldn't be unusual in terms of ethnic breakdown in regards to sorry yes in send none of the sorry there's one student who is who was send that was fine thanks for that information I know it's quite a lot to ask you you're probably not prepared but then so from that specific demographic you know in terms of before it got to the fine did you exhaust every single measure yeah yeah yeah I can tell you the steps that yeah yeah well we just implemented itips this year so we we're implementing informed practice across the school we're in year one of the two year project of implementing that in terms of the measures that we take before it reaches the point of a fine the parents are written to once their attendance drops below 90% they're written to twice then they're invited in for a meeting then there's a home visit if it's for medical reasons then we'll make a school nurse referral and we'll make referrals to social services then we'll issue them a formal warning a second formal warning and a formal reminder and then from there will be the SAR will be sent to Islington and then it progresses from there and then just to add in of course we also have similar provision to what Acklin Burley had mentioned in terms of the wraparound and supporting the students so it's certainly not it's draconian by any measure and I'm very sorry if it came across that way but we do make sure one of the big reasons why we have good attendance in school is because the students are very happy to come to school and they see it as a safe place and a happy place and that's the number one reason I suppose for them coming in each morning when it gets to the point of fines it's the sharp edge sharp end of a wedge I suppose it is a tool that we do use but it's used as a last resort thank you Owen I think he's done some of us with the thousand pounds fine but not taken away from all the good practice that sent other wishes and I think just on the point of what committee members are saying I think sometimes the measures we're just worried about that family breakdown and also the negative impacts but thanks for clarifying your position I am conscious of time so I'm going to take can I get quick questions from councillor Rosalind and Susie and then I'm going to move on thank you you spoke about attendance rewards so what's the nature of these rewards please they can vary so it depends on which students we're targeting some of them it's very specific with some students and it can be vouchers for certain things vouchers for Amazon things like that for other ways we reward it is when sometimes we celebrate good attendance for a tutor group so it might be that they have a pizza party on a Friday so they have their whole tutor group we order in some pizzas notwithstanding healthy schools but it is very it's quite motivating and actually we also create a competition between the tutor groups where in the assemblies every week are your team leaders put up where they all are so all the tutors they can see where they all are against each other in this competition board they can see where they are against other year groups in the school so whether they're higher year 7 or higher or lower than year 8 and year 9 so there's now a competition we introduce and we also introduce some rewards and sometimes it will be that we actually take some students out on reward trips as well so it depends on kind of whether we're targeting the whole group of students or whether it's individuals and sometimes it might be that we say well your attendance is so much better now we're going to send you on a reward trip do you want to take a friend or I can be up for an afternoon or something like that or sometimes it can be reward time so we've got a really nice astroturf we could say on a Friday afternoon you and two friends period five play football or something like that so it can vary really but we do use quite a lot of different kinds of rewards and finding out what children really like and then using whatever it is because sometimes we think vouchers are a good idea but actually it's not sometimes they want something a bit different so thank you thank you thanks sorry it's not directly attendance related but sort of indirectly because it was really interesting hearing Acklin Burley speak about having approximately 300 Islington residents in the school and they've come in as an example of good practice but I was looking on the Acklin Burley site it was really interesting to see that you've got an additional resource provision which I don't think any Islington secondary school has and so maybe this is more a question for John are we getting any ARPs in secondary schools can we just get that on for the microphone so I didn't actually catch that yes mine in September just check that your ARPs across year 7 to 11 is that correct so yes so our PAN number is 178 and then we have four students in each year group that are allocated specifically to we have yeah and is additionally resource provision for autism which in itself also attracts other students who might not be there but they are not that's not just Camden that is is as well but yeah sure and other Camden schools like Havistock also so Havistock have just opened one a couple years ago and we're still defining what the difference between the two is but yeah there are two and then there's a primary school one as well thank you so maybe more plans for as well in the future after bacon hopefully thank you so much if there are no further questions can members note this item and thank you so much for attending this meeting and I am definitely interested in the work that you do for the people premium cohorts I think that was really interesting so I'll write to you offline if that's okay and hopefully feed that back into the committee and thank you so much Owen Mark and Aaron thank you thank you we're going to move on to the next item which is child friendly Islington was the presentation thank you Tanya I believe you're presenting this item thank you yes I am chair thank you so just to as a reminder on in September 2023 for council don't go on yet thanks for council resolved to actually adopt the principles of the UNICEF child friendly community programme in terms of putting together our own child friendly Islington approach and said that we had to genuinely engage with children young people to create our programme in Islington making sure that their voices were central to the development of our programme and also think about how we use our programme to improve so that they can develop in Islington to be safer healthier and happier so our programme is really focused in terms on delivering the full council resolution from 2023 which I will take you through our approach also builds on the fair future 's recommendations and city's theory of change next slide please so we want all children and young people in Islington to start well develop well and progress to adult well which means that we want an Islington wider family so all adults in the family whether that be grandparents etc have the knowledge skills confidence to provide that environment for children young people to thrive in but it also means that the community infrastructure to support children young people to thrive too so we really through this we're really trying to envision a different type of income where families want to live here and they want to settle here and children young people to shape the space in which they live so that they can thrive including as part of the community so child friendly is actually going to span all aspects of children's and families lives to ensure that they are central to the decisions and actions that relate to not just the support that is not about children's services it's about every part of this organisation and the community and non council services really come together to make a place that is family friendly too next slide please and this also includes you too so you're going to just do a little bit of work for me so if you get out your pens and paper and you can just for one minute just write down safer and inclusive so think about the ideal experiences for children and people and how they might engage in things and what needs to be in place to make it a reality so I'll just give you one minute on your own to your colleague next to you and share the top thing that you want shall we convene Tanya we ready okay so so if I just bring you back all together so can I just have just a couple of suggestions about what came through for you in terms of your idea I think I can't do justice for the brilliant ideas that I had come up with but I think there was an element of safety for our young people and children whether they go into a place or in a specific location and I kind of was thinking about what we are in charge of council which is the public realm so how can we make that safe there's also an element of the destination where they're going to so that they do have whether it's an adventure playground a children's centre a youth hub where they can actually go to and where they can receive some support as well which will be great and as someone who has a buggy that they move to and from place very regularly I think for the public realm to be accessible as well so let's get on to our pavements I think that'd be great drop curves all of that and hopefully that was is that yes did I cover sorry yes so we had a couple more I think we had a couple more on safety which was really a concern about about drugs and also actually about phone muggings which I know that adults are concerned about but also really really impacts children as well in the borough and safe cycling routes as well to get more kids cycling and actually teaching cycling in schools as well things like cycling proficiency are really good for that and then the final one we had was really about mental health support so I think CAM's got a role to play in that and just other you know even sort of lower level interventions like school counselling and things like that brilliant thank you I'm going to come over to diagonally over here if that's okay if you could share what you came up with we were talking about young mums really very young mums just had a baby and a place for them to go to because I was very conscious my daughter I still called a baby a baby but it's two and a half years now but being aware going into coffee shops and young mums on their own with their baby and there isn't a safe place it's not normalised and when they're in that isolated thing they're on maternity leave completely you know they're blown out of their work all of those things maybe developing something a normalised place they don't have to say oh I'm feeling lonely because not an awful lot of mums will have their mum around them you know their grandparents may be out of London so I just feel or they may not have grandparents so I think that's a need and there was another one I didn't mention which was the teens between 16 and 18 and that lovely funding they got many many years ago which disappeared but I think that filled a gap for a lot of parents single parents and all parents who needed that gap that money was a godsend to some families for when they went to further education did A levels or whatever they did that money they got between 16 and 18 I can't remember who it was who introduced it but I think something on that it would be lovely thank you so just say we've got no money but however we do need to think about it if I could just take actually the corner over there just lastly before I move on yeah so it was a lot of cycle lanes but also places to park those bicycles and also getting the forest bike type things off the pavements everyone's sick of those drug use in parks I park next to my school I'm ready to go in and ask the drug users to move on because they're next to school and sometimes those conversations aren't easy ones Barry do you want to say what you talked about horticulture yeah I think it's really important to have thanks chair just talking about horticulture so obviously it's more specific so where we have access to where green space is and there's a massive waiting list why isn't there space for children and young people to actually go on the estates and actually plant their own whether it's seeds or looking at bird feeders etc I think it's a space that we're really missing on in terms of seeing children and young people in those spaces and then being a bit more AI and futuristic I think for like and not that I'm being gender specific but I'm going to say it like for our young boys and those growing they like things that are quite virtual it's like a virtual way of them to actually engage in what we're doing at the council so civic engagement getting involved in like petitions or surveys so I think it's all good of us as committees and parents whatever speaking but actually young people having this access with their phones and that digital kind of engagement with civic engagement council and stuff like that thanks brilliant I'll just offer this last group Claire's itching I can tell and we did go a little bit more kind of blue sky actually but recognising that safety was really really important but I feel like that's we've kind of covered that already so we said more community spaces for young people to go to so for example in my ward you know we have three community centres that don't actually have a youth offer so and or youth hub and perhaps those kind of youth hubs helping kids getting ready for work or teaching them kind of life skills. We sort of talked about spaces outside to learn and play so I think kind of to Valerie and Nick's point about places where they can learn gardening et cetera et cetera and then we sort of talked about places that are vibrant and inspire children to learn and you know a lot of our big kind of social housing estates have got signs on them saying do not do this do not do that and perhaps we need to change the narrative on some of those estates and encourage children to actually kind of learn and be inspired by their natural habitat so yeah so we went kind of a bit kind of blue sky. That's beautiful thank you just next slide please yeah just wrap up because I know that members will have questions but I did yeah enjoy that so what I'm going to take you through next is basically now how we are doing the child-friendly programme and our timetable for it so so as I said it goes beyond the whole children services department so you know clearly we're really proud to be a borough where we keep coming back to the voices and influence of children and families going forward. Next slide please Theo. So for the child-friendly Islington programme there are four pillars that are really essential to implementing the approach so each pillar is led by the relevant executive member who has that responsibility for the portfolio area and the lead member from the relevant council department so that we're also across the council who are really picking up and leading this from the front that it's not coming from children's services we're here to actually just facilitate the programme. Next slide please. And as I said before the ARB approach is really based on the UNICEF child-friendly in the people and children young people have a say over the decisions that impact them which would then lead to improved engagement better urban design meeting children and things and improved partnership working and finally leading to children better outcomes and increased equity in terms of how we are as a place for children and young people. Next slide please. So taking inspiration from the UNICEF model and applying to the context of Islington sorry you're going to need to click several times to get the bits up there and applying it to what we're setting out to achieve we've got these three C's which are also part of the UNICEF approach which is cooperation leadership changing our culture and also thinking about how we buy police and this really just embodies this is just the principles of the child rights based approach practice. Next slide Leo. So our approach is what we've been doing so far is that part on the left hand side the orange bit which is really just taking stock so that audit of that the knowledge and what we've done to date so that we're not starting from zero because we have done a lot in this in turn existing and upcoming pieces of work that can be flagships for our child-friendly approach. The next part that we're going into is really defining those objectives so we're going to be working with children and young people to establish what's the problem to solve and then actually generate the ideas to do it to then setting up the actual child-friendly approach with children and young people so they're going to what the child-friendly approach is within those actual pillars themselves and then from August onwards this year we're going to be rolling out and testing some of those initiatives. Thanks so much. Thank you. Any questions? Maybe it's just more of an observation and maybe something we need to come back because this is a really great report. I would have loved a little bit of numbers and stats because again anyone looking here online, wherever you are, hi. We've done such amazing stuff here and we always rant on about how amazing you are but some figures have been really good like you've got the parent champions, you've got your reading champions, all the stuff that you've been doing on the estates, there is work you've been doing so it would be nice to have had that data here to then also just have that shining work. So I guess going forward I'd love to hear more about the change makers because that I've not really heard about so the recruitment side of it and will we be able to see them or will they do any audits or audio work, I don't know, are they going to be using some of their work in the comms, I don't know what age they asked, could we have a bit more information on that please, but thank it's supposed to be a bit grim but I just can I just clarify, when you say figures and stats what do you mean in relation to? So just like here you've got audits on knowledge and activities today, what are they? So what activities? So you know, you've spoken to 20 people, no sorry, 100 students but others 100 students you had 20 that were really keen, that wanted to be the change makers, they went for this rigorous kind of you know, I don't know, question and answers, they quizzed you, you quizzed back, just stuff like that, that's just an example but. So is it okay if I clarify? So this is our approach, so we're not there yet, yeah? So we're taking quite a phased approach to so we've just, and it's in the papers in terms of the actual timetable, so we have just starting to kick off but also starting to reach into other groups of children and young people because this can't be just them themselves and detailed work in terms of what you're talking about will come about in the refining and setting up the initiative. So I'm really happy to come back to give you an update in terms of some of that information and who's involved. I guess Tanya would when, I guess this is the beginning of just child friendly and it's not fully implemented is my understanding, so when it does come back maybe in a year's time, could it also come back with looking at how that fits into the Fair Futures Commission as role, and I think on Valerie's point just kind of seeing something more quantitative like some sort of benchmarking would be quite beneficial, but I understand that this is just the beginning. I'm conscious of time, so I'm going to take one more question. Councillor Nessar? Thank you, Sharon. Thank you for the presentation and the activity beforehand. I think it's great to see that that's the kind of co-design culture that's going to be taken on board, and I do appreciate that this is a framework, essentially the bones into which the scheme will be fleshed out on. I am still concerned about the pace, especially having, looking at the timetable, there's very little detail in terms of what would be the key milestones. There's literally a gap of essentially 25 to 29 where it's very empty, so I think when we do come back, if we can have a lot more significant data of how this will actually manifest itself. And speaking of in terms of kind of accountability, first and foremost, I know congratulations to Children's Services for the outstanding Ofsted reward, but one of the areas to improve did say consistency of seeking children's and families views in the auditing process. And I think what you just talked about in terms of the auditing is so important that we can demonstrate that as part of that change, as part of that learning moving forward. So again, I think we do need to make sure we get this right. I think the public chair does want a question. So I guess my question kind of holistically looking at this is we need to have performance indicators. Because right now, this is really holistic. It's obviously I think great principles, but we've got nothing right now that pins us to say how well we're actually doing. So whether we're looking at performance indicators that come to policy performance, corporate resources, scrutiny, there's nothing there to really indicate the detail of the things that are being delivered. So I think we do need to examine how we can indicate how well we're doing. Thank you. Thanks for the comment and the question. So what I'm not going to do is provide that out of the way before we can give you some detail and that needs to be worked through with young people. So I would feel a bit remiss to start putting in details on our own or just with adults without young people doing it with us. The second thing in terms of performing the approach because it isn't designed to do that. So it's not a service, it's a programme, it's an approach. So what we will be doing is looking back at the file, behaviour change and making sure that's sustainable within the council. So I think what we probably need to do for you is just make it clear in terms of some of the members of the public. Thank you. Thank you Tanya for that. We will now move on to the next item this evening which is the alternative provision in Islington. Members have read the paper and thank you. The paper was actually really good. It was a small report but a lot to unpack. Just in terms of before I take questions, I just wanted a point of clarity, John. There were some schools that was in the report, some alternative provisions, sorry, but it wasn't in the appendix. So I was just wondering if that was intentional in terms of the table of the data. There were some schools it colluded. There are some alternative provisions that the local authority commission directly and those are the ones in appendix A. The detail in paragraph 5.5 is about all of our children in alternative provision which includes those provisions that are commissioned directly by schools. So some children are, some places are, as I say, directly commissioned by schools who are then responsible for the monitoring and the quality assurance of those and then others are commissioned by the local authority. So the ones in appendix A are commissioned by the local authority. In 5.5 it's all of our children including those commissioned by schools. And just on that, so in terms of how the data is collected or how it's recorded in terms of the overall data on persistent absence, are the, is that, is the figures in the appendix, the data, is that reflected into the overall picture, if that makes sense? Yeah, so the borough's overall attendance figures include all children in alternative provision in Islington. So if they're attending the alternative provision outside of Islington, they won't be in our figures. They will appear in the figures of the home borough. So if that alternative provision happens to be located in Hackney, that's where their attendance figures will be recorded. So our overall attendance figures only reflect any alternative provision which exists in Islington. Thank you, Thank you, Candy. I'll now open up to questions from members. Councillor Ilkay and then Mary. Sorry, Councillor Ilkay and Mary. Sorry. Mary, is it okay? There's Councillor Ilkay first, but... There's a question to Candy and also then to Joanna Possible. It's very short questions. Please, thank you. Very, very short, I promise you. I didn't quite understand, Candy, when you were talking about the section 5.5 and then Appendix A because the schools and the alternative provisions, well, the alternative provisions that you have detailed and given explanations of what they do, where they are, are different to what it is in 5.5. And what I understood you to have said was that in 5.5 you were only referring to schools that were in Islington. Is that correct? No, commissioned by Islington. Commissioned by Islington. So could you explain why the other provisions are not? Say, those are, appendix A are the schools that Islington would commission. In 5.5, that's all children in alternative provision which may be commissioned directly by the schools and by the council. But on this data, there's five cases missing because you were found to them in. Yes, so they are providers that we commission. We don't happen to have anybody there at the moment. So we've got no-one in these provisions. We've got some but not all. In your time chapter, where we have the data for that persistent absentees and we thought it would be useful just fair to show because some of them have got really small numbers. I think in appendix A, what we're also trying to say, and there is some crossover, so you will see that, for example, the ARC exchange is in appendix A and it's also in there. We're trying to be transparent as possible in terms of however small, like that individual learning programme, that one young person down to obviously the New River College, third also. We could, if there was a need or a commissioning need, we would then go to another that could be on that list as well, but maybe not currently there. So just for a point of clarification on her point and what kind of success, I thought it was because, for example, the boxing academy is in Hackney but it's on the appendix, but there was one, is it the complete works? Yeah, so the complete works isn't on the appendix, is that, I thought that was because it's not commissioned by Islington, but is it because we don't have no Islington students at that alternative provision? I was just a bit confused just there from the response. It's just one of the alternative provisions that's not in the appendix. My understanding is that we do have a young person there. Sorry, Chair, and Capital City College. So maybe I'll just clarify that point later on because I'm just trying to understand why it's not Yeah, I mean, I think in the spirit of what we were trying to do, David, bear in mind that data does move, et cetera, and you've got that intelligence. What we were trying to show was these were when we captured data, these were the young people at these particular colleges, but we could also, there's a wider repertoire and that we commission across those boundaries as well so they don't just sit within Islington, but apologies for any confusion. Thank you, John. And Mary? I hope I'm not speaking what you were talking about here. Maybe I'm on another planet here. But anyway, I looked at, there's two bits to this. One is the fact that, I'll go to the first question actually and then I'll go back to this one. I was quite intrigued by something called the Pairs Family School in Islington because I'd never heard of it. And I know, when I looked, they're linked in with Anna Freud who train up mental health practitioners. So that was quite intriguing, but you haven't recorded them here. And if that's because you haven't got children, then it's okay, fine. Okay, going back to page 15 and what you have in 5.5, one struck me pretty noticeably, and I mentioned it at pre-meeting, was the Boxing Academy came up at only 25%. And when you read about the Boxing Academy, they focused on self-esteem. And just listening to all of this stuff from St. Aloysius and from Atom Burley and also, what's it called that we saw, Kona, a few weeks ago, there seemed to be a big pattern about really good communication with everyone, with all of the professionals, the CAMS people, all the practitioners, alongside really good communication with parents and counselling. So they had set up counselling in some sort of shape or form. So that pattern, I'm picking up, I know it's an obvious pattern, but it did seem to sort of ring bells there, self-esteem, counselling, all of that is glaring. And I know all of these alternative provisions maybe are taking in pupils that have been persistently absent for a long time and have ongoing problems that are not easy to put into a box. There may be completely various ones. But it did strike me that the Boxing Academy did mention in their thing about self-esteem. And I'm just throwing that out there to do with counselling. Could we use a bit more of the PEARS family school that are based in Huntington? Thank you, Mary. And I guess just on a general point, for the alternative provisions where we don't have any students, what can we do to kind of utilise that provision for our young people? So I think obviously each of these providers have got unique setting points. strengths and particular approaches that don't work for everybody. I think each of the students is very, very different in terms of their needs and their presentations. So what works for one student, for example, at the Boxing Academy, it takes a very particular approach and I have a guess. It revolves around boxing. That's not everybody's forte or interest or skill or strength. the Pearce Family School is again a very particular approach and one of its main requirements is that a family member spends at least a day a week at the provision. So basically observing how their child interacts and how the staff at the provision intervene as and when it's necessary. so it's a learning experience for the family and again that doesn't work for all families and it doesn't suit all families and also their criteria are quite specific in terms of who they think they can work with. It's the younger age range. Children have to move on by I think years seven. So again each is very different in its offer as is every child very different in in terms of their needs. Thank you Canji. So I'm going to take, just I want to see who wants to ask questions. So I'll take Anastas, Ilkay and then Nick and then we'll move on. Thank you. Thank you Chair. Just a quick question because it is in this paper with regards to flexi-schooling. Just want to get clarification whether this is a national guidance or whether it's an Islington approach. Item number 6.3 says flexi-schooling should only be considered if parents or carers specifically request there and should not, as highlighted, be promoted by schools. So the not bit is that Islington's approach or is that a national guidance? That's the national guidance. Thank you Thank you Chair. My question goes back to the chart. When we look at that we can see that New River College is an Islington maintained school that accounts for three quarters of students in AP. On page 19 of the report it says children develop the core skills and knowledge they need to succeed in further education, employment or training. So English and Maths are a significant focus. Yet in 2024 results only 13% of NRC students achieved grades 4 or above in English and Maths. And more than 50% end up meet, which is not in education, not in employment and not in training. These statistics don't tally with this report. And what happens when NRC reaches capacity? I mean, where do we send our children? We've got alternative provisions that we've now been told that are niche. We talk about the boxing academy, which we know that 0% pass their GCSEs. So what are we doing? I mean, we have a problem of persistent absentees and I want to know what we're doing with post-16. Shall I go first, Candy, and then you can thank you. I think, of course, what we do use is New River College is our provision. So it's going to have a number there. What we do know, and you know as well, is those numbers, particularly on the medical and secondary, have increased. They've outgrown their residency. What we have also seen is although our numbers decline in our schools, we've seen a greater demand for SEND and for the more vulnerable young people within our schools. And what we have heard from our schools, and we've heard it probably from our two guest schools as well, some of the challenges that young people do have. If you look at the national average down at the bottom there, I think we're broadly in line with persistent absenteeism. Now of course we're striving, that's where scrutiny are, are really looking at how we do improve that attendance. But you can see that New River College is not out of kilter nationally with other provisions or in old money Peru. Okay, you're absolutely right, but best outcomes for young people would not even want to defend that young people leaving school at 16 or going into college or further aid, etc. That's 16 to 18. If they haven't got the English and maths, it makes it really challenging when they get out to that workplace. What we are seeing, I think, on the back of pandemic, etc. is reported in the press today, one in six children not in school regularly enough, never mind some of our most vulnerable who need that qualification, that functional skills qualification. So I think, you know, we make that challenge, we make the representation to New River College as we would do with the others. What I think we're trying to say is, yes, those numbers definitely are going up, yes, we do need them to attend school, but we're not out of kilter. In some of those qualifications, you quoted one of them where zero, you know, it's not good enough. But at the same time, some of the challenges that our staff have in getting young people to attend regularly, because I think, you know, you've got persistent absenteeism, but you've also got severe absenteeism, severe absenteeism, would that be that 50% more? And there are a number of young people, probably as outliers in here, who do have more than that. So I think, you know, with the way that we work and Canada do chip in, is that, you know, they have, I think, a pretty decent curriculum. They don't cover everything at New River College at all, because they can't because of the specialisms, but ultimately, for my young person, I want them to have the English, the maths, and maybe three others to at least then be able to access. So I'm not going to defend the fact that that's not good enough. We have to strive for the very, very best for all of our children. Candy, if I missed anything. I think what John said is absolutely right, and of course within those figures there are children with zero attendance, not attending at all, and the college spends as much time, you know, working with and around, you know, within the network on those fields, and even though they're, you know, one is up in Cumbria, others are not able to get out of their, literally get out of their bedrooms, but the college continue to work. Obviously, in those circumstances, academic success is a challenge. And you'll have heard the Atkin-Burley colleagues, you know, today say when they get to their specialist threshold, alternative provision is where they move on their children, that they've not been able to engage in learning. So it's already a very big challenge with the time they arrive. Thanks, John and Candy. I just wanted to go back to the point you made about severely and persistent absence, because on the 5.5 chart, we talk about those children in alternative provision who are persistently absent, but of course, you know, 100% of children who are just below 90%, or are they closer to 50% and severely? I think it would be quite useful for us to know. Yes, you've got the range. Let's say you've got literally from 0 to 20% in 50%. It's true for everybody, we just don't know, that 90% to 50% is such a broad category. Yes, exactly. Would we be able to get that granular data circulated as an action point? Because I think that would be really useful. Just before I take any questions from the members of the public, on New River, because I know it's a small cohort, but it's the most vulnerable cohort, and I think everyone in this room, speaking to the echo chamber, knows that those who are out of school are more likely to be at risk of exploitation and harm. So I think that's, I just want to bring it back to that and what we could do as a committee, as members, in terms of really changing that and making those improvements, and for me that's the purpose of why we're here, and seeing the 91% and 81% is quite stark, and some of them 100%, essentially these are children that are out of education, they're not persistently absent. So I would, I think, obviously we can't do it in one meeting, but I think this does need kind of more looking into in terms of what strategies, what's working, what's not working, what are the individual cases, what support does New River need, if that is the issue, what provision is being provided, is there an issue with the provision, and also I think just from how far we've come in the committee, I think there is a lot to say that actually some of the young people that do come to alternative provision is usually too late, so the interventions haven't been in place from mainstream schools, and what we can do at that route, whereas I think it's going to be much more difficult to tackle some of that persistent absence once that are alternative provision, because there's not been that intervention in the mainstream schools, a lot to unpack there, but I do really, it is a concern, and I do want to stay focused on this particularly, seeing that granular data and seeing how we can focus on this as well as obviously the persistent absence in mainstream schools. can I just echo what you said, and also sometimes when a young person go to alternative provision, yeah, sometimes it's less to meet their needs, because from the school, it can be from primary school to secondary school, they may have some kind of needs and never been diagnostic on time, and when are going to go to alternative provision, that's also sometimes still missing, as you said, it's quite a lot to unpack, because we have to bear in mind every child matters, and the need is different from one young person to another person. I think what we discussed, John, Kanzi, and Paul, is for us really to start to unpack a bit to understand what is working and what is not working, for us to start to understand in details, because if we want to change a system, the details matters, and that detail is to see across the education system from early health also and early years, to catch up young people as younger as possible, to give them and to wrap them with all they need and support they need. It is going to avoid for us to see their failure when they are getting a bit adult. As Ilke said about needs, for us to avoid it, we can't wait until they are in secondary schools, we get that to avoid it at every age as possible, to avoid, to see the failure in the system. That is something really we are trying our best to work with at school to avoid that in the future. Thank you, Shreen. And finally, Councillor Pandell. Page 40. I'm looking at the suspension rate for white, black and Caribbean pupils that isn't in secondary schools. Page 40. The next agenda item. We are still on alternative provisions. So, yes, you can take that. I will take that question next. Is there any, before I close, sorry, move on. Are there any questions from? Sorry, Chair. Just very quickly, just picking up on your point that I think is an important one. I know it's been echoed within the, within our room and our members, would be with the children's wellbeing and the school's bill. There is, for me, represents an opportunity because what I have heard is that off-rolling, we've seen the number of young people who are educating other than at school. But I think it's the point you made about is it too late? And how systemic is that? You can see these young people back at telling through a system and not landing because in all of that time they're missing. But I think with the new schools bill, there is that opportunity for the collective to really make that representation because the inclusion scorecard element is really going to put a focus on some schools, not just here but nationally, really about what and where young people are going when they're encouraged to off-roll. As I've said, we don't capture that information. The DfB don't capture that information. Then they transfer into potentially, you know, a sort of alternative provision. It could be elsewhere. They could then transition to education other than at home or to a virtual school. And I think the point I'm sort of saying is we welcome that challenge around the inclusivity and also being, schools being held to accountable, which is why I've said it to Claire Burton at the DfB and also to Ofsted about we, you can't keep going and giving schools outstanding when we know that there is practice that we know about that we can't actually grip and hold them to account. Thank you, John. Thank you. That's really helpful. And yeah, it's really good that that is going to be included when they do within the Ofsted because I think it is important. And is it suspensions and exclusions included in that inclusion? Brilliant. Thank you. Are there any questions for members of the public? I have one question. I'm sorry, you raised your hand. Please go first. Hi. Do you want my name? No. Roberta. I'm actually a governor at NRC and you, Roberta, and I just wanted to point out that it's actually a pupil referral unit, but everyone's discussing it as if it's a special school, which is quite a different provision. So I just wanted to make sure people were clear on that, that there is a difference between a pupil referral unit and a specialist school. The numbers in the last four years have grown from... Do you want to pose a question? Yeah. My question is about how much it's changed in the last three years. There used to be 12 pupils. Now there are over 50 in medical. That's just one part of New River College. And I wanted to know whether the funding is reflecting that because the outcomes have changed dramatically. They've gone down, as we've heard from Councillor Ilkay. So I just wanted to ask, is New River College being funded enough to... I think that's a fair point because if the numbers are increasing... I'm sure they would say no, but the funding has increased considerably over those three years. I'm going to give you the figures, but it's quite a significant increase in funding. Thank you. Can I just take one more question from the members of the public? I'm a parent of a child in Fiddlington School. I think I've had a really good listening to everything that's been going on. I think what's really important is to understand that schools do need to have some kind of accountability in terms of attendance. My child is son. He has very complex needs and he's in mainstream school. What does that mean for his attendance and how is that really, really taken into account? So I think there's two comments around governance. How is school actually communicating with me? How is the school really communicating with the child in order to make sure that that is an inclusive place for him to be? And is that really being accountable to Ofsted? Are parents being offloaded and being told that everything's okay, we're doing a great job? So I think my question is, how is the committee looking at the governance around how schools are actually communicating with parents and carers? Not with children that have additional needs, but all children? Because my child could be sent, but there could be other reasons why a child is not attending school. So my question is accountability for schools. Thank you. Thank you so much. I don't have a question. Because she's gone to visit all the schools. I think that's about my time. I think we've heard already about communication and a lot of the importance of that and certainly from the two schools who presented and you've had one, Aloysius, who do that very well and Atkin Burley have said, we've got lots to learn from that. So I think it's something you've got to keep working at really. And I think through Katie's visit, Michael's visit to each of our schools, they've all recognised and acknowledged the importance of communication. If it's not working well, then obviously we need to know about that. But you're absolutely right. It's a governance issue as well. And I think one of the things that Katie and I are aware of is that we've probably not done enough work with governing bodies over certainly this most recent period. And I think that's one of the next things that we would want to work on. And I think that's where the accountability naturally sits. I would just add that, you know, just from, we have been visiting schools and speaking to different and you can definitely see the different cultures across the different schools. So I think today we saw this good practice but we've also seen schools where the culture isn't as exclusive as it needs to be and, you know, your personal situation there's a lot of parents that actually resonate with that in the certain schools. So we have seen that difference across the different schools. But I think things such as trauma-informed practice with the teachers, with the head and also, like Candy said, tapping into the governors because they're not always, you know, they're not part of the teaching staff and all of them parent governors and local authority governors. But I do definitely appreciate your point. And it is really difficult as a local authority to kind of tackle that school culture because we are limited in how much we can do that but, you know, the team have, you know, they don't stop trying and I think that's really important to know. I'm going to move on to the next item of this meeting and also just take a five-minute comfort break but literally five minutes, please, if that's okay, everyone. Thank you. Sorry. Hi John. Is everyone ready to final item? Hi, Brother. Did you want to... Oh, sorry. We're going to move on to the quarter two report. And I think John, you presented that report? Okay, brilliant. Okay, brilliant. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thanks, Chair. So I'm not going to go through the report because I know that you were. What I want is to just identify that we've responded to some of those requests that primarily have come back from scrutiny and that's in Section 4 if you're looking for that reference. So the number of library visits was asked so that is in Appendix C. The next point was around the elective home-educated and that is in Section 2.20 and also 6.15. Those numbers are slightly reduced on the same period this time last year. Not by much, but slightly. The next point was around providing number of children educated otherwise at school leotis. There were 14 children who had education in the health care plans and educated other than at school and funded by the local authority. That's the figure we gave back in December as a figure. And then we've got a suite of health figures. We've got Baljinda here as well from Public Health. But we were asked about a number of those weeks. We went away and had to think about what might be the most useful indicators. So we've got that in that final section, I think in five. So I'll pause there, Chair, and then we can answer any of the questions that members may have. Thank you, John. Members have any questions? Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the report as well. I'm going to pick on something that isn't in the report, although it has been written up to tell us about the mental health and what the Council does with it for our young people. I think when you speak to young people, mental health is something that we bring up really often. So what I'm surprised by, and I know it's recently moved into this scrutiny, is that we haven't got a performance indicator for it. And I think it probably deserves numerous performance indicators and possibly even a key performance indicator for the Council. So I wonder where we would consider for next time round this performance report comes in to have something to indicate how well we're benchmarking, how well we're performing on that. So just for clarity, Ernest, that would be around, I know you recognise it's not there at the moment, around that mental health provision. Are you looking at waiting lists for the 05s? Are you looking at waiting lists for young people who are in secondary from 11 to 16? Are you looking at those who are on a waiting list for neurodiversity? Or are we looking at maybe what we cover? So thinking about, in Janine's world, in terms of health and wellbeing, how many and how do we go about supporting them through the school? I can come to Janine and that. Just in terms of make sure we get exactly what you want. Can I come to Janine? Is that helpful? Ernest, did you want to clarify any points before Arthur? No, I don't. Yes, so we could certainly talk about the provisions that we have. And so schools involved in the Islington Mental Health and Resilience in Schools programme and schools who've taken part in that, schools who are involved in the Trauma-Informed Practices programme, which obviously supports all children, including and supports children's mental health. And we also have the school wellbeing service, which we've provided some numbers, I think, for the number of children being seen through that service. So if those figures are all, we can certainly provide some of those, if that would be... Thank you, Chair. I think there's nothing not for me to decide what gets provided, and I think I leave it to the professionals and possibly even young people, because we spoke about co-designing ideas. So again, it would be great to hear what young people would like to take ownership of. And as long as we've got something that I think that we can track over time, it would be really, really useful. Thank you. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I just want to come back on that point, really, about having a good indicator for mental health. So there wasn't really anything that we could put in just as one indicator. As you've rightly said, there's probably a whole range that we could include. So we've put some in there for those different programmes, but we have just completed our mental health strategic needs assessment, which has got a huge big section on children and then a whole section on adults, so we can share that when that's ready to be published, and it will go on our website as well. But there's lots in there, and if there's anything else in particular you're interested in, we can find that. Thank you. Councillor Ilko? Thank you, Chair. My question is on 2.8, which is the inequalities measure rate of suspensions for pupils with SEND. I mean, we all know that the correlation between SEND and suspensions is really high. My question is that how are we tackling this when we know that, as in the report, one of the most common reasons recorded for suspensions among pupils with SEND is persistent disruptive behaviour. What are the factors and what are the provisions that we're providing so that we don't have this? Because suspensions, detentions, these all lead to children not wanting to go to school. And I just want to know as a council what we're doing to tackle this. What provisions are we putting in? Are we putting in more manpower to ensure that EHCs are done quicker? I know that 80% of our EHCs are done within the 20 weeks, but out of those 80%, I know that over 90% are refused at initial stage within six weeks. So I want to know how we are tackling this and what are we going to invest in this and how can we ensure that this doesn't happen? Our figures are really high. It's 16.2%. It is really high when it comes to suspensions in secondary schools. It's above London. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, so you're absolutely right. Our suspensions are very high. We're very concerned. Our challenge is that 80% of those suspensions are covered by three of our schools. So we've got a small number of schools who are suspended in very high numbers. So there's a lot of work going on with those three schools who happen to be part of the same group to really have those conversations about those disproportionate numbers. Sorry, can I just add just on that? Because I know we did the scrutiny looks at secondary schools, but I was just a bit concerned about the increase in suspensions in primary schools and 89 suspensions, and we don't really know which schools. But I think that's quite a worry, and if we don't try to actively do something about that, it's just I wouldn't want to see our primary suspensions go up year on year. So we don't have insight into, yeah. Again, from those 80-odd suspensions, about 40 of those are down to one school. So that's one school that we're working very closely with. Mary? Okay, I've been looking at page 42. So I was looking at percentage of pupils that meet an expected standard in the phonic screen check. That's by the end of year two. But if we go to page before 41, there was percentage of pupils meeting expected standards in the phonic screening check in year one. And if we look for year one, Black Caribbean seems to be on a par within the London, 75% and 75%. Mixed White Caribbean, 74% and then 77%. So there is a, there's something wrong, there's a discrepancy there. Why are white British and free school meal boys no longer published? Because they used to always be an issue. Why are they suddenly completely being omitted? And I've been asking this for the last year or two. I keep on asking what's happened about them. Who's dictated this that they're not ever recorded? Because there used to be quite a big discrepancy there. I'm quite alarmed because no one has officially said, oh, they're brilliant now, they're fine, we don't need to sort of monitor them. But then on this one it said Black Caribbean boys 21, 62% and then Inner London was 67%. Now, I went and looked on page 42, so this would be the end of year two. And there still seemed to be a bit of a discrepancy. In fact, it seems to have increased more, 68 and 79. Now, I could be completely wrong on this because Black Caribbean boys, sometimes you would say with phonics it might be, you know, English and traditional language, they're learning two languages or something like that. It's not always, and I'm not sure about the actual science of this. So, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but sometimes it's been put forward in the past. But a child there will not have an additional language, Black Caribbean boy or Black African, maybe a Black African, but it says Black Caribbean here, doesn't it? Yeah, Black Caribbean. So, I just wondered, because I was looking at the figures, the only other thing I came up with, and I could be completely wrong, so just bear with me and I'm just going with the flow on this, is we're looking at data to do with autism and all of that. But I just wondered, is there a speech and language not being picked up? Nothing to do with autism, just straightforward speech and language that would explain, is our children not being picked up for speech and language? Bear in mind sometimes, when you look at data with black mothers going through birth and they're having trauma, and I used to work in a borough where you could deduce a lot of some of the learning difficulties arose from trauma at birth. You wouldn't normally talk about it, but you could go back and find that there was trauma. But I could be on a completely wrong vein there, so forgive me if I'm on the wrong vein. Is it to do with speech and language? But also, then looking at the data, which I'm not suggesting that these children have got autism, but this is the second question, separate. Looking at the data, is there anything we can do to improve this data? The data, which tells us, I've got these little green boxes, you've all got them. And the ones to do with children between 0 and 5, they've got to wait for 16 months. And then between 5 and 18, they've got to wait for 3 years. So that's a secondary question, really, to do with, wait, these are long waiting times, and I know the whole country is in this situation. 16 months isn't as bad as I've heard in other boroughs, which are 3 years. But 3 years from 5 to 18 is quite long. So I've got two separate questions, but the first one is to do with phonics and the kind, the thing to do with the white working class boys, and then also the data with the Black Caribbean. What would explain those discrepancies? Does that make sense? It certainly does. There's quite a bit in that, Mary. Well, I've given you a hard time, John, and maybe I'm wrong. I'm happy if you turn me on. Mary, do you mind turning off your question? Thank you. So I'm glad you picked up on that point around phonics, early reading, because that most certainly is a priority. And you can see we're really looking at gathering that information around early reading, what fidelity of that approach is. Nick will know every single school has to outline what their fidelity to reading is, what the scheme is, and early reading, hugely important. And we are out of kill, so that doesn't sit comfortably. It's a challenge that I've most certainly given the Learning and Achievement Directorate around that. The analysis, you're quite right. I think at the moment, the published DfE figures, we don't get that breakdown. What I want to be able to say, and this just buys me to the 1st of April, or when we bring our standards report to you, we will go back and really look at where we can make sure we've got that comprehensive ethnic breakdown list, which is what members have asked for before. The curiosity bit. So, yes, we have got a challenge with early reading. It's been brought up, and you can see over time what you do. And what I would say is look at the proportion or the disproportion of the numbers in there as well. I don't know if I want to go about hypothesising why. What I would say is that we try to give our young people the very best start in life, bright start. That 0 to 5, that early help offer is most certainly out there. Candy, bowel, etc. may have a view around the speech and language. We know there is a rise around that and making sure we're trying to change that therapeutic approach towards it. But, you know, the data to some of these, the questions it then asks, I think, you know, autism, ADHD, that rise to that. What I would say is if you go to the Key Stage 2 results, actually they're much stronger and have been getting stronger over time. There could be a hypothesis. However, I still think you don't want groups of children lagging behind, and schools do a great job in screening, mopping up. If you go and watch reading in school, the fidelity of the teaching, the phonetic teaching is pretty damn good. But, Candy, I might want to come to you around speech and language. I'm just sorry to interrupt, just on the point of speech and language, because I just know it is really difficult to know what the referral pathways are or how to get help for your child for speech and language specifically, whether it's in a nursery setting or primary school. So if you could just come on what those referral pathways look like and what are the kind of obstacles or how we could make those easier. I think the obstacles are simply there's not enough to go around, so certainly we've been working very closely with our health colleagues to think about early language development and early language experiences through family hubs and through early years provisions. You can't get in early enough, that's for sure, around language and communication skills. And obviously it's also about skilling up schools to continue to do that work, and with families too. So there's a big, big focus on early language development, and that's continuing. We've just also had confirmation that through the change programme we'll be receiving some extra funding to pilot some work. It's called an ELSAM programme, early language. I can't remember what the other bit stands for. But anyway, it's a programme that's been trialled successfully in other parts of the country, that we'll be getting money for it, so there's a lot of focus on early language. But I really share Mary's, I think, concerns with you about that. We now have the highest number of children with autism as their main area of need, with education, health and care plans in the country, and that is by a considerable amount. We're the highest by quite a margin. And also, where we're very high is on the number of those children with a diagnosis who are early years. So I think some of our anxiety is, are we, you know, is there a confusion between language development and, you know, are we diagnosed with some of those children too early? We'll see where their development is, even in the next kind of couple of years. Are they acquiring language or not? And I think it's, you know, it's a big debate, but it's a big concern for us. We are definitely an outlier, and that needs to, that needs to have some questions asked. Thank you, Katie. Thank you. Can I, Tanya? Oh, sorry, Tanya, I didn't see. Thanks, thanks, Mel. That's okay. Just, I just wonder whether, because the committee has a Start for Life programme within Family Hubs, it's got quite a chunk around speech and language therapy, early language, home learning environment, etc. And one of our partners is very, very enthusiastic about this, Leslie Platt. It's part of her passion, and I just wondered whether the committee would like to receive a report from the Start for Life programme, which would take into account some of the reflections that you've had in terms of what we've done around that, the pathways, for example, and what we're putting forward in terms of year four. Thank you. I think that would be really helpful and probably answer some of the questions that, yeah, that was asked today. Thank you. Can I, I'll take a question from Councillor Pandora and then Councillor Zemin. I want to go back to 6.9, which is on page 40. And I know it says here that you haven't gotten figures for this quarter, this year yet, because obviously we just started 2025, but I'm still surprised to hear of the 76 suspensions from, you know, from our white and black Caribbean pupils, and complicitly on how our teachers, obviously they're going through cultural competency training, but in terms of unconscious hold of biases and stereotypes that influence their perceptions and responses to behavior. I mean, we're in 2025, and I feel that this shouldn't be happening in our illington schools, because our borough is quite diverse, and I am shocked, well, not shocked really, but the lack of representation of school staff, and I want to know why this is happening, and I can appreciate that we're keeping our eye on it in 12 months, but I feel that we need to keep our eye on it every quarterly or every six months, so that we don't get to the end of 2025, and we see this again, because these 76 suspensions are not acceptable, especially after I'm reading this, and I know that we're doing a really good job, but I just find it unacceptable, and I just want to know, what are we doing, especially to get the lack of diversity amongst school staff? Thank you. Thank you, Sankar. Yeah, thank you, Councillor Fender. I think, you know, there's a lot in just those two paragraphs, and funnily enough, my management team this morning, we were talking about, not directly this, but really talking about cultural competency around our leaders, leadership, cultural misunderstandings, we've seen that, you know, locally in other boroughs as well, and quite a national level is what I'm referring to. What I would also say is that there are, you know, multiple factors here. One, we can just point to the fact that disproportionately, you know, some schools are suspending at a faster rate, which isn't good enough. We have to have that ability to challenge proportionately. This is where I go back to the children's wellbeing point. We have to have some of the leaders locally. If you have a look at that bill, I think we're getting there. The other point is about training, training and teachers, teachers coming through, retention and recruitment is not easy in inner London. I'm not just talking about Islington, but I'm talking about inner London, outer London, and some of those discrepancies there, where we've got, you know, staff and turnover. So you've visited a couple of schools as well. I'd be amazed if they didn't talk about the turnover of staff, and that's not just in secondary, that would be in primary. But also the quality of training, we also know, is, and the world of education has got diverse, broader, more complicated, more complex. I'm not trying to give any excuses here, other than what our schools tell us, our secondary heads in particular, or the pastoral leads, just saying it's getting more and more challenging within school. So I think we have to be curious about, for example, though I'm glad you picked it up, because that is about how do we help schools. We need the training, particularly I'm looking at trauma-informed. How do we, you know, we've not got all schools there. Is it because it's too long? Do we have to, you know, shorten it? Yeah, that time commitment to do something, like trauma-informed training, you know, how far does it get pushed back? So we have to do things, you know, I think we thought we were turning a curve last year, and it didn't really. This year we do feel like we've gone back, and that, you know, that isn't helpful, because we need kids in school. That's the only way that they're going to get the English to the master, and that they're going to make that progress. We have this into professional partners. We didn't have those, you know, probably 12 months ago. We've also got that relationship broken with our academy schools, where we really have to have some of those levers. I think the scorecard will be a helpful lever. It's not a means to an end in terms of cultural competence. Thank you, Jen. And I think tackling that would also tackle, actually, some of the approaches when it comes to children who have an additional need or ASD who are persistently absent, because I think there is a lot of that stereotyping and labelling. So I think, yeah, it will tackle both. Sorry, just one follow-up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I appreciate what you're saying, but do you think that instead of having it at the end of 2025, is there any way of having the data in six months' time? So we can just, we can keep our eye on it. We've got real time for data, so we don't have to wait for the census to come through. So we can provide that, as long as there's a bit of a health warding event. Thank you, Joy. And Deborah, did you want to come in on that as well? I was really just going to add, in terms of your point, in terms of representation. It's not just within schools. I mean, I think across the room, do we all reflect the communities in which we're working with? And that's why the focus around improving cultural competency, because we don't necessarily have the diversity within all of our organisations. That's why it's really important that we retain good staff, we train good staff, and we name it, and we constantly name it and challenge it. So I just wanted to just broaden it that this is something that's what's representative. Thank you, Deborah. Really important point. Councillor Zemmick? I just wanted to go back to Candy's point and Mary's point about the ELSE thing. So it is early language support for every child. And I'd be really interested to know what funding we have received, because I know Gloucestershire and Shropshire have got two-year funding, and they are researching, they are looking at 1,700 children between the ages of two and five. So I guess it goes back to that early intervention that we were talking about, that they are surveying, kind of researching, kind of like the phonic need at a really, really early age. And I think that kind of speaks to the bigger project that we've all been talking about, like we need to get in that early. So I just have a friend who's been part of the project in Gloucestershire who sent me the details. And so, yes, she's doing it in Gloucestershire, so she's one of the therapists. But yes, if we have one funding, it would be amazing to know if it was the two-year Pathfinder funding that we've received that. Unfortunately, no, it's only a year. It's a year's funding, and it's £250,000 across three local authorities, and that's going to be shared according to pupil numbers. So I don't quite know how much of that money we'll get, but it's not, it's, you know, it's an approach. Okay, well, perhaps something could come back to the committee about how it was going to be used for kind of early intervention. I think we'll do it as an action point for the minutes. Can I just see the final question? So I've got Susie Ilkay and Councillor Bell, and I think we can move, yeah, close the item. Susie? Thank you. I just want to go back to the suspensions for SEND students. And on page 39, they're often suspended because of their behaviours that are deemed as disruptive as their specific needs are not being adequately met. So the first part of the question is how do we meet their needs? I understand that the majority of these are from three academies. I want to tie this in now also to page 46, where the highest numbers of pupils being electively home-educated are from four academies. Half of these secondary school students are year 10 and 11. Is this, again, a sort of sneaky way of off-rolling as well? I think that's a very good point, actually. Yeah, I don't know who wants to come back and see this question. Yeah, I think we're doing what we can with those schools to raise these issues. I don't think we can say much more than just as that being. Are they the same schools with a high rate of suspensions? OK. Councillor Ilkay? Thank you, Chair. Mine's just a follow-up from Susie's point. Oh, sorry. Sorry, sorry. I think we sort of referenced this earlier in terms of the bill. I don't disagree with you. I just don't have necessarily the evidence or the proof because we don't capture that in that data to say, is it, in your words, a sneaky way into year 10 and 11 of off-rolling? What we do know is, and the DfE know it, so I'm not talking out of our term here, DfE, Ofsted know this does happen. We challenged Ofsted, Caroline Doolan, just about, you know this is happening, but you go then and give a badge and it's not inclusive practice, but yet we all know. And I can only point to local authorities have been stripped of many a power over the number of years in terms of duties and their ability. What you'll see in that section B of the Schools Bill gives, you know, a little bit more redress. You know, this isn't about wrestling power or anything like that. Academies do their job. What we want them is to be ethical and fair. We know the challenging behaviours. You've been to a school recently. I think Ilkay mentioned the number of detentions that took place in one of those schools when you reach a particular threshold. It's how do you change some of that culture to be, you know, some of our schools never suspend, never exclude, will wrap their arms around them and do their very, very best. We need that same culture but at the same time what we have heard from our past release is some of the most extreme and challenging behaviours that schools and teachers are having to deal with. It's where is that, where is that balance because year 10 and year 11 we need the ethical approach to making sure that young people are inclusively kept within school. So, I think we've known what's been going on. I think we've got an opportunity here and that lobbying here because the bill is out now for let's hear your voices and I think there's an opportunity. I was going to say on that point because there is a lot of, you know, as you said, things that we can't do and we are limited and it's frustrating I think for everyone in this room. But in terms of lobbying, I was, that was my question. So, with the bill coming through or it being in consultation, would it still give local authorities some leverage in terms of how they implement that, not implement that bill but work with schools because some of the problems in our schools isn't going to be the same in another borough. So, I think does the bill have that flexibility where we can say we've got one particular school who's got high rates of suspensions, high rates of, you know, home elected, you know, potentially off rolling. How, what would be the flexibility that the local authority may have or is that a conversation we could have with the DfE or with government to say, look, we need some more flexibility once that bill is introduced? Yeah, completely. I'd say what we have done before, you know, I think in the first year I was here we most certainly challenged some of the behaviours. We spoke to Caroline, sorry, Claire Burton at the DfE. We also then reported it to City of London to the Director of Children's Services over there. So we've escalated it but I think culturally, politically, things have changed. So that's why I think where we've maybe not had, you know, we can make that representation, we can give some of the data but, you know, what we do need is some more levers because we couldn't then say it's X amount, that many percentage but we now have some levers and I think what we're saying is endorse that inclusivity element of the scorecard. It may not be everyone's cup of tea of the scorecard but the inclusion bit is really helpful. I just think culturally and politically if you look at some of the admissions we've got greater authority and responsibility about in-year admissions, we didn't have that as well. So I think there's a couple of useful levers about what we might potentially be able to do around challenging that. Thanks for joining and I'll be keen to explore that further as well. I'll just take a final question from Valerie before I take any questions from members of the public. Thanks Chair. I just wanted to bring us back to I think it was section 9 on 6.5 and dental hygiene and just wondering in terms of our schools obviously because we always think about specifically with GPs being the space of where they might give leaflets and that practice of dental hygiene and obviously our dentists but do we know of our schools in terms of some sort of cultures where kids bring food from home and what's happening in their lunch boxes just as someone as a school governor I'm sure we've well I don't know but just through experience of just walking through and sharing at mealtime with some children at lunchtime that has just been I guess something I kind of wanted to raise here in this space like how are we working with our schools in terms of what parents put in their lunchboxes and also the cultural birthdays for some of our children that are especially from free school meals bringing a birthday cake sweets galore and all that kind of stuff when they're quite young I don't think it's something we kind of want in the bars because we know we have data here that's showing that we are not tackling this particular issue I hope that makes sense thanks thank you yeah really good question so we've got a whole comprehensive package of activities around oral health promotion which is in early years primary schools and also secondary schools your question was specifically around schools so I won't talk about what we're doing in the children centres and family helps and stuff there's loads around supervised tooth brushing and lots of health promotion and information but within schools we've got the healthy schools programme and maybe actually Janine you might want to talk about that in a bit more detail yeah so we encourage all schools to take part in the healthy schools programme which is an award that they can get sorry I'm just going to really interrupt I'm so aware of all the amazing stuff that you guys have on offer my question was specifically about schools so maybe it comes back to John how are we able to see what schools are doing in terms of their practices so like birthday parties that kind of rituals and you know like it's my birthday everyone I'm bringing a goodie bag what is in that goodie bag like that specifics yeah so one of the criteria within the healthy schools programme is around around provision of around oral health but we my team actually provides guidance to schools around birthdays and not not using food as a reward in schools not not having birthday cakes and and not having not having regular cake sales at schools that those are and so the schools who are who are recognised as healthy schools are at least tell us doing that and and and and we definitely whenever we hear what we we challenge that on a on a regular basis thank you thank you we would like more schools the numbers of schools who are who are recognised healthy schools has really dipped during the pandemic but has really really increased in the last two years and we're we're really keen to get more schools involved in and on board with that thank you and then it was just back to the libraries so I know we're using our libraries really well so how are you also gearing this particular project and then also bring it into the libraries I think some of our children young people use libraries so do you have a space in there are utilising in that space I think one of the things we want to do is use the libraries as a sort of multi learning space so not just in schools but how we're bringing that into our wider community because obviously some parents have active participation in our reading challenges so how are we now bringing that into that space as well please thank you we're probably going to have to take that one away only because libraries we have to grab that information from it's in the different directorate so I've just made a note that Theo will as well and then we'll get that back to you sorry there's a question from the member of the public she's been waiting did you want to ask hi I'm a parent of a child with SEND in secondary school and has also experienced suspensions so this for me is a really important issue I'm wanting to understand what the plan is in terms of making the link between we've got specific schools that have these significant numbers of suspensions and also have the capacity to be able to send children to alternative provisions and I know typically if you speak to parents they will talk about the fact that their children have a quite difficult time or have had high numbers of suspensions before they've been sent to AP so I know that the government has recently given some guidance around the use of alternative provisions which has been updated and has given local authorities more responsibility I guess more capacity to be able to ask those questions and hold schools to account in the sense of when you're sending a child to an AP essentially being able to know what the reasons are for them being sent to an AP that they have to consult with I know particularly for children who have got an EHCP they have to consult with the local authority so that's one of the things I'm wondering how is that power being planned to be used if we're talking about holding schools accountable is there a plan to be able to utilise that I'd also like to understand if we are making the connection between high numbers of suspensions children being sent to APs but also in terms of persistent absence if the persistent absence is also coupled with the high numbers of suspensions are we making that connection and are we understanding what the issues are and are we drilling down and understanding in terms of the data you know we've talked about ethnicity and those sort of issues are we understanding that and are we understanding that in the context of SEND as well and sort of on the back of that really just understanding what are the specific actions that the local authority now plan to take because it's just you know I'll speak frankly as a parent you often hear the same things and it feels like the same conversations are being had how do we move forward and how can you know families and parents be able to speak candidly about these experiences and actually get to hear the things that are going to change these rates because it's just should I take that John so we welcome the change in guidance which means now that a school can't automatically direct a child to alternative provision if they've got an education health and care plan so it requires a three way conversation then between the parent at the school and the local authority and again alternative provision isn't necessarily a punishment or the wrong direction sometimes it can be the right thing to do but it needs to have the conversation so that's really welcome and already we're having those conversations I think obviously we do have an action plan around how we can reduce suspensions one of the things that we haven't emphasised here is that our permanent exclusions are very low in this thing so that's a good thing but it's not great if we've got very high suspensions and the relationship is a clear one between suspensions and attendance given that if you're suspended that counts as an absence so it's automatically you become a persistent absentee if you're accruing lots of suspensions so we do have an action plan around that which it might be helpful perhaps to bring back to a future meeting thank you so much I'll just take the final question because I missed you from Councillor Ilkay and then we'll bring the meeting to a close apologies chair for asking loads of questions this evening but it goes back to Susie's point and also the fact that when we look if a child's needs aren't being met they typically apply for the HDP and the majority are turned down and we know this we know this but 100% that go to tribunal are one so say 98% for clarity but during that period it's a long weight gain so children that are going through transition from primary to secondary miss out because by the time they go into secondary they don't have the plan then they do have behavioural issues according to the schools and then they are suspended so the correlation between the delay in getting a certificate suspensions and then off rolling going to an alternative provision is not always a choice it's forced upon the parent and it's also forced upon the child the question is is what will the local authority do to get rid of that time frame and to ensure that when an application is done rather than sort of like meet statistics and say right we have dealt with X amount of numbers of applications is actually look at the previous applications see that majority of them are actually one at tribunal and just give them the assessments because it would save a lot of parents a lot of heartache and they would know what provisions their children could get I think John maybe because if you could answer because a lot of it is not in the report happy for a written response and if I could be copied in as well I think if that would be because I do want it to be answered so if it can't be in the meeting happy for it to be offline I think it needs quite a detailed explanation so I'll be happy to do it thank you thank you very happy can I ask members to note the quarter two report I understand that the work programme was omitted from the initial agenda but it has been circulated to all parties can I also ask members to note our work programme yeah okay so it was just in relation to the comment about the action plan when what would that look like and how as parents are we able to see that and know what that looks like as I say it's an issue that I just feel is really pressing important and if we're talking about trying to reduce suspension and whilst like you say permanent exclusions we might have low levels but we have just an equivalent of something else which is being sent to APs or really poor outcomes for those children who are receiving those suspensions so just for me it's just a thing I just like clarity and understand what exactly the time frame will be for that we haven't published that online but we could do that would probably be the easiest way to do it otherwise you've got to wait for another meeting to report it so we can where would they find that online it would be on the local offer on the local offer so we'll do that within the next week okay thank you sorry thank you if there are no urgent matters or questions I'll bring this meeting to a close thank you all for attending our next meeting is scheduled for 1st of April goodnight