Transcript

I'm Councillor Goulcin Ozdemir and I'm chairing tonight's meeting of the Children and Young People's Scrutiny Committee. Please note that we're not expecting a fire alarm test 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 and to turn your phone on when speaking and remember to turn it off when you've finished. To make sure 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 the right. Councillor Valerie Bospon-Kwashi, Branhill Ward, Vice Chair. Nick Tapp in C of E-Ram. Councillor Piker Pandor, St Mary's of St. James's Board. Mayor in C of E-Ram is representing Roman Catholic Giants, Ms. Westminster. Councillor Michelline Safi-Ngongo is a executive member for Children, Young People and Families. Councillor Claire Zanet for Holloway. Councillor Ilkay Chinca-Ana for Laycock. Sophie McNeil, Parent-Governor, Representative for Primary Schools. Councillor Neslisi Godova-Sams from Fort Highbury World. Thank you. I am Finn Craig, Councillor for Arsenal Ward, not Rosalyn, as it says on the team. Thank you, John. Good evening, everybody. John Abbey, Director of Children's Services. Clown Townsend, Head of Strategic Programs and Strategy. Hi, everyone. Deborah Israe is Director for Safe Couple and Family Support. Karen Gibbings, Assistant Director of Corporate Parenting. Paul Senior, Interim Director of Learning and Achievement. Andy Holder, Assistant Director for Inclusion. Katie Woods, attendance, leave. Good evening. Ben Zahn, Assistant Director of School Improvement. Thank you. We have apologies from Susie, Susie Graves, Councillor McHugh and Councillor Ogonro, which Councillor Craig is substituting for. Do we have any interest, do we have members who have any interest to declare? Okay. We now move on to the minutes of the previous meeting. Subject to any amendments that members wish to make from me or the Clerk, can we agree the minutes of the meeting held on the 24th of February? Agreed. Sorry, I have got something. I mentioned it to Theo. In the Third Dispatch, when they do a summary of St. Aloysius and Akinberley, they omitted, I think by accident, St. Aloysius said that they have a lovely breakfast club, which costs about $1,200 for the whole year. And it was really good. I felt that that really needs to be included. And when you think $1,200, it isn't there? Well, I kept reading and rereading and couldn't see it. So can you check why I haven't seen it? They said something about good health, but they didn't mention the breakfast club. I didn't see it. And it costs $1,200. Oh, right. Okay. Sorry. Apologies. Thank you, Mary. Thank you. We'll move on to the Chair's report. I just wanted to start my Chair's report by formally confirming that I've called an additional meeting for Monday the 12th of May. I've authorised this change to a work programme to just allow us some additional time. You know, we've started to really unpick quite a lot through our evidence-gathering sessions and data. But what was excluding was that additional evidence-gathering from New River and alternative provisions. And I think it's really crucial that we have that before we do our recommendations for our scrutiny review. I just want to ensure that the committee members have the opportunity to comment and agree on the recommendations before they're formally agreed on 12th of May. So, as I mentioned in the pre-meet, we'll also have an additional meeting to kind of discuss those outside of committee. I'd also like to use this opportunity to inform everyone that in light of the changes to our work programme, I'll be varying the order of the agenda as well. So, I'll be taking the special guardianship update first and then the 12-month update on making children visible. I will then take the attendance update. As this item doesn't have papers in the agenda pack, I will take the school results last. I will be taking questions from the public during the discussion items for the purpose of ensuring the committee has enough time to fulfil its business this evening. I will be using my chair's discretion on the number of questions to take from the public this evening. If there are any questions regarding what the committee has heard from external speakers, which we don't have any today, I'd ask that it's submitted and written. There are no items for calling this evening, so I will now move on to the special guardianship update. We've had quite a lot of time to read that report, which isn't quite as extensive because it was supposed to be at the previous committee. But I would like, because there might be some members that might just need a little bit in terms of what a special guardianship is. So, if there is just that overview of what a special guardianship is, like an introductory, and then we'll take questions if that's okay. So, a special guardianship order is an order that's made by the court that confers parental responsibility on connected people. Connected people can be relatives of a child, or they can be a friend of a child, or the child's family. That special guardianship order gives them, in a way, more parental responsibility than the parents. The parents have a right to be consulted with if the child leaves the country for more than three months, or the special guardian wants to change their surname. But other than that, the special guardian can actually exercise parental responsibility. Thank you. Do you want... Would you like me just to give a brief overview? Yeah, I think that would be really helpful. The report details the offer, the support offer that we provide in Islington to our special guardians. We currently work with 181 special guardians, and 24 of those, our involvement is very active. We've got a fairly comprehensive service that we provide with a dedicated family and friends team. There are seven social workers in that team, and three, in particular, focus on providing support to special guardians. For many of our children who come into the care system, this is a way, at the end of care proceedings, if they cannot return to their birth family, many of them are taken into the care of their family, extended family. And we have, I think, 24 children who left care last year who went to live with special guardians. So we have, our comprehensive offer includes financial support so that those family and friends carers who've previously been foster carers would get the same amount of money once they become special guardians. We also offer access to the same training programs, our foster carers, and that's quite wide. It includes lots of training around providing the reparative care that lots of our children who've previously been looked after need, training around child exploitation, training around supporting children through education. So it's a big kind of variety of training. We also offer support around mediation because sometimes, for example, you might have grandparents who are trying to navigate tricky relationships or aunties and uncles. Sometimes we offer mediation to support family members work effectively together for the benefit of the child. We also sometimes supervise contact. Alongside that, we provide education support to special guardians and children. We have a dedicated advisory teacher in our virtual school who can offer support if children are struggling in school and also to support access to school as well. And schools also have money from the government pupil premium to assist in providing additional support to them at school. I mean, we also, you know, offer occasionally some of our special guardians take large sibling groups and we have, you know, facilitated at times adaptations to their homes to facilitate children being able to live with them, which obviously for the council is very good for the children, but obviously is much more cost-effective than having them in care. We also provide access to nurseries when they can't get free access if our special guardians are working. Yeah, so that's kind of, I don't know if anyone's got any questions. Thank you. Just before I do take questions, I do appreciate this introduction, and I'm really glad for it to be at committee, because I don't think we've actually looked into special guardianship or, you know, that area in committee before, and I probably would ask for it to come back with more details. I think this is an opportunity for us to kind of really request what information we want or what we're interested in. There is a lot in the report about the offer to special guardians, but I did want to just talk about the offer to the child post-18 and kind of that disparity between those that are care leavers, because I think from one of the cases that I had, once that child was 18 and was made homeless, he was sent pillar to post between children's services and adult services because he was technically an adult, and that wraparound support that you have for care leavers from the age of 18 to 26, and he really struggled to access it, even though I was trying to advocate for that. So I guess that's my question. What does it look like for an 18-year-old who was under special guardianship, and what offer is available for them? Sorry, the support is very different for children. If they're looked after and they become carer-experienced young people, there's very comprehensive support that's offered that includes paying, for example, tuition to university. It includes the right to have a pathway plan. I put it like that because that kind of brings together support for various aspects in that child's life, so there's quite a comprehensive offer. For children who were previously looked after who go into special guardianship arrangements at the age of 18, they can still request support from us in Islington. They're what's called qualifying children, and they have a right to ask for an assessment of their needs. So we support, I mean, it probably, round about, we've probably got about 30, 30, approximately, young people in our service who are qualifying. We provide a variety of support, so we do support them to help them to get into work and education. We legally have a duty to provide accommodation for them if they're in Further Education University. We also have, you know, we keep cases open, we do direct work with them, but we don't, their access to housing is different, and it's also changing. Historically, in Islington, we didn't have that differentiation. Qualifying young people were seen in the same way as young people who'd been in care and stayed in care, but there is a difference in terms of the priority need that is given to young people in those different situations. Legally, there's a difference. Yeah, so that offer, yeah, is different. The government in the Children's Bill, they are thinking about offering more help to qualifying children, particularly around accessing Further Education and getting grants, which I would welcome. But, yes, there is a difference, and we're not resourced enough to be able to provide, you know, for that wider group of young people, and I guess the legislation doesn't compel us to provide that same level of support. Having said that, in Islington, our offer to qualifying children, when compared to other young people, I would say is actually robust. It's good. Thank you. And just to come back on that, I think there's 181 special guardians, and not all of them are going to need that support once they turn 18, because some of them will stay with the families. But I think there would be a small cohort within that 181 of 18-year-olds who, you know, once they're an adult, they've just really lacked that service. So I think I'd be interested as a committee to kind of explore what we could do with the limitations in terms of supporting that cohort and identifying that cohort. But I think that's been really helpful. Any questions, Susie? I'm sorry, Rosie? Yes. Sorry. I'm interested to understand how you evaluate whether these special guardianships are successful, because they sound absolutely great. It sounds like it makes complete sense and a better way to provide a stable living arrangement for a vulnerable child. What sort of metrics do you use to evaluate success, and how successful are they by those metrics? So nationally, and particularly nationally in this country, but also in America, there's been quite a lot of research that's been done around the outcomes for children in kinship placements. And generally, those outcomes are more positive in terms of providing stability to children, in terms of promoting education. So there is research that contributes to that. We get some feedback. So we're not monitoring all special guardianship arrangements, because clearly they leave the local authority. That wouldn't be appropriate for us to do that. We have had some disruptions, so that's very low numbers. We've had three that I'm aware of, and I've been here for several years. That's not to say that there's not other disruptions, because some special guardians don't live in Islington, so if they disrupted, they would disrupt in other boroughs, and after three years, we wouldn't know about that. But that's a mechanism that we also receive feedback. We might also receive feedback through the work of our virtual school, particularly with children in Islington, because they are involved, and they would also have access to the advisory teacher that we have about how those placements are going. Do you have a follow-up, Sophie? Yes, Councillor Vallor and then Nick. Thanks, Chair. It might just be maybe an observation, but how closely do you work with Officer Curtis? Is it Curtis? Is there any crossover with how you guys work? Because obviously, Sophie's point about the matrix would make sense to be like sharing the data across... I mean, we work very closely with Curtis' service, so some of the children that may be placed with family and friends carers, if they're involved with Curtis' service, we would be working very closely with them and accessing support where appropriate through TYS. We have... once the special guardianship order is made, unless those young people were involved in offending, and I can't think of any that come to mind, they wouldn't necessarily be involved. I think there's some work... just slightly to the left of what you're asking. I think there is some work that we're currently involved in that we're doing at the moment to make sure that our special guardians and the children are accessing fully the early help offer that exists in Islington, and we currently have a task and finish group where we're reviewing what we currently do and looking at expanding that, because we have a local offer, and we're currently reviewing that offer, and we want to make sure that it fully encompasses what is actually out there in terms of support and that special guardians are aware of it. Nick? A very brief question. How soon after the special guardian takes on the children, do they get the offer of support, and how detailed is it? And do they generally take it up? Before the special guardianship order is made, we basically have to draw up what's called the special guardianship support plan, and we would do that with the special guardian. They would also have access to a solicitor, so they'd have some independent advice about that plan, so they could come back and argue if they weren't completely happy with it. But we have a really good take-up of the support that we offer. We've had, it goes in peaks and troughs. Our support group is really well attended by special guardians. We've utilised the adoption support fund, where we can access therapeutic support for children and adopters. We have quite a lot of attendance, particularly on some of our training courses that are run by our kinship team itself. So yes, I think, yes, it is. And in order to be granted the order in the first place, it's before the court, and the court has to endorse the support plan. And so if that support plan isn't sufficient, it won't get signed off by the judge. So there's that kind of extra layer of scrutiny around that. So I guess, was your point that, while that process is happening, is there kind of immediate or interim support? I think my question was asking, when does it happen? And the family answer was, well, it's already happened before that. Yes, it is. Many of the children who end up, if you like, in special guardianship arrangements, their carers have been previously family and friends foster carers. So they've had support all the way during the care proceedings from us. And sometimes they're private arrangements that, you know, families, anyone can make an application for special guardians. You may not know them until there's a request for an assessment. And so we see it's not just through becoming looked after or through the kinship fostering arrangement. It could be through, even from private fostering arrangements, if it's younger children, but, you know, more just family hearing about something that's happened to a family member and taking on the care of that child. Thank you. Yeah, councillor. Thank you very much, Chair. I want just to add on what Karen said. A few months ago, we celebrated what the kindergarten they are doing across the borough. It was a very good event and also to see their own testimony to help their own families' members. Because sometimes young people themselves, they feel honoured to be kept in their own families or people they know since they were young. That means they are keeping their culture. Because sometimes to find a match for a young person to keep the cultures or to keep a birth, some kind of values is coming from their parents or descendants. It's very difficult. And to see even grandparents and see everyone just to come to wrap support for that child and to take over really themselves, their values. And another thing when we are celebrating the good work they are doing to step in in this situation is their own peer support. They themselves can gather. They are meeting. They are having them small groups. How they can support each other. How they can share experience. It was a very great event. And you can see they are really motivating themselves to do the right thing. That is big volumes by itself, really. I want just to highlight that. Thank you. And, yeah, I think it's really great that the committee understands and knows the support that is available to our special guardians and what that work looks like. But, yeah, I am definitely keen to explore further that support for the post-18-year-olds, just kind of focusing on the children. But, yeah, thank you. If there are no further questions, can we note this item? Thank you. Oh, are there any questions? Sorry. Are there any questions from the members? No, thank you. Okay. We will now move on to item D4, the 12-month update on making children visible. Members have read the papers, so if I could ask officers to give a really brief overview. I believe Tanya is speaking on this item. Would you like to introduce the item? Yes, thank you, Chair. So this is a 12-month update to the scrutiny view that was undertaken by the committee between July 2022 and March 2023. I just want to draw out some of the key things that may be of interest to the committee. And also, sorry, it may be a bit of a cop-out. There's some issues that I won't have the detail on, so I will pass that on to the officers for the ones that I don't have oversight on. One of the things that I did want to draw the committee's attention to is the aspect around electively home-educated children. Just to note that the recent Children's Wellbeing in Schools Bill will introduce compulsory registers for children not in school and who require local authority consent for home education in certain circumstances. So once that has received royal assent, we will be working through that in terms of updating the response to this recommendation, but particularly how we're just going to implement the new education reforms in general. So I thought that might just be helpful for you to understand as context in relation to one of the recommendations and the progress on that. Another aspect that would be helpful for the committee to note is during the actual review, we were quite keen in terms of how we communicated and marketed our services and support to actually children, young people and families, and really updating that in a way that actually is more tuned to where they are and how they actually receive information. So one of the things that we've done through the Family Hubs programme is really focused on ways to design digital, virtual and also the telephone offer, more attuned to how families and children and young people work now. There's a thing around digital parenting, which isn't about receiving information about how you parent, but how parents now use digital technology to get our other parenting advice, support, etc. So that's been really built into our Family Hubs programme. But also connected to that, going forward, we're going to be working with the comms department to actually review and carry out research around digital audiences, particularly young people, to really just focus on the different channels to actually engage and work with them, because we want to understand how best to reach them in different ways. So that's going to be a piece of work that's going to be taken forward this year. The other thing that I wanted to draw your attention to is one of the things you're quite keen on is that although you get a lot of statistical information, you don't get a lot of information around qualitative lived experiences, living experiences of children and young people and how our success is also measured through that. So what we have done is we have agreed what's called a voice and influence framework to start refreshing our approach to how we capture the lived and living experiences of our children, young people, parents and carers, and actually having that sit alongside a lot of the statistical information so we're getting a bit more of a rounded picture and insight into what successes we're achieving with the families that we work with and to. One of the things that I've suggested that the committee might want to receive a future report on is the work of the 100 hours world of work and how that's being focused on a lot of the marginalised groups. There's probably a bit too much to put into this report, so I've suggested through here that you might want to receive an additional report in relation to that so you can focus on marginalised groups and particularly for those who are going through the world of work, but also the next steps around the youth employment hubs as well. Alongside that, and you've got a lot of stuff already going on around attendance where you're asking for the Education Board to have a bit more of a granular information on absence and that is working through, but also just to reflect that more recently central government have published what's called the Families First for Children Partnership Programme Guide which is part of the national reforms, but also within it it sets an expectation that where families with severely absent pupils are factored into local eligibility decisions for family help and schools and local partnerships have had a joint approach to actually supporting them as part of the new family help offer under the new legislation and new national reforms. So that's just something that you might want to think about and consider how we would do that going forward. And finally, what Councillor Chapman who led the review was quite keen on was a different way for counsellors to actually engage with young people in different ways and in a bit more of a child-friendly way as well. And you received the child-friendly report at the last meeting just to flag under the inclusive pillar, which is part of the Child-Friendly Programme there will be an element about how we actually redesign or reshape how counsellors can engage with young people in a very, very different way over and above the traditional ways of surgeries, etc. So that will also be coming down the track too but we have started some work around that with Councillor Chapman leading that. Thank you. Thank you, Tanya. Thank you. So I thought it was a very interesting report and I thought it was particularly interesting the comment about how young people prefer to engage with support in spaces that are specially designed for them as opposed to more generic spaces like community centre. And so my thoughts are coming off the back of the visit we had to Lyft Youth Centre which was brilliant and it just made it really stark that actually we're really lacking in those services in the north of the borough and there isn't really very much, you know, that, you know, kids do want to access those services, you know, particularly things like, you know, gyms and things like that that also can be a bit more of a sort of neutral way to access support that's less visibly like they're accessing support or a traditional youth club offer. I just wondered whether there were any plans to provide something that was more better tailored for our youth in the north of the borough. So the actual recommendation focused more on whether there is access at weekends at times that are non-traditional times and so there isn't any further plans as far as I'm aware in terms of opening up further youth access particularly because we've actually put in some more in the north of the borough even more recently. So a lot of the decisions now around community assets of which youth hubs, etc. are part of and now part of what's called the Strategic Asset Management Plan so they will continue to focus on places where young people prefer to be in their own spaces rather than in other community assets. However, as far as I'm concerned, as far as I'm aware, there's not plans to open up further youth hubs. John, just before you come in, because I think you might be able to help because it says Andover Estate in Flindsbury Park, which has been open, is it nearly coming on two years now and I don't think we've heard much about kind of the service that they offer and provide and I think that might answer the question that Sophie's asking in terms of what service is there in the north of the borough or, you know, lack of so I don't know if John, when you, yeah, if you could kind of touch on that. Yeah, there's a, thanks Sophie. There's a couple of, in response, Althorne Estate, which was set up, it'd be two years in August, September in response to the tragic murders and deaths of young people and that was instigated most certainly by Councillor Micheling where we got an offer in there working with a couple of our partners, not full-time but most certainly for two, three evenings a week. Collective Acting Studio took over the Platform Building but there was still an offer that comes out there, mainly around, you know, dance, theatre, acting and then we opened, as the chair alluded to, Andover, again, a couple of years ago. It's quite a small hub but again, it's integral. There's an offer that's rolled out there from, I think, Manor Gardens and also next door to it, you can probably picture it, Sophie, there's the Mooga and again, that has a lot of that activity which goes on again over the weekend. I guess the challenge and maybe the critical point in that report is that what happens at weekends as such, what I would say in terms of school holidays we have a holiday activity fund that is very active, participatory but we also have the Summerversity in the summer which is, again, very, very successful and that half, which we've renowned as that lunch bunch offer so it always offers food to our young people and a range of activities does take place in each and every one of those holidays. Thank you, John. Councillor Nesbeth. Thank you, Chair. If I can bring back to the first recommendation which was on the elective home education something that I'm just very wary of are the slow clogs of national government to get legislation through and I wouldn't hate for us to be in a position where we are essentially waiting for that process to happen before we actively do something. I have an elective education home charter so if I was a parent who was home educating a child and I was potentially thinking of having a more flexible approach getting involved back into the school system what information could I find online to start engaging in that process? Do we have any information? Is there something that we can actually provide on that front? Thank you, Councillor. And that's a relevant question, as you said, given the context and with regards to the local offer website which I'm sure that many colleagues here we were very familiar with there's a lot of information, advice and guidance which we do signpost parents and residents to using and there is a relevant section on there pertaining to elective home education Sorry, just to follow up specifically does that local website use the term that parents in the community use which is flexi-learning? And again, if you don't have a response to it now I'm more than happy to receive it Am I right in... Sorry Sorry, no, I'll let Paul I understand we have a policy It's online and it's in line with policy based on the Department for Education requirements and consistent with policy and practice in other local areas as well which has also been subject to regular scrutiny from the Department for Education and Ofsted and through the law courts as well So we're confident that our policy and our process can stand up to considerable scrutiny but it is a welcome challenge, councillor Thank you councillor Valerie Thanks Chair And just to go back to Sophie's point it's a valid point about our local offer in the north as well as the south because it's Islington and looking at our geofencing I don't know, it seems like even our community centres do have the offer as well but it's again about our comms and how we, you know, get it out there and I think we recently got a letter from the council, like a postcard in my household that was sent to my youngest and I was a bit confused but this is what I mean about we do need to fix up our comms so is there any sort of move going forward in terms of ring fencing some money to actually sort out our comms and our offer so it's not always like online but then maybe the postcard does come where it says it's like a picture, a sort of thing of community centre has this, that, that and the other because I know as a trustee for example in Elizabeth House within the north of the borough there is a youth offer but second to my point if I may chair is about that offer for 14 to 18 year olds and they can't do what maybe a 9 year old or a 7 year old can do and I know in my ward there was a lot of pushback from residents saying that out loud because it's been minuted elsewhere but a skate park because, you know, this sort of like young versus old and we were to live under this sort of concrete jungle but we do have to think about, for example, AI moving forward you know, the IT facilities things that we can have in these spaces that a lot of young people, especially those with said needs really flourishing so just, there's a lot in there but I think one about the comms two about the offer with the money and how we get that across the borough and how we also communicate what we have in the south is actually accessible to those in the north it's a bus ride away, literally if we can provide that or a walk or a line, a bike Yeah, I'll do the offer one We'll break that down, Valerie and set that to and Tanya will pick up the comms piece because I know we're doing a bit of work around that and it's good that the postcard landed in terms of the holiday activity fund so there's proof in the pudding that we try and reach all the families that are on that directory particularly around that pass and some adversity offer the comms point I think is always really well made and Tanya will pick that up about how do we reach all of those young people the offer we have over the last couple of years tried to make more equitable around that north and south that south split I think two years ago we were very conscious that there was an imbalance I think we have redressed that with the three that are now there we can always strive to do better but what I would say is in terms of members council over a number of years this council invests more money for youth provision than any other borough in the country per unit per head and members have most certainly safeguarded that if you look at the take up across our youth provision which I'm sure you will have come across them they're dotted around they're something to behold in terms of if you go to somewhere like Lyft where they do have that gym facility you've got young people learning musical instruments you've got gym work you've got tennis you've got bowls and you've got a meeting place what I'd also say is somewhere like Roundhouse where we commission again invaluable services so that investment is second to none and I know it's something that members have protected we've most certainly looked at how we model some of that funding I think part of the big challenge is to make sure it's equitable it's reachable and young people can get there it is differentiated and I think sometimes it's harder for young people i.e. the adolescents you've got to try and lure them in with either boxing, fitness and then once they're in you've captivated them as I've seen but do you want to pick up the comms bit Tanya? Yeah that leads really nicely into it because I think for a lot of the officers and particularly our comms colleagues this recommendation was the one that excited people the most because we haven't got it right for a good few decades I would say in terms of the marketing that actually appeals to young people and adolescents but also how it then manifests itself in terms of the different groups of young people as well you know we can't homogenise all of them they've all got different these are different ways of receiving accessing information etc so that's why this specific project around looking at the marketing but also looking at how we do our comms very very differently from how we do it now not based on what adults think is the best way to communicate with young people but how what they say is the best way to do it but also modernising our approach because there is there are things now such as you know we start talking about how can we get on TikTok they've already moved on from there by the time we started talking about that and actually sometimes they don't even want us in their spaces on that so what's going to work for them as well as kind of draw them in so that once you draw them into the offer there's other things as well that they can also access so this is going to be a priority for us this year Thank you Tanya and I think I'd be really interested in visiting Elphorn and Andover because I haven't since it's been open and I think yeah I'd welcome if we could if the committee could see because you know we should be really proud of the services our youth services in the north and the south of the borough every time we go into Lyft we always leave there like so you know you know so happy that this service is available for our young people and I think with comms we can also have that role to play as members, as councillors and maybe part of our visits could be that I mean I saw that the Wicked Cast visit at the National Youth Theatre and I thought you know that's in our borough we don't commission it but how can we make our young people accessible to that world and be really proud that that's happened in Islington so I think a definitely important point that I would love to pick up with you Tanya and for the committee to kind of see the provision I'm just going to take a question from Ilkai, Claire and Mary and I'll close this item thank you thank you for that information my question is based on we've got a number of youth clubs and hubs for our youth and young people to attend in both the south and the north what's the current intake of those and do we have any children because we've got roughly about 25,000 children living in Islington and the capacity of those spaces is very limited because I know that the centre where I live it's always oversubscribed so do we have any intentions of trying to expand in I know that we spend a lot of money I know that it's about budget but do we have any future plans of expanding and making more facilities because we do have a large number of children that although we have the services there are unable to take up the services because there's no capacity and I know about like taking up over the holidays with like tennis and stuff I remember as a parent trying to sign my child up and there was never any spaces left so I just want to know if we've got any intention of expanding to accommodate all of our children so each child in Islington has the same access yeah thanks good question around equity and access and what we do have is probably per square mile more access for young people to go there we also do have that capacity I don't have it right in front of me but if you and I can pull it out is that in this in this quarter three scorecard if I cast my mind back I can't see it but it does have what that footprint and how many young people do actually go there so we will pull that out for you we have capacity within our youth provision for more young people to attend what we do have not so much about building more because we just we just don't need them and for some of them it's about you know viability I'd also say a number of our young people go to adventure playgrounds we have more of those again in Islington than anywhere else so young people and again there directly and inclusively a couple of them for our SCND young people as well and protecting those playgrounds is something again you and others should be really proud of because again that's not there so you know there is if we mapped it out we did map it out with Michelin a couple of years ago when we were looking at provision and challenge for the north about mapping all of the provision not just our youth provision there is a lot that goes on there which includes even in Elthorne you've got the Arsenal Moogie you've got the Boxing Club that take up when you look at it comprehensively and universally so it's not just council directed but it's about community and I think it was Valerie who was talking about our community assets and they do provide some of that access in we can get the numbers for you just around the youth provision though okay for sure really quick one thank you for that answer how accessible and how do we it's about comms sorry do we ensure that every single household that we are aware that has children has access to this take into consideration that some households do not have access to the internet or computers how do we actually go about advising our parents and some of them who do not speak English as English is not their first language how do we go about advising these parents of the services that we offer in Islington yeah so for the younger cohort in terms of the Bright Start cohort the 0-5 we have got kind of like a comprehensive way of doing that either through the children's centres but also through like the health visitors etc to be able to actually do that however you have picked up on something that we will be looking at as part of the support for parents in the round under the Family Helps programme because that was one of the things in terms of making sure that information is accessible to all parents but it was also in a way that's accessible for different marginalised communities as well and there's different ways to actually do that that may not be through a leaflet for example that might be through one of their peers for example so we are looking at different ways to do that because we recognise parenting is just different for different groups and we need to be able to reflect that one in the way that we work but also the way that our partners work too is just thank you thank you Claire Claire on 4.4 I wasn't part of the committee when we were talking about this but have we ever considered using the libraries when we talk about safe havens for children for homework clubs is that because obviously boxing and gyms are very important but there is another cohort of children who need a safe space in order to do their homework and they actually want that safe space as well perhaps don't actually have it at home So if Michelle Gannon was there who's the head of libraries she would be like gushing that you've asked that because that was one of the things that particularly around the time of the Fair Futures Commission which is one of the things that they really really wanted to focus on and they have put in quite a bit of homework and study space across all of the libraries to be able to enable to do that because it was recognised that where children were living in overcrowded housing having the space to do homework was going to be quite vital so they have made sure that that is right across the library estate that there is those opportunities to study space and homework Some libraries are opening on Saturday for example Louise Library the children's library in Caledonia they are opening even on Saturday to accommodate that space for young people to go to do their homework in case if you have homework for the weekends to bring on Monday Okay so I guess it goes back so just supplementary quickly I guess that goes back to the comms strategy as well doesn't it in being able to talk about that a little bit more because I don't see that advertised and I guess it would be great to see a little bit more of that kind of out there Yeah I agree and even as you're all talking what is making me also reflect is it's not just comes to our parents and our carers but it's also to you as councillors so that you can also be advocates and champions for the services that are in not just in your area but across the whole of this for the children and young people in the borough Just really quickly because I think it's an important question I mean when I was in Central Library in the summer I remember young people congregating specifically that sort of GCSE time and it was lovely seeing it because it brought a vibrancy to some empty spaces I just wonder and I agree with everything Tania has just said about how we maybe advertise that through schools I mean we advertise the youth offer through our schools part of the frustrating aspect was not the take up always through the schools so part of for example CAS's offer they had to go and visit every single school and recruit thus many young people but incentivising them to go along which is sometimes just a small cafe so they can get a drink and it's as simple as that because there's a safe space I completely agree with you thank you John Mary I remember a couple of years ago when we had recommended that we visited lift and we've recommended more things in the north so it's great that that's come through that you follow the recommendations and it has gone above and beyond it something that has occurred to me and I may be completely in the dark and there's something going on but we have got a multitude of we've got the Angel Puppet Theatre we've got the Almeida we've got Sadler's and you mentioned the National Youth Theatre and they used to be the Arts Factory and they're still working I just was thinking about all these children who can't attend and are very anxious some of them have we got loads of networks going on for those children for ones that have got anxiety issues confidence building all of that because we've got funded and also I felt the National Youth Theatre I always see actors saying I joined that and they're from God knows where they're not from Islington have we actually got some that we can guarantee or we have got options for Islington children Claire did you before I take thank you because I'm Claire's burning to comment on what you're saying I do have to declare that I am the Arts Champion for Islington but yes we have an amazing provision so National Youth Theatre on a Saturday have a class for kind of needs so you know children who are outside of education they can attend I think they've got three programmes the Amida does an amazing programme that is free and encouraging kind of working class and children from low income families to kind of participate the Pleasants have just offered me four work experience placements for young people between the ages of 15 and 18 who are again from kind of working class or low kind of economic kind of backgrounds there are Angel Theatre I've just been funded to do some puppet workshops for children on some of our local estates the provision is huge in Islington it's wonderful and I think actually now what we're trying to do is just again sort of make sure that everybody sort of hears about this and one of the things that we're doing in our local ward is actually writing a letter to us councillors to all of our residents actually telling all of our residents about those kind of opportunities as well so I think something we can be really proud of in this Do you want to come and sit over here? I was going to say I won't take a response but we don't know about it though and it comes back to our role as members Those in the know will know and those that don't haven't got a clue and I think that's the thing about cultural I think actually what you will find is I think slowly we are trying to make sure I went to see the Almeda this week and just sort of said you need to make sure that you're doing a little bit more outreach and speaking to the families that need to hear about this the Pleasance I have sort of said you don't just do an email to everyone in Islington actually what you need to do is focus on those two estates that are right next to the theatre and you talk about this is your local theatre come and get involved thank you thank you thank you so much Claire so I'll take the final contribution from Councillor Valerie and then we can close yeah I don't I don't want to sound like a broken record but I might just take privilege of being vice chair for once but it just comes back to what Don just said about your frustration because I'm also frustrated because you do a lot of work as officers but sometimes you don't showcase it and the issue that I have is that recommendations from 2023 to 2024 had all been set in stone and it's like we've kind of ticked some boxes but not ticked some of the other boxes so I'd really like officers to really go back and look at all those recommendations and really hit the ground running in terms of we have done it that we need to again the communication needs to be key but it's also incumbent on all of us as councillors which goes back to Councillor Nesta's point that we can't wait for the national government to do things it's about us knowing our wards and also facilitating work that needs to be done in our wards and work with officers as well as the councillor lead cabinet lead councillor michelin because I just get a little bit frustrated that things have been done but we're not talking about it and the thing with comms is that we have utilised our library spaces but I kind of want to push going forward that actually we do need to have them opened on a Sunday I think one of the recommendations before was looking at how we utilise that space on a Sunday and I don't think we've come back to that and also I did send an email to Michelle when I was the Reading Champion about how many children and young people are actually accessing the libraries in certain days and times because we also need to work with our residents about their timescales some parents are working there's a lot of hit and miss on these spaces and so we need to really go back to again hearing about the children young people and putting their voices about would they like the library on a Sunday and if we could facilitate that why are we not doing that because other borrowers need to do it and get the funding for it as well so that was just my little bug there thank you thanks chair thank you chair I'd just like to follow on from councilor Samet's comments regarding the incredibly positive comments as well regarding the art groups and the potential great access and opportunities the cultural experiences that they can provide our children and young people locally we're incredibly blessed to have so many fantastic opportunities and groups who provide our young people with such experiences and some of you will be aware that through the work of our education department there's been closer work recently between the Almeida Theatre and Sadles Wells in fact both of those organisations have hosted our teacher meetings in recent months as well and officers have been working very closely to look at the education programmes and the universal access programmes as well so our schools are better sighted and more aware of the work that these programmes can bring so we can actually hopefully increase the reach that every listening child will have access to such provision so it's just a start but just to say it really resonated with what you said to councillor Zannett thank you and just on Valerie's point around comms and also that I think from the recommendations how they're being met how they're going to be brought back next year as well and what those action plans and also the libraries being open on a Sunday and hearing from children yeah thank you Valerie and yeah it was helpful getting some feedback in terms of a little bit more of and how we can showcase ourselves so we'll take that way but next time we'll get Claire to write that one element one for us but I think we need to just liaise with Michelle a little bit because she'll have that foot fall and we'll know Thursdays are busier than Mondays perhaps and we've been down this time before in terms of where's the demand and they also probably will have that consultation about weekends that weekend drop but I would also say to push that a safe place a safe environment for young people I do think there's a trick that we're missing where we've got that space young people like coming together and they're very respectful but to talk socialise to do their work so I think there's some opportunity there so thank you thank you John now there are any questions from the members of the public thank you if there are no favourable questions can I ask members to note the report thank you we will now move on to the next item which is the attendance update there are no papers in the agenda pack other than the presentation on the screen and only one screen is working but I think everyone's got printed copy could I still ask that for the purpose of members of the public in attendance of watching online that officers give a clear and concise overview regarding the figures that are presented as it's only paper copies and I believe Paul's team will be introducing this item we'll just wait if you can introduce it before the screen I guess it's fine is it Katie yeah thank you thank you chair and thank you colleagues for the opportunity to update the committee on progress with the Islington programme of action in seeking to address attendance issues locally we recognise that the attendance agenda locally isn't where we would want it to be we find ourselves in Islington an outstanding children's services directorate we find ourselves in Islington an outstanding youth justice organisation in terms of the council performance we find ourselves having 98% of schools been rated good or outstanding and 100% of our children's rated good or outstanding so Islington is an incredibly high performing high functioning borough but the attendance issue chair and committee colleagues is something that naturally has caused concern hence the call to arms and chair I would like to formally thank you for attending a recent event that officers convened during a holiday period to talk about attendance and how best we progress this agenda as well so my colleague Katie and I'd like to formally thank Katie for working with others to formulate the update which we have before us this evening and this is on the back of a considerable programme of engagement of every local school just to make sure that systems and processes and policies and strategies were relevant and updated so Katie why don't you talk us through the slides please thank you Paul so if we go on to the first slide please for those of you that can see the first slide what it gives you is the full academic year of attendance data for 23-24 this is our published data and it's the most up-to-date and complete set of published data that we've got and what we need to understand about attendance data is there's a time lag in the data being published so due to the extensive process of collecting and verifying the data so for a full academic year which we'd finish in July the published data isn't released until the following March so there's about an eight month lag between it so comparing like for like data becomes a bit tricky we do have published data for autumn and spring term for 24-25 sorry the autumn and spring term data for 24-25 won't actually become available this period until October 2025 incidentally the DFER undertaking a review of the frequency of publishing data data so if we look at the full year data for 2023 what it's telling us is the overall absence was 9% so that in turn means that the overall attendance was 91% and that is 0.1% lower than the national average which we can also see here that persistent absence which this is for secondary sorry so persistent absence in secondary which is the focus of the scrutiny and it was at 26.1% which was slightly above national average 0.5% above national average interestingly in Islington severe absences actually below the national average at 3.46% so if we go on to the next slide what we've got here is the published data for the Ottoman spring term for 2023-24 so last year's Ottoman spring term again this is published data and from here we can see what it's showing us that the overall absence was 8.5% so overall attendance 91.5% which was actually the same as the national average for that period at that point the persistent absence was 24.5% which was 0.6% above the national average and severe absence again was just under national average at 3.32% so in order to give you a comparator if we go on to the next slide what we provided you with is our local indicative data for the year to date so if you think about it the year to date takes in from the start of the academic year up until now so that is almost almost the Ottoman spring term for 24-25 there is a health warning and that is around generally comparing attendance data is a tricky thing if you look at high level data it doesn't give you the context you could have schools where there has been an outbreak of norovirus and you're not going to see that by looking at the figures so you need to bear that in mind the indicative data also comes with a second health warning because it could change it is not the final data schools can go back in and change their attendance codes right up until the point that it's been verified and published by the DfE so normally we wouldn't publish this but obviously in particular circumstances this is a scrutiny and we're looking at this data so this is what we've been able to give you but please that's why we haven't shared it any further it's not verified so bear that in mind so for the attendance data for the year to date what it's showing us at the moment is overall absence is 8.6% so overall attendance is 91.4% and persistent absence is 23.4% and so it'll begin to make a bit more sense when we come on to the next slide so we can see the comparators so if we look at the slide that looks like this which is slide 4 comparing the autumn and spring term for 2023 24 with so the published data for 2023 24 and the indicative figures for the year to date date you can see the overall attendance has decreased very slightly by 0.1% we would say that's stable but it has gone down slightly the good news is that the rate of persistent absence for this period and again the focus for the scrutiny committee it has actually decreased by 1.1% which is really great news and then the final slide that we've got here I've given you a breakdown school by school so on this table we've got the overall attendance the persistent absence and the severe absence for the periods that I've talked about so the autumn spring for last year and this year you can see here all of the green shows where there's been improvements the yellow shows where there's been no change and the red shows where there's a decline so overall for this period as compared to last year we can see that seven schools are stable or improving across overall across attendance participant absence and severe absence and three schools are facing ongoing challenges against each area but with those three schools there has been additional support put in place to help them out what I would say again is with all this work it does take time for impact to be thank you it does take a long time for impact to be reflected in the figures but I can guarantee that all of the secondary schools are working very hard to support those individual children and try and improve that persistent absence and the attendance overall thank you Katie so much I think explaining through the slides was really helpful in understanding the data better and I think that 1% is really significant so I'm just looking at page I think it's the second page where you mentioned it being 0.6 below national average but I'm just comparing it to other inner London schools for example the difference between Islington and Hackney is at 1.4% so that's just trying to understand why Islington not doing as well as the other inner London schools and seeing that 1% improvement would really change where we are in comparison to the inner London boroughs and I think it leads to my question which is looking at the table you can see there are like three schools that aren't doing particularly well with both severe PA and the overall attendance and from our evidence gathering we've started to understand what those issues are with those specific schools and actually doing kind of targeted support and intensive support would really increase you know would really improve that attendance data so I wanted to know what from your perspective and from the work that you've been doing what are those kind of supports specific to the schools that need the most and just following on from that one of the schools was mentioning that actually some children are on the roll but don't attend and how that skews their data so there will be a child that's on the school register but have never attended the school and I think that's specific to those two schools that actually have severe PA and I was wondering if that's come up and how the team is addressing that because I think that's quite important. Sorry I know there was a lot in there. Thank you chair and this will probably be a two-part that I'll open and I'll ask Katie to come in on areas that I might not cover. Obviously I'm sure we'll appreciate it would not be appropriate for us to comment on any individual schools in this conversation but obviously on the level where you said chair that obviously some of our schools are not performing as well as we would desire. Absolutely targeted support is crucial and one of the important outcomes that came out from Katie and her team engaging effectively with every school was to get a deeper understanding of the schools, the systems, the processes, the strategy, the policies that are in place and we recognise that some of our schools, chair, probably need a little bit more support and challenge than other schools. Some of our schools are high functioning, high performing and doing some really good stuff in this attendance space and if you made me certainly right we've actually invited a number of our schools to present and our head teacher meetings to showcase what's working really well in the attendance space so we do have some examples of really good practice chair from our schools with regards to attendance and we're deploying an approach where we try to get our school sector-led improvement to again show what works and lift each other up as it were but where does any targeted support? Obviously we have the attendance mentors that will be coming on stream soon we'll be able to provide some targeted support as well where those schools need it and in terms of other forms of engagement as well so absolutely the data leads us to make targeted decisions and interventions and how well we support those schools and those schools working with us as well and as part of our wider risk assessment process when we look at all of our schools and attendance is part of that risk assessment framework in addition to performance, in addition to finance, in addition to a range of categories school chair we consider is there a need for escalation around risks where we might need to have a call in with the head teacher and the chair of governors and the leadership team to again have a target focused conversation where we put an action plan in place as well so that's on the targeted element Casey is there anything you want to add that I've not covered yet? Thanks Ben Yes so following on from the school visits last year we've actually trained up a number of colleagues across school improvement Bright Futures and Bright Star and the access engagement team to continue visiting all of the schools every time and that has happened this time I was at a school today and those which are now called targeting support meetings are data driven so we actually sit with the schools we look at the data and we see where we might be able to help them out or look at particular cohorts and see what's going on and so we've got a better idea of where support is required one of the schools that is read across the board there we will be deploying another member of the access and engagement team to do a six week they'll be visiting the school once a week for six weeks to do an intensive deep dive to look at the structures around attendance and processes and really have a look at what's going on there to see if we can help them out Ben's IPPs are going in to all of the schools to talk to them about attendance as well but actually one of those schools as well has actually tried really hard to use their own resources and they're actually they've expanded their attendance team so they've now well the remit of their attendance team so their EWO or their attendance manager is actually providing weekly counselling to a number of the kids who are struggling and the third school on that list which again I visited recently they have reviewed their policies and again they are making changes in the way that they communicate with families they have gone from doing no home visits due to capacity issues to doing many school visits during the week again this has all just happened this term so it's going to take a little bit of time to see the impact but they are trying and again as Paul mentioned the attendance mentors will be in schools after the Easter holiday thank you and just the question around when pupils are on the roll but they may have left the borough just no intention of coming back is it a six week period that schools are allowed because it's my understanding that they weren't allowed to take pupils off roll that just weren't attending or never attended before so we won't take pupils off roll until we've confirmed a destination school for them so even if they've moved out due to safeguarding so we make sure that we don't lose sight of that child we will keep them on roll until such time as we've got a confirmed destination school so there can be a bit of a delay there but it is for safeguarding reasons and that could take months I guess is my question because of completely understanding the safeguarding concerns but just in terms of that could potentially take months and also you know impact the date we would hope that it wouldn't take months within our admissions team we have a dedicated officer who does that work so we could go and find flight details and so if the school's having difficulty getting in touch with that family we will and they can refer it to the local authority and we will do everything that we can to track them down what that message is until we've got some piece of evidence to make sure that they have actually left the country and don't have an intention of coming back and then at that point we will agree to off roll them I'll just take Ilkay's question and then you can come in Councillor Ilkay Can I make a point just on the back of what Katie has just said before we move on that falls into the category of what they call children missing education so the local authority does have statutory duties around that and naturally as you would expect we are subject to regular scrutiny from the Department for Education and the Nostrad as well and in fact the CRR featured quite prominently in our recent outstanding children's services inspection where our systems and processes in that place were actually held up as an exemplar so I agree that we're aware we track and we have the processes in place and no child is taken off roll before we secure their destination so and then Sophie thank you chair my question is about the registers chair raised when we did our fact finding mission there we had an example where a child had been on the register since the beginning of term and but never attended you stated that it doesn't take months it did over a term and a half and they still don't know where these children are you talk about missing children what does the local authority do when a school says that these children are on the register but they have not attended for two terms what do you do and also your attendance records I mean yes it's great that we are below national average but we are the highest in London and this is really concerning and I want a breakdown of I mean this data clearly just shows about the seven schools that we've spoken to that we've looked at it doesn't include data which I know that chair is going to raise at another meeting of the alternative provisions or the new river college it doesn't include that because we know that that's going to be for a further topic but my question is that when you have attended the schools firstly have you actually spoken to the children or spoken to the teachers as to what is the common reason why children do not want to attend school we've had no mention of this at all we've been told that schools that they are not attending but you haven't spoken about emotional based school avoidance maybe not being able to have an EHCP we just would like to know reasons as to why we are highest in London thank you sorry Councillor Ilka I think this is just the comparative data and of course the whole scrutiny we've been trying to unpick those issues and in terms of the alternative provision it was a conscious decision not to include that because we had that meeting last month so the focus was just on the mainstream ones for today but yeah I think that has all been part of their work but I think today was just about comparing that data and not expecting to see that change because it's only been a few months but we would do our recommendations and then when it comes back next year I think that would be a response to what you were saying but I will take a response from Paul if you did thank you chair go on John thank you I've been into a lot of schools I'll go in every single week I've probably been into every single second school this year and I know you've been into many of those to understand some of the complexity that sits within the schools it's not a simple response as I've reported before you go to EGA it's about adolescence it's about girls it's emotional school avoidance the data you can't hide away from we're at that wrong end but historically and stubbornly we have been there and I think that's why the scrutiny have gone had a look at this I think the most frustrated people are probably some of our head teachers are pastoral leads within school who work tirelessly I was in school one of the co-led schools last week where they were talking about what they do with parents that probably two or three years ago they would have never been doing that you know the relationship between primary and secondary was always slightly different what I would say is though we are doing it right those young people who are missing in education we follow the legislation properly we don't just say right after six weeks or ten weeks you can have all that authority to take them off let me say it other local authorities don't adhere to that take from that what you will but it means there's massaging of figures it's not a very good accusation to make but I know that is the case we follow it up the reason why we make sure that young people don't go missing and we tackle them we follow it up follow up the school is about losing that visibility of children if something were to happen to one of those children who went missing in education and we take them off roll you'd be holding me to account for what might have happened to them so let's be mindful of what we do correctly ethically but also we're not going to go down that unethical route now that's not to say that those are all doing it unethically but what I'm saying is we follow the rules and I think part of the work Michael and Kate did really well last term in school let's just data cleanse all of those codings to make sure that they are being applied appropriately correctly is there any other way of leniently applying that but ultimately we're never going to compromise on safeguarding and that children in missing bit we do really really well however I think the recommendations and the nuances that this committee will come up with will most certainly help most certainly leverage again some of the resources that this committee part of the council have provided provide us with I think some longevity to provide something it's a duty that is not funded by the government however what this council has done is say right and this it's a slow turn but only a 0.1 0.2 0.3 moves the dial and shifts us you're right half a percent shifts us and we don't want to be there the reason we don't want to be there is young people need to be in school so they achieve and get those qualifications that they need so I just wanted to add that if that's okay thank you John because I think that's really important I think the context I wanted to provide with some of those schools are doing everything but there are issues such as a child not attending that kind of affects their data so I just wanted to give that context for the schools that we are seeing because they are doing everything but there is that issue for example it's probably marked as an unauthorised absence but safeguarding the children is of course we wouldn't want it any other way it was just providing that context but I would take Sophie and then Anastas Hello so I just wanted to check my understanding of something I'm seeing in the data to make sure that I'm not seeing something that isn't there so and I'm comparing slide three to slide four so on slide three we've got our 2023 2024 autumn spring terms and so last year essentially and Islington overall absence was 8.5 and national was 8.5 okay so we're kind of on par with national and then when we look at slide four and we're looking at the year to date our absence is 8.6 so we've got very marginally worse overall although obviously persistent absence has become a lot better which is good but overall we're sort of flattish basically but down at the bottom it says that national overall absence is 6.7 so am I right in thinking essentially although we have kind of stayed the same with overall absence actually nationally things have improved quite a bit and we've not managed to make the same impact am I reading that right do you have any sense of why that is well as we appreciate this is there's no quick fixes in this space so when you look at the two categories in terms of overall attendance and persistent absence persistent absence we've seen progress but overall attendance is naturally not where we would want it to be and there's no sugarcoating it it's not good enough and our school leaders recognise that this committee recognises that and it's how we all work together to improve outcomes in this space and the challenge and the scrutiny that this committee has brought in this area is welcome and the additional resource so there is a range of actions that have been undertaken and not all of them have benefit as optimally as we would like them to do so so until we can get to the end of the year and actually look back on progress made this year and look back on the areas that have really impacted the most and actually through our London activity benchmarking and comparing and contrasting with other councils only then I suppose we'll be able to have that 12 month evaluation look back on what's been impactful what's worked what's not worked and what other local areas are doing as well so we had a very helpful conversation with the Department for Education last week where this area came under scrutiny and it was recognised that Islington is making good progress in the persistent absence space and actually during that time they were kind enough to commit to coming to our attendance conference which we're looking to organise later on this year such as the seriousness that they're taking this agenda and the support for Islington and recognising the trajectory but the overall absence the simple answer to your simple question is it's not where we'd want it to be and we don't have full data in terms of from work with all other local areas because we're talking about months as opposed to years evaluation but clearly as we recognise there's still a lot to be done and there are no quick fixes thank you sorry because I'm just conscious of time is that ok so I'll just kind of you don't want to ask a question oh so go ahead I guess the question I wanted to ask was it sounds like other local authorities around the country have managed to make a bigger improvement than we have is there you know are you looking at what other authorities are doing and learning from them to try and figure out how they've managed because if this data turns out to be correct they will have made a really sizeable improvement which we haven't managed to make so what are we doing to learn from them benchmarking is an ongoing process as you would imagine so we're plugged in with regional and national partners and regular conversations with the department for education as well as the education board locally takes this area very seriously but yes we are benchmarking we are looking at what works but we have to remember we start from a lower base than others as well and there's some deeply entrenched issues that we have to address before we can get to the point and progress been made we recognise overall progress again not where we'd want it to be but progress against persistent absenteeism which I think is the focus for this evening's conversation clearly there has been progress but no one is doing cartwheels at all we've got a long long way to go thank you Mary yeah I just want to say to back you up John really because if you're being really good in terms of safeguarding and making sure a child doesn't come off full that's protecting that child I've come across children that we can't locate them or they disappear and it's just one child sometimes but when they disappear because what happens is if you pick up something about the child being neglected and the parents pick that up they're up and off and you can't trace them so at least having that on roll is protecting them and if you are following the guidelines and officers have picked up that you're doing everything properly then maybe what I said is if we scrutinise the codes maybe some of the other boroughs are not doing that I'm not saying that all of them but instead of I feel that we're doing this scrutiny to help the borough improve it's not about us and them it really is we're doing it to try and get to the bottom of it so we're not sort of I don't want to feel that we're attacking or aggressive we are actually trying to find the answers but what concerns me is that if we are measuring ourselves and we haven't got the full story of how they may have maybe they haven't massaged the figures or maybe they have omitted if we do that then we get rid of that a lot so we're kind of we could be being unfair but we're not we're trying to do the best in terms of our scrutiny here and what you've been doing so that we do get to a better place for Islington accounting for the quite impressionable poverty rates in this borough that may not be in other boroughs or in the other parts it thank you Mary and just on your point I think a lot has come through actually in terms of I think as a committee we are understanding the picture we are understanding the different reasons for the different schools and I think it is a bit to compare that to other schools it's just hard to do in different boroughs because these are different schools with different demographics different issues I mean we saw that some schools have a high rate of children with social services it is a different picture so I think one of the recommendations that is coming through is that targeted support to those specific schools to support those specific children that whether they come from disadvantaged backgrounds are on free school meals are vulnerable and what we can do specific to Islington and I think that's where our focus has been as a committee and has really come through from speaking to schools young people who go to these schools that we are seeing the persistent absence or low overall absence so I think by next year I think it's just to do that right now or to kind of expect that right now is way too premature but I think that is the purpose of what our recommendations will be and we're not going to just leave this and just all that work we've done just take our hands off it this is coming back next year and we will be then having these questions about okay why isn't it working why isn't there improvement what's going on here but I will just before I take Ben I will take Valerie and if you could obviously respond to both Mary and Valerie that would be great and I think if there any other questions then I'll bring it to a close I am conscious of time okay Valerie thanks chair and you read my mind I think I know where Sophie's coming from in terms of looking at other schools and boroughs but again I wouldn't want to do that only because I think that would take distraction on what we're trying to do here in Islington but what I want to go back to is the voice of the young person and the children and I don't know if there's anything we can do in terms of because I obviously openly people can check this I work in Barnet and we serve various amount of children young people that come from all across different districts etc I just want to find out again in terms of like home life we can do like a survey pick up on transportation you know who are what the chair just mentioned about those in free school meals just little things that we can do to also leave it and show that it's a combination of so many things that we can then hone in on it and then do our analysis then focus so I think if we do go into this I know John you come from Camden but I wouldn't want to compare Camden again because where isn't well this is the thing and I feel this you know and I kind of feel like we keep going back again about you know COVID and I kind of leave that alone as well I think there's something I think Paul you mentioned about the deeper entrenched thing here and there is and the work we're going to do with our schools there is a culture here and my issue which I want to raise here if I may share is that we've got parents who talk to parents and if we want our secondary schools to improve and we know the schools we don't have to mention them but they will talk and we've had years of where secondary schools have had falling roles in terms of who apply to them they will take their kids outside the borough we don't want that so I just think we need to focus in in terms of the data and looking at what we can do with the surveys from children and young people and what it is that is happening in schools because something's got to give here and we're not hearing the voices of children and young people about why they're friends they talk to each other on Snapchat and all those things why are they not in school they're missing out on their friendship groups and it's a slippery slope because we don't want to also increase on our needs and I'll leave it there thank you Paul and Ben I think you wanted to come in as well my best lines are when I'm quiet I'd like to formally go and thank you so much for those incredibly helpful comments about the voice of the child and our school leaders have been incredibly outstanding in working with Katie and the team in canvassing views in terms of just to get us that voice of the child to help inform our systems and processes and our approach question a recent survey across young people the responses regarding attendance in case of my writing thinking over 3,000 responses over 3,075 young people voices in terms of coming back with the reasons of school attendance and some of the reasons such as common themes around illness injuries some areas children feeling bullied some children attending family events and holidays some not liking school work and subjects some finding the work too easy difficult some feeling unhappy at school some comments my teachers don't motivate the class some there are topic subjects that I don't like one comment I had to go to an important party I mean important family event weddings and funerals some school is boring and I could go on I could go on I could go on but we've got an incredibly rich sample is that recent data because we we haven't got that and it's frustrating to not have that if we without making our recommendations this is timely and we can make it available to yourself it's timely it was really we wanted to share that live data now but we can make it available in due course to help inform the work of the committee but you can appreciate such a broad sample and I would like to formally thank Katie and the team and our head teachers for progressing such an important piece of work thank you Paul the survey was completed in February with a great deal of help from the schools but also a special mention goes to our youth council representatives who helped us gather that information as well I can't contain my frustration so I'm going to leave it there any questions from the members of the public I share a little bit of sympathy actually with the team the academisation and the number of academy secondary schools in the borough makes it incredibly difficult for any officer team to make an impact on attendance I'm just a bit concerned that we have a discussion around attendance mentors which is positive and brilliant but how are they going to help send children because the level of attendance that you're putting them in at is to increase the higher level of attendance so what's happening about send and also just to update the panel that since I've been coming to scrutiny I've got 50% more clients now in Islington and the same problems keep cropping up if you're not making reasonable adjustments for children under the equality act you're never going to sort out the attendance issue and again they're all autistic being denied support getting punishments suspensions the absence is because the send department and we've had this in Camden and the 1.3 million pound a year spend increase now because they didn't have sufficient cover I'm just wondering when that's going to take place within Islington they're going to look at the send provision that could help the schools better that could help with these persistence absence questions because my caseload is growing at a rapid rate in Islington much quicker than it did in Camden and I'm open for discussions conversations I appreciate academy schools don't participate with you guys like they should and could but reasonable adjustments for these send children are not being made which is why they're not in school Thank you Ben Thank you chair not to answer specifically that point but coming back to the point that Mary was making about Ofsted the bottom line I think in terms of Ofsted since the autumn term 2023 I've sat in on 24 inspection feedbacks and that's both across Maintain school the academy sector nursery primary secondary special and alternative provision and in every single one of those inspection feedbacks under the behaviour and attendance strand where sorry behaviour and attitude strand where attendance sits every single school has been rated good or outstanding by Ofsted in terms of the work that senior leaders school leaders and staff have been doing towards attendance and I think one has to look at if schools are doing more than they were doing in 2019 and our outcomes re-attendance and PA are worse COVID and the COVID tail is where the effort needs to be put in terms of schools the local authorities and politicians working collaboratively and in partnership to give school leaders the support that they need to bring about the impact that we're all looking for and in terms of benchmarking with other local authorities absolutely we have lots to learn from our statistical partners in terms of the things that we can be doing moving forward. Attendance is not a tanker that's turned around quickly and the inference that things can be done in one or two terms I think is misleading. This takes time and I think across the borough working in partnership and collaboration it needs to be a collaborative effort and I think the sort of throwing of brick backs we've been there where we need to move forward I think is learning the impact of COVID on our more disadvantaged cohorts and how we might be looking at the finding system how we might be looking at how we work with family hubs how we might be working with those families that are harder to reach that's where the answer lies. Thank you can we quickly respond to Kimberly's point because we've got one more item so if we could respond to that thank you. Thank you chair I'll respond to that those comments I just wish to make a point though beforehand just following on from Ben's comments about the timeliness and how challenging and the time it takes to turn something like this around there are no quick fixes and I really do welcome and I think all officers welcome the challenge and the support from this scrutiny and from our head teachers and again our head teachers in schools and settings who are leading this agenda with the support of officers and partners to really try and turn this around there are no quick fixes we've got a number 98% of our schools rated good or outstanding and they recognize this is a big big challenge but the scrutiny and and chair the proportionate and the measured approach that yourself as chair and the committee are taking in this space is well regarded because we recognize I think all that it's not a quick fix with regards to Kimberly's comments I think we recognize that our 10 children do face significant challenges in this space the attendance mentors as part of the suite of activity that we'll be undertaking to work with schools to enable our schools to be better positioned to support children young people of all needs will be part of one of our approaches so naturally the attendance mentors will be guided by the schools they work with to how effectively they can do so so we won't comment on any individual cases or individual schools but just to say the attendance mentors in isolation will not be the solution but they will certainly be an asset that will enhance our approach to working with all children and young people of all demographics and all different types of needs as well Thank you and if there are no further questions can I ask members to note this item thank you we now move on to school results I think we have read it and I am conscious of time so if we could just get a really brief overview and then I'll take questions I think just a couple minutes oh sorry before we do that a five minute comfort break so members have read the papers on the school results item so Ben if you could just be super brief because of time and then I'll just go straight for questions yeah or is it Paul I think you're speaking on the phone thank you very much chair and thank you again committee members for the interest in this topic which every year we bring forward a report that outlines the key findings and the headlines from the results from public exams that our children and young people across the borough have undertaken so I would like to formally hand over to Ben and just say thank you to Ben and his team for working to pull us together but also I always begin by saying thank you so much to our head teachers and our staff in schools and settings for all working together to ensure or work together to make sure that Islington's children and young people have access to the best possible opportunities and achieve the best possible outcomes so I'm not going to steal this thunder Ben if you want to give us an overview please thank you thank you chair I'm fully fully conscious of time 12 months ago I was in this seat talking about 2023 outcomes and quite rightly you gave me a bit of a bumpy ride one of the questions at the time was well in 12 months time is there going to be an improvement the bottom line is yes there has been in short this is a very very promising and encouraging I would go as far as to say a great set of results notwithstanding that there is still work to be done there are some important key areas but just to highlight the fact that over the past year I think the local authority has been working in closer partnership working with head teachers head teachers senior leaders and teachers in classrooms make these results happen and the local authority recognises that there is incredible expertise in the system in Islington that has contributed to these results the bottom line we have and you've seen the slides but across 19 key performance indicators across early years phonics key stage 2 key stage 4 and key stage 5 of those 19 indicators we are up in 16 from last year so there's been an improvement on those 16 of 19 I'll come to the three shortly where we haven't seen an improvement in terms of national when compared against 19 of those same key performance indicators we are above national for 17 of those 19 where we are below we are we have done less well in early years foundation and phonics and I'm sure there'll be a question read that which I'm more than happy to answer and I think the challenge moving forward as ever is that we are there or thereabouts when you compare us with London in terms of outcomes but in a lot of the KPIs we are either within a percent or less than a percentage against KPIs but we have 10 of those KPIs where we are lower than inner London but I think the direction of travel is certainly going in in the right direction and if I could highlight one area because we have talked about well 2-2 really in terms of the primary school outcomes for combined both expected and high they have outperformed both last year national and very close to regional and not too far behind inner and I think I would like to make a point around secondary outcomes as well in terms of progress so the progress eight figure for our secondary sector as you will have seen from the slides is plus 0.15 that is a considerable improvement on last year and just to put that in context that means that on average if a positive progress eight figure it means that on average youngsters have made better than expected progress based on their prior attainment when they came into secondary at key stage two so building on the excellent work at primary schools youngsters across Islington have made better than expected progress which is the first time I think we are now the 37th out of 152 boroughs we jumped from mid-70s last year so I think a testament to the hard work that goes not just in the secondary but in our early years primary and secondary phase and finally in terms of still work to be done outcomes for our black Caribbean for our white black mixed and for our white disadvantages are still not good enough it is as simple as that and the reasons for that not dissimilar for some of the attendance issues and then you look at some of the send outcomes as well if you were to do a Venn diagram we are dealing with the same stubborn issues in terms of cohorts and families and we all know that attendance high attendance is about having a school environment where young people feel successful achieve feel happy and safe and that will always be our primary so we're not there yet but I think it works for professional partners with schools some of the senior leader networks that we've set up where we are sharing better practice across schools far far more wider than we have done historically and we are definitely going in the right direction thank you thank you Ben I'll take questions and Nick from the value thanks chair Ben I think these are great results really great results and I just want to take the moment to actually recognize that one question particularly about phonics and we struck that you know our phonics results are slightly lower than inner London and lower than England but do you think there was consistency of moderation across the virus is that data being collected in an equitable way I would say the short answer to that is no I think Islington when you look at the moderation of phonics we do it absolutely by the book my team that go into schools and conduct those moderation sessions with schools schools find it both valuable because it is done so robustly and rigorously and what it also does because we do it so robustly and rigorously we know what we need to do to improve so in terms of speech and language difficulties that pupils certainly since COVID have experienced we know the importance of mentoring and modeling training for support staff is really important professional partners that are now going into schools where there has been underperformance are having very constructive conversations with school leaders about how we raise outcomes the targeted approach in terms of phonics is really really key I think we've got I mean I was at a session last week with the senior leader network for primary and nursery these are the assistant heads and deputy heads they had an amazing session where three schools showcase best practice in terms of phonics and you saw the other schools absolutely scrawling away and then during during the break networking can we come and see what you're doing that's where we improve by sharing the amazing practice that happens across schools also some of the frameworks that schools are using I think they've reflected that is is it the right framework are there frameworks that and their models that and with particular cohorts work particularly well that they're not using but they could be using so there is anything but resting on our laurels here and I'm confident that just as I said 12 months ago they're going to there'll be improvements in 12 months time we will see some dramatic improvements in phonics thank you and I think the proof of that is in the key stage 2 results so if something's going right in key stage one absolutely you'll see the outcome in key stage 2 absolutely councillor Vannan thanks chair and it probably is a supplementary to what Nick's just mentioned but it's great that we're looking at best practice at the headship side but what's happening on the lower ground so because I heard you refer about the support staff but I think there is something that we need kind of honing on as well because obviously post the pandemic a lot of those students from you know from let's say EAL backgrounds or from those families that are on low income and maybe not access certain extracurricular activities we heard in the previous brief about the half term you know half term activities that might happen where they get to like verbalise and speak to their peers so how much work is being done there and about the training I guess because obviously I mentioned before about the AI side but how much training is being updated for teaching assistants I know they have a different lifestyle to maybe teachers but I think they're the most integrate part of how our office is going to function going forward if we want to improve on these schools I think we might be missing a trick we don't hone on them and what their needs might be thanks Ben absolutely very much I know this is something that's really close to your heart and so the answer again like like attendance and there are no quick wins here I think what we're talking about when you look at outcomes at key stage 2 so those youngsters that are 11 last year and the outcomes at key stage 4 for young people across Islington that were 15-16 when you look at where they were when Covid hit the key stage 4 the year 11s last year were in year 7 when Covid hit so their education across year 7 and 8 was dramatically impacted by Covid and yet outcomes have improved but you're absolutely right Valerie for those groups where they haven't improved I think that the impact of Covid has been much greater and the point that you made around the training I think starting early so if we look at 11 and 16 year olds moving forward if we look at the results in five years time where we will be higher than in London for all cohorts where are those youngsters now well they're in year 2 they're in year 3 they're in year 4 they're in year 5 and I think it's about that that joined up thinking around how are we working across our early year settings our primaries our secondaries how are we looking at transition how are we supporting some of the families that you just mentioned how are we supporting those families that often go from a very nurturing environment at primary school and then are faced with the challenges of going to a secondary school and suddenly that nurturing environment has been you know nurtured for for many years often isn't continued into the secondary sectoral it's very difficult for secondary colleagues so then pick that batten up and get back to to where families are so there are huge challenges but it's I think it's about proper training you mentioned AI it's about proper training for all staff early on and in terms of the capacity in schools you know particularly primary head teachers in terms of how you deploy your teaching assistants a lot of school leaders have said that historically they may well have had more teaching assistants involved in targeted support with high SEM needs maybe that that happens less now so how how do schools share best practice in terms of that targeted approach and the I mean it was mentioned earlier by by by by Mary it isn't just about targeting support of quality first education in the classroom it's those wider things that families from more disadvantaged backgrounds it's about the cultural extracurricular offer it's about building those key skills around confidence and resilience and aiming high and being ambitious and we've got sorry if we just wrap up because I will do there's more questions to try and and I promised I'd be brief so apologies so around those key skills you know it really is starting young and working with school leaders across all settings and all phases which takes time to embed but that's where we realize we need to go moving forward and I think that's something that resonates with head teachers thank you and just before I take any more if there are and the report was quite thin in comparison to previous years if I remember correctly and there's usually a more granular breakdown for example the permanent exclusions was usually with ethnicity whether they're on free school meals so I think my first point was just the difference in the way the data is presented and lack of data so it's not as granular as it used to be in previous years so for example which leads to my question the permanent exclusions for primary schools it's just got like 2.04 we don't actually have the actual numbers of how many children were suspended or excluded I mean I don't find it quite I don't really understand the data as much as I would the way it was presented previously and just on permanent exclusion as an action point are we communicating to schools that they primary schools specifically that they need to tell the governing body when there are suspensions and exclusions because I think that needs to be that needs to be done again because I think there's a misunderstanding that it's only if there's a certain amount of days that they need to tell the governing board which I don't believe is correct so I think that needs to kind of be done because we do talk about exclusions and suspensions quite a lot but it would be nice to see what actions follow from that so that would be one I would like to request as a committee and just also on the concern around primary school suspensions and exclusions is does the team and I know that this might be difficult but it's not a huge cohort do they track whether those who are excluded in primary school then get then are the same children that are excluded in secondary school so more concerned around the primary exclusions in that aspect because once they've been excluded and have that experience what those outcomes are and again that ethnicity so we can see the disproportion which then links to previously in terms of not reinventing the wheel we did a lot of work around representation across governing bodies and I feel like that's died down as well and have we re-looked at whether we are you know doing that work in terms of more representative governors to address this issue specifically in terms of exclusion suspension thank you Paul thank you chair and as always chair thank you for your focus targeted questions which really do warrant as I say appropriate answers and really helpful as part of our overarching course I'm going to focus on the work with we've been undertaking with governors recently and my colleagues may well decide to come in on some of the other points but colleagues will be aware that in recent months we've put together a chair of governors advisory group which we had our latest meeting last week which we saw 50% increase in attendance and that these meetings where we do talk about masses of this nature and just continue to do reminding reminding reminding and at this meeting last week this the exclusion matter came up as well as attendance and a few other themes as well and we also hold eternally governors briefing as well and again when we talk about these matters so but we recognize chair that we can always remind and remind in writing and in meetings and wherever opportunities arise of systems and processes and making sure that our governing bodies working with their senior leadership team schools are working effectively together to design out the potential risk in this space. The slide with regards to the percentage and the numbers and I'd agree I think I suppose maybe looking going forwards maybe it would be better to when the numbers are so incredibly low as a percentage that we actually have a written number as opposed to a percentage you say I understand we've got no permanent exclusions in the primary phase and so it is incredibly low chair but I think we'll take that as a comment that going forwards when the numbers are so low in terms of percentages that a written number would be more beneficial for the reporting for accuracy. Thank you Paul. I think that answers that then. Claire? And then Anastas? I was just looking at, well I guess I observed the key finding about the black caribbean and mixed white and black caribbean pupils having the lower levels of attainment and then also noticing that they have the lowest progress score as well. So I just wondered what your thoughts were in how you can target and improve that but I think also as a committee what we've learned over the last year is how the whole family has to be involved you know that it's not it's not just the children it's not just the parents it's like that whole children, whole family approach. So just be really interested about what your thoughts are on what we're going to do next in order to improve that area. Great, great question. The global and it sort of goes some way to answer the previous questions of the global majority Governors Network we met a couple of months ago and these are governors across Camden and Islinson that look at exactly these issues and what came up at that meeting was actually greater awareness at governing board level about the sorts of questions that should be asked of senior leaders about outcomes particularly for black Caribbean and black white mixed Caribbean and it is around leadership, around equality, it's about tackling stereotyping, it's about teachers low expectations, it's about a relevant curriculum, it is about targeted support but it is about engaging with families as well recognising that high deprivation, poor housing etc plays a key role. Low literacy levels obviously but fundamentally it's about that ambitious culture in terms of the ambition to succeed and you can't be what you can't see. Do we need more leaders and senior leaders from global majority networks in our schools? Absolutely. Do we need more representation at governing board level? Absolutely. And we are working very hard with all partners to make that a reality. Councillor Semet, just a compliment. In addition we discussed this at the Chair of Government's Advisory Group last week where this had again another outing and that was a similar theme as well. How do we equip, how do we enable, how do we empower our Chairs of Governors with their governing bodies as well as our head teachers. Again, as part of the system and it's a whole system, this is no individual school or setting. This is not just an Islington issue, this is a national issue and as Bernie keeps telling me we were here last year and will probably be here again next year but what can we do? What can we do? Only by working collectively. It's a whole system approach. Do we know if, because it's an overall picture, do we know which schools are doing really well in terms of the attainment with disadvantaged backgrounds or black and ethnic minorities and those that aren't doing so well? We do. In terms of the sharing best practice across our senior leader networks and our school leader networks, that's going to be a focus moving forward. Interesting to say actually with regard to black Caribbean outcomes, when you look at ethnic minority comparisons against disadvantaged and advantaged, the advantage across all ethnic groups do better than the disadvantaged as you might expect. With the exception of black Caribbean, black Caribbean advantaged outcomes are still much lower and more or less the same, certainly secondary, as black Caribbean disadvantaged. So there's some really interesting work to be done about how we unpick those schools that are really achieving great results with the cohorts that we've discussed. What can we learn from them moving forward? Thank you. I'd be interested to know more about that actually, which schools are doing really well. And Nesta? Thank you, Chair. Thanks for the report. I think it's probably fair to say that in September than when we had the provisional results, we were a bit more optimistic from what it might look like. But still, I think the hard work has gone in and all of the colleagues should be applauded for what's gone on. Speaking of kind of applauding the work, the last item on the quality of provision still uses what I would describe to be as antique statements and especially it doesn't recognise all of the hard work that's gone through the Ofsted inspections since last of August. That's not represented in that data. So I think whether Ofsted stick with the current initiative or whether they're going to review that again in terms of what that might look like, whether it's Nando's or a different shop that they're going to go with in terms of their ratings, I think it would be useful to us, again, even internally to have a way that we can represent all that hard work. So again, it'd be good to hear your comments on that. And I think the report very clearly shows in terms of where we need to head forward in terms of inner London. I think that's well recognised. I do wonder though, because that gap has existed for a significant amount of time, just the same way as attendance has as well. I still personally do not understand what is that significant difference. Is it child poverty? And again, if that is the case, I think we need to hear that, because I know council does prioritise that, but then it has to spend a lot more resources in terms of if it wants to narrow that gap. Two very, very good questions. I think, answering the last one first, school leaders, middle leaders, teachers are hugely ambitious for the young people in their classrooms. And the attendance work that's ongoing, it's so important that that is successful, because the more of those youngsters that are back in classrooms, we have fantastic leadership across our schools that will realise the outcomes that you refer to. I think we're certainly heading in the right direction in terms of being online or above inner London, and I'm excited about the future there. In terms of the first point about the Ofsted grades, you're absolutely right, the most recent round of inspections have been more nuanced, although we've not moved to the new framework. They are judged against four, five, six strands, depending on the nature of the setting. Ofsted themselves are wrestling with the semantics, so currently we are looking at the proposal is secure, strong, exemplary. I think it's true to say that Ofsted are nervous about secure, becoming the new, requires improvement, and how do we showcase the great work that's going in schools without slipping back to a system that is not dissimilar to the one that we currently have. So some interesting questions going forward. We've got a couple of schools in Islington that we think will be piloted under the new inspection framework in the summer, and that will give us a huge amount of feedback in terms of how we then support schools moving forward. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Oh, so if I should take a question from Kimberley and then. By the way to check. Yeah. Oh, of course. I don't want to exhaust this point, but thanks, Jay. It's just again about, I'm just going to say this, the quality of teaching. And this is not to put any, you know, stress on anyone. But I think, again, from the council's perspective, if there's anything that we can do, and I know we do things like, you just mentioned about the governors meeting up and doing training on maybe ethnicity, you know, how we, even as councillors are corporate parents and stuff like that. But I think it just goes back to about, you know, there is not enough capacity for teachers to do so much and they're already stretched. So if there's anything that we can do, you know, and again, it goes back to our comms, about our libraries, it's about our Afghans, our Ukrainian kids that have come in. Where are they also going forward? Because we don't want them to become, again, a part of that slippery slope. And back to council minister's point, we have been here before where we've talked about the Caribbean students that are failing. And I just, a little bit frustrated again, because I didn't think we'd kind of be back here. But we do need to see what the schools are, where the schools are failing those particular students, and see where the other Caribbean kids are across the other schools that are doing really well, because it won't be all of them. But again, that best practice has to be shown, so we're not back here again, hearing the same things 2026, 2027. Thank you. Thank you, Bella. Ben, if I could take Kimberly's question, I know you can answer. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's about page 19, the attainment aid and the SEN support, the EHCP figures. These are the children that cost the council the most money per headcount, because an education healthcare plan comes with additional funding on top of the other SEN. And I'm just looking at the figures, and just wanting to understand a little bit more about why the children you spend the most amount of money on are not achieving the same as even in a London or national average, when actually when you look at the other SEN support, it's not the same kind of picture. Thank you. Thank you. That's a... Kimberly, which slide am I looking at here? Page 19. Key Stage 4 SEN provision, Attainment 8, Progress 8. And it was just the figures for the EHCP. Yeah. It kind of, it's quite glaringly obvious, and this is my bread and butter, is education healthcare plans and how much they cost the council. And I know that education healthcare plans are inputted so that children can maintain, keep up with the kids. Thank you. And if you don't have those figures, can we get them written? Can we get a written response if not? It's a very good question, and it comes back again, I think to Valerie's point, the pressure on schools to be doing more with less, and how do we share best practice, and how do we look at the schools that are achieving very strong outcomes. When you look at EHCP figures in terms of progress, EHCP young people last year were broadly just under a grade, worse than their peers in Islington. That was better than National, but not as good as Inner London. So I think, once again, as with a lot of the other KPIs, Kimberly, it's about how can we look at the best practice for EHCP youngsters in our schools, so that we are then on a part, if not better than Inner London, moving forward. So if I can come back, the whole point of an education healthcare plan is not sharing best practice, and doing what other schools do, it's doing the bespoke provision that's in Section F of the plan, that has to be written for that individual child, and must be delivered. I must see three or four a week that I'm reading of your education healthcare plan, not specified and quantified. It hasn't even been fully assessed, not all needs are in there. You know, there's an awful lot missing. I know some of the reasons why this is not working. Thank you, thank you completely, thank you. Sorry, if there are no further questions, can I ask members to note this report. And can we also agree the next, the work programme, because we've got a meeting from Monday the 12th that wasn't agreed. And if there are no urgent matters, I'll bring this meeting to a close. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.