Transcript

Welcome to this meeting. My name is Councillor Sheila Boswell, and I am chair of the Children's Overview and Scrutiny Committee. The normal procedure is that we do a roll call of everyone who is present. So, members of the committee, I will now call your names. In alphabetical order, you know the format. Please switch on your microphone to confirm your attendance. Once you've confirmed your attendance, please remember to switch off your microphone. So, I'm going to go through the list of the committee membership in alphabetical order. Councillor Aps. Present. Good evening, Chair. Councillor Birchall. Good evening, Chair. Councillor Corner. Good evening. Councillor Crivelli. Good evening. Councillor Davies. Good evening, Chair. Councillor Lee. Good evening. Councillor Osborne. Good evening, everybody. Councillor Owens. Good evening, everybody. And Councillor Paul. Good evening. Now, this committee, unusually here at Wandsworth Town, has some, Wandsworth Council, has a number of co-opted members. So, I would like to welcome Ms. Nabila Haroon, who is with us this evening. And I would also like to welcome Mr. Anthony Langdon, who is a parent governor. And also, Mrs. Areen Walsenholm, who is from the Southwark Diocese, Board of Education, Church of England. Good evening. And I believe joining us online is Ms. Sam Gower from the Catholic Southwark Archdiocese. Is Sam with us? I can't see. Yes. Welcome. Yeah, that's correct. Thank you. Welcome to you, Sam. I apologise for the back of my head. I would also like to welcome our Cabinet Member for Children, Councillor Kate Stock. Good evening, everybody. And as you can see, we have a number of officers present around the table and in the room, and they will introduce themselves as they address the committee. So, welcome, everyone, to today's Children's Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting. Welcome. And I'd actually like to begin by expressing gratitude to the entire Breadstowes School community in Broadstairs, Kent, for hosting our committee members for a site visit last month. It was an absolute privilege to visit the school. And we want to thank you for facilitating our meaningful and constructive conversation with the staff, and also we spoke to the parents online. And I think we would all join in saying thank you to those of us that went thank you to you for giving us such a warm reception. It's National Apprenticeship Week this week. We always like to flag up one of these special weeks at committee, and we want to recognise that. It's a vital occasion that highlights the significant impact apprenticeships have on individuals, businesses, and our wider economy. During our previous meeting, we talked about and explored the council's really, really impressive youth offer here in Wandsworth, and we highlighted, as we so often do at this committee, our ambitions for all our young people in Wandsworth. I'm proud to say that in partnership with various stakeholders, and we have some very high-profile stakeholders here in Wandsworth, we're very lucky. Our council is dedicated to nurturing talent and promoting career development for our young people. And I know whenever I speak at schools to young people who are soon to be leaving, I always say that they are so lucky because they were not only born in the greatest city in the world, they are also in a borough which has some of the most amazing opportunities for them because we have Apple headquarters here, we have all sorts of opportunities for our young people, and to grab it with both hands. I'm sure we'd all agree on that. Okay. So that brings us to agenda items. So we are at agenda item one, which is declaration of interests. Are there any declarations of interest, pecuniary or otherwise? Yes, councillor corner. It's a non-pecuniary interest, but I am a governor of the pupil referral unit here in Wandsworth. Thank you very much. Is that noted? That's right. Chair? I'm not sure that it is really for special interest, but I am chair of the pupil referral unit. So I ought to at least make that clear. Thank you. Thank you very much, Councillor Osborne. Yes, I suppose it comes under non-registerable interest, but as we've got a paper on that. Thank you to both of you. And then for, please declare, no, sorry, I'm in the wrong place. Here we go. Co-optive members, we know this on the voting, but it's just to remind you about voting on papers for executive decision that are to do with the education function of this council and not children's services. So you wouldn't be voting on those. We've got two papers on which are for decision this evening, finance papers, and you can vote on both of those because they're connected to our education function. That brings me to item two, which is the minutes. The minutes of the previous meeting held on the 3rd of December agreed. So we take that that Councillor Davies was present. Thank you very much. And that brings us to item three. So this is a petition presented to the council referred formally to Children's Overview and Scrutiny Committee, paper number 25 to 63. Before starting on this, I would just like to say that the council is acutely aware of the profound effects this process is having on students, families, educators, and the broader Broadstairs Kent community. And we are steadfast in our dedication to listening, supporting, and acting with empathy and kindness. Our commitment remains to support our families and staff as we navigate these steps together, addressing any issues that may arise with sensitivity and care, that everyone should bear that in mind this evening. Now, we have a deputation request. That's come, it's a separate paper, number 25 to 80. So formally, at this point, I, because we have a deputation request, I have to ask the committee whether they agree to receive the deputation, and I have to read out this wording. For the committee to receive the deputation, understanding order number 13, in connection with the report on the petition presented to the council, and referred formally to Children's Overview and Scrutiny Committee, paper number 25 to 63, in relation to the consultation on the closure of Bradstow Residential School and children's homes. And it's in the agenda pack. And a copy of the deputation request is included in the supplementary agenda, which was circulated earlier today. So, committee, are we agreed to receive the deputation? Agreed. Thank you very much. So I now have to read out. No, I don't. Not committee. I'm going to ask Sarah Adams to come to the table. I think Ms. Wright. It is going to bring Sarah, who is the lead deputation member. Sarah, if you'd like to come to the table. And join us. Good evening, Sarah. I'm going to ask you to outline the points in the deputation, and you have five minutes to address the committee when you're ready. Thank you. Good evening, and thank you for giving us the opportunity to address this committee tonight. On behalf of the Bradstow community, our leadership, governors, staff, and most of all, the children and families we serve, we appreciate your time and engagement. We are especially grateful to those of you who have visited our school and witnessed firsthand both the complexities and the vulnerabilities of our children. Your conversations with families revealed the heart-wrenching challenges they face just to reach Bradstow, a place where their children are finally happy, secure, and able to thrive. The proposal to close Bradstow has left our families in a state of desperation. For them, this decision is not just a matter of short-term education and care, it has life-changing consequences. The closure of Bradstow would have profound and lasting impacts, not just for our children and their families, but for the entire national special educational needs landscape. Sorry. The closure of Bradstow would have profound and lasting impacts, not just for our children and their families, but for the entire national special educational needs landscape. There is already a severe shortage of residential and specialist placements for the most complex and vulnerable children. Without Bradstow, many of these children face bleak futures. Some will likely be placed in inappropriate settings where their needs cannot be properly met, putting them at significant risk. Others may be forced to return home without any meaningful educational support due to the lack of suitable alternatives. Those who do find placements will likely be sent further away from their families, increasing their isolation at a time when they need stability and care the most. We have submitted a detailed consultation response, which outlines the financial viability of the school and presents clear opportunities for Bradstow to thrive moving forward. Contrary to the consultation's premise, Bradstow is not only viable, it has the very real opportunity to grow and thrive. Our leadership team has worked to present a sustainable path forward, and we are confident that Bradstow can continue to deliver the high-quality care and education that so many children and families desperately need and deserve. We are also pleased to share that Bradstow is officially partnered with Cygnus Academy Trust. We are now actively conducting mutual due diligence and are keen to move forward with the academisation of the school. We ask that the committee supports us in enabling this transition to take place with appropriate timelines and to find agreement on a deal that works for both parties, ensuring continuity of care and education for our children. At Bradstow, challenges are not seen as obstacles, but as opportunities for growth. This mindset has allowed us to identify practical, achievable solutions for concerns raised in the consultation. More importantly, we have a clear vision to ensure Bradstow continues to serve as a beacon of hope for children and families. Our business plan is simple.

1. Restructure staffing to ensure an appropriate overhead for the number of pupils.
2. Reset fees based on a newly established cost and a new core offer of one-to-one provision, informed by a detailed needs-based assessment of the Bradstow cohort.
3. Grow pupil numbers back up to 60 sustainably over time, increasing costs only in line with pupil growth and demand. By growing steadily over the next three years, we can build a healthy margin into our revenues, recover the deficit and establish a sustainable surplus to safeguard the school's future. This is not a typical school closure driven by declining enrolment. Quite the opposite. Demand for our services is increasing. Even under the shadow of closure, local authorities are still seeking places at Bradstow because they have nowhere else to turn. Closing our school would exacerbate an already dire situation, leaving countless children without the support they need. Bradstow is more than a school. It is a community. Former students and families remain connected to us, and we continue to support one another long after children leave our care. Our dedicated staff see each child as an individual, not just a list of diagnoses or challenges. We break down barriers, challenge societal beliefs, and advocate fiercely for the children we serve. Our community stands united in the belief that there will always be a solution. Our business plan is clear, achievable, and rooted in our commitment to providing children with the care, education, and future they deserve. Our academy partner, Cygnus, is committed to driving a successful transition to a new oversight structure, which offers new opportunities for the future. Together, these proposals refute the claims that the school cannot be financially viable, and has no viable alternative to closure, which were the central tenets of the closure proposal. We urge you to consider not just the facts and figures which we can evidence, but also the moral imperative to do what is right. Radstow fulfills a strong and growing need in our society, and it is a place of hope, aspiration, and opportunity. Together, we can ensure it remains so for generations to come. Our ask, it is clear that Wandsworth Local Authority is seeking to bring to an end to its oversight, and responsibilities for Radstow. You have reached five minutes, so if you can bring it to a close. Thank you. Thank you. So I'm now going to ask the committee if they have any questions for Sarah Adams. Councillor Paul. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for your insightful address. As we strive to ensure the best educational outcomes for all children, can you share with us, the committee, the current Ofsted rating of the school and highlight any key findings from the most recent inspection? I'm particularly interested in what aspects of the inspection were praised, and also any sort of issues of improvement that was identified, and also to understand how you were intending to address those. So currently, we have had a number of Ofsted inspections over the last year or so. Many of those have been linked to the children's homes inspections. So we had three registered provisions in the children's homes, so one 38-week provision and two 52-week homes that had separate registrations. Thank you. So they were all inspected separately, so we had many inspections going on at the same time. The findings were very similar across all three of the registrations, and they linked to administration of medication and concerns around those areas in the main. Those areas, I'm pleased to say, have been addressed. So our most recent inspection for the children's home, which was back in November now, just before Christmas, was good overall, with one requirement still outstanding that was linked to health care plans matching up with some of the administration, but it was not a major cause for concern. The education inspection, that happened at the end of the last academic year, so previously we were outstanding the year before. Then we had an unannounced sort of inspection under Section 8 that looked at safeguarding specifically to see if it was effective. They deemed at the time that it was effective, but then around six weeks later, the Ofsted education decided that there wasn't enough evidence for that judgment to be so. So they came with three senior HMI for the education inspection to look at safeguarding again. They deemed it as effective, but triggered a full inspection. So all areas within the education Ofsted, which are quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, and personal development were outstanding, and leadership and management was deemed as required improvement. So therefore, the whole judgment was moved to required improvement from outstanding. But we are very confident that we've already addressed the issues, which were around parental communication, and some issues around making sure that parents were in touch with incidents of behaviours of concern when they occurred. So we've done a lot of work around that, and I'm confident that if any inspector came in, we would be back up to outstanding. Do you have a supplement? Yeah, just wanted to understand, because you were saying previously in terms of work, could you give me like the timelines of the years and things? Yep, so we had an inspection in 2023 for education that was outstanding across all areas, outstanding overall, and we had an inspection in 2024. I think it was around May time to say that safeguarding was effective, and then in June, I think it was in 2024, we had a full inspection, and that was the required improvement overall. And then the care home, there were multiple inspections throughout the year, you know, academic year 2023 to 2024, and continue, because they come biannually anyway, and they can come in and do monitoring and assurance visits whenever they see fit. So we've had a number of those over the year. We're very linked up with our lead inspector, so we're open and honest and transparent about where we are, and we were able to demonstrate that in the November inspection about, you know, where we are, the improvements we made, and where we're moving to as well, you know, with reference to looking at outstanding. Councillor Osborne, I think you have a question, and then Councillor Corner. Yes, thank you for your presentation. I note that the trade union, the GMB, have expressed concerns about the situation at the school. Can you tell us in detail, how confident are you that the school community, parents, yes, but the school community, as represented, the staff at the school, as represented by the trade unions, are actually supportive of your proposals for the way forward? I would say I'm very confident that they want to move forward with the proposals that we're suggesting. The article was disappointing, I think, for GMB members, and they have expressed concerns about being within the GMB, but do not wish to leave the GMB, because they don't want to be in a position where they haven't got representation at the moment. That's what's being said on the ground. Many members of the GMB are not accepting of the line that has been taken with regard to that. Councillor Osborne, did you want to come back? I do. Can you give us a bit more detail? How do you know? I mean, is there any expression of this disagreement by the GMB on the ground, as you put it, with the position that's been officially put by the GMB? How are we supposed to sort out the difference between the two? What's the evidence for what the GMB on the ground is saying? Yeah, there was an indicative ballot to confirm non-confidence in the leadership and to look at potential strike action. Obviously, in terms of meeting the young, it's down to the GMB to decide whether or not they propose those actions. But many staff have come to different colleagues across the board and expressed that that's not an avenue that they wish to support. But obviously, that's not my, you know, that's not for me to say one way or another. So what was the result of the ballot? It was 80, I think it was 83% non-confidence and around 85% for strike action. But it's not clear on what the data is that sits underneath that. Non-confidence in? Leadership. Of? Yep. Leadership of the school? Yes, yep. So 83% non-confidence in leadership of the school? Yep. 85% for strike action? That's my understanding, yes. But it's not clear what the figures are that sit underneath that. Thank you, Sarah. I think Councillor Corner would like to come in now. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Miss Adams, for your really compelling presentation to this committee. And thank you to everyone from the Bradstow community who's travelled a long way to be here this evening. We really appreciate it. Just on a point of information, I think this GMB statement that's been referred to, on the 28th of January, the GMB actually said that they were calling on Wandsworth Council to save the school and residential unit from closure. So in that regard, I'm really glad to hear GMB taking that position. So I don't think Councillor Osborne was being entirely representative of what the GMB was saying. However, I think given recent discussions at this committee, it's generally agreed that the long-term future of Bradstow lies outside of control of Wandsworth, and probably more in an academy-type way of operating. So, Miss Adams, could you talk about the discussions you've had with academies and how long you think that it will take to transition to academy status, and also the impact that the consultation is having with the school at the moment, especially with regards, and it's pointed out in your report, and response to the consultation, I think 40 members of staff have already submitted their resignations and others might be thinking of doing so because of the uncertainty of the school. So I'd really like the committee to be clear on how likely it is you are going to be able to academise and the risk that the consultation presents to the school being able to successfully conclude that process. Yeah, if I may, I can pass that over to my colleague. Good evening, everybody. Nice to see you. I'm Paul O'Dwyer. I am a parent of a young child at Bradstow today, and I'm a member of the Board of Governors. I've been particularly involved since the sudden announcement on November the 11th trying to work with the school and the whole community to find alternatives because this was one of the key tenets cited behind the rationale for the school's closure. So in a very short period of time, we have done an analysis of 18 different academy trusts. We have conducted research on their performance, their history, their financial status, the position of all of their schools, their vision and their experience. We shortlisted seven and contacted the CEOs of all seven. We have had positive feedback from four of them, one of whom we, as Sarah has already said, has now signed an agreement with us. We had the very strong intent to make the academisation of the school a reality. We're extremely confident, extremely impressed, in fact, with the professionalism and determination of this particular leadership team and its trust. We have a strong alignment of vision and intent for the future of the school and have been very impressed by their diligence and speed of progress in working with us. They've already spoken with a number of the officers here at Wandsworth, and I know you're becoming increasingly familiar with them. We have another three academies sitting in the wings who I have been able to say, thank you for your interest. We have an academy with whom we have now entered a formal agreement, and we would like to pause further discussions with those other academy trusts in order to focus everybody's efforts and resources onto a single path. They wait in the wings, and they have told us if we need to speak to them again, they're ready to do so. Two of those are national specialists in this space and are very interested in the credentials of the school. So we feel in a very strong position that academisation of this school is viable, it's eminently achievable, and it awaits us. It awaits us. In terms of timelines, we've laid out clearly with the academy what the steps in this journey ahead of us are. I'd be happy to share those with you if you wanted to hear them. But we're all working as fast as possible, but as thoroughly as possible, to make sure that this is a success for everybody concerned. We're appreciative that the feedback from Wandsworth so far has been supportive, and we must trust and hope that you continue to provide that support because it's essential for this school to have a future. In terms of timelines, I think it, well, I hope it stands to reason that we're working as fast as we possibly can, but we must not cut corners. The other thing to bear in mind here is there are a series of steps with the DfE that we will have to work through. There's a consultation process for academisation in its own right that has to be properly conducted. These things cannot be rushed, and we want to make sure that we have the proper focus and space to do that job properly and to make sure that the transition into that academy is seamless and smooth and professionally managed. Thank you very much for such a comprehensive answer. I think, Councillor Birchall, I had you next in asking a question, but would that be to Ms Adams? Well, it's sort of probably to Ms Adams, but it's also to... Is it Ms Adams? Ms Road-Dwyer, yes. Yeah, Ms Road-Dwyer. It probably comes to a parent governor as well. I can quickly answer and then hand it over to you. So, thank you so much for showing us around the school. It was very enlightening. At the meeting that we had here before Christmas, I didn't have the full feeling of the school. But going there, I really felt how important everything you were doing was. So, the premise of the consultation was all about the financial viability of the school. But if we... I would like to ask Ms Adams the point of the education that you're giving these young people is helping quite a lot of them being able to continue with possibly only a one-to-one care, one-to-two care. They're going to be able to function in supported living in a not-too-expensive way. If they don't have this provision at Bradstow, they might end up in one of these long-stay hospitals where the provision is not good or somewhere where the provision is going to cost an awful lot. So, to me, it seems as if it's a forced economy closing the school because if we can get these children into their adult life able to control their emotions a little bit, that is a real investment into the children's lives. Do you have a question? Well, maybe somebody could actually explain to the committee what the school is doing and how that... Do you agree with me that it is an investment in their lives? I can give you... try to give you a succinct answer to some implied questions in what you're saying. Thank you for that. This school changes lives. There is no question. It changes lives in the short, medium and the long term. I know from my own child's time at the school the dramatic change in his ability to cope with situations around him, environments, sensitive issues that he struggles with, and the ability to interact with others have dramatically developed in his time at the school. There are many testimonials that a number of you have heard from ex-parents who have moved on from this school and remain in contact simply because of the difference it's made to their entire family's lives. The school equips its young people with the tools, the techniques, and the behavioral attitudes to be able to thrive in the future. Parents speak in amazement at the difference that this school can make for them. In terms of cost of the provision, that was another element really that you were referring to, I think you should be able to see in the detailed report that we've provided you the analysis that we've done on the financial position of the school as we now see it moving forwards is very favorably and competitively benchmarked with a range of other schools providing comparable provisions. We also know that for many of the parents faced with a dramatic change of their life should this school be closed, they face alternatives which may be at great distances away which will be higher cost for all concerned let alone the impact on that young person's prospects. Thank you very much Mr. Edward. Thank you. I think I've got Councillor Davies next and then Councillor Thank you. Yeah, I want to express my gratitude to all the teachers and the care workers at Bradstove their dedication in helping every children thrive and thank you it's good to hear your testament. But the paper refers to Kent owing £2.7 million and of which £1.9 million Kent County Council are categorically refusing to pay. This sorry this might I mean I don't know I might pass this over to my head of business colleague if you mind swapping. So yeah so really what I'd like to know please is what measures have the school taken to engage with paying councils including Kent County Council on the non-payment of fees for the children supported at Bradstove you know we know that the school leaders whether it be the senior leadership but also the governors they are ultimately responsibility have the responsibility for that management of the income and expenditure thank you so thank you very much I'm Polly Benton I'm the school business manager I joined the school in November and became aware of all of the details relating to the financial position of the school I was aware of some of it at interview but what was apparent to me at that point was that although my predecessors had been across the situation with unpaid debt they had not been leading at any stage the conversations with any of the local authorities on unpaid debt those conversations have sat with the officers at Wandsworth to date they have had the meetings they have led the correspondence they have led the legal challenge to Kent on the unpaid debt that is not it has not ever been in my understanding the school leading either the charging the setting of fees the sending of invoices nor the chasing of debt with the local authorities we would very much like that to change we would like to be involved in those conversations and we have talked to the officers at Wandsworth and we are in agreement that we will be stepping into those conversations to support we are very keen to support in evidencing the provision for the Kent disputed fees in particular and providing anything that we can whether that is paperwork whether that is evidencing the need for provision of those young people to support in that dispute but we have not I have not to date been included or involved in those conversations with Kent County Council and so do not have the ability at this stage to chase that debt but we do want to be involved we absolutely want going forward for conversations with commissioners at all local authorities to be conversations that are had initially jointly between the school and ones of council and going forward between the school Cygnus Academy and the local authorities do you want to ask something yeah so I'm just trying to tease a little bit I can hear the dedication of the governors here but the governors in the past they haven't taken a role in auditing finances or looking at or you know monitoring what's happening the governors have of course taken I can't speak for the governors and happy to pass it over of course the governors have been across the finances but they have never been responsible for the chasing of debt that has sat with ones of council officers thank you for that councillor lee I think I've got next and then councillor creveli absent osborne sorry my question was answered I will hand over to was it osborne councillor creveli can I ask a question that's for miss adams and that's I don't know how familiar you are with other schools in wandsworth and the sort of sand provision that they have but one of the arguments you put forward at Bradstow is obviously that you offer a specialist facility and if Bradstow is not there that specialist facility wouldn't be offered can I just ask you to draw a comparison between the facility that you offer at Bradstow and other SEND schools in wandsworth in particular I would ask you I don't know if you're familiar with paddock which we are recently investing in an expansion and if you could do that I'd be very grateful so committee members can understand the distinction between your school and other SEND schools okay yes I am aware of the day special school provision and I understand the investment that is currently going into paddock and that's admirable the children that Bradstow serve are young people that need a residential and specialist education environment many of our children have come to us through the school system so they've already been through the day special school system unfortunately and when young people arrive with us at Bradstow they have had placement breakdown usually several they have experienced trauma from placement breakdown and continual moving their families have experienced trauma and breakdown of their family unit and then sometimes it's because of the circumstances at home are just too unsafe to manage for families families have told us their experience and many of them have had their children at home because no day school provision would be able to take them and meet their need so unfortunately our children do come to us with that back story so they have already been through a school like paddock and we do take children from Wandsworth that have not been able to have their needs met at day special school in Wandsworth in terms of the children's needs it's usually the behaviours of concern that our young people demonstrate because of their needs that means that they come to our specialist provision they come with complex challenges you know that they've learned over many many years to have their needs met and they centre around their needs around sensory processing their needs around communication we do positive behaviour support which is about understanding what the behaviour is telling us it's a dialogue and we have to unpick all of that for each individual and teach them a new way of communicating their needs and that is what we do at Bradstow every day so our staff team work towards that so it's great that Paddock are having a lot of investment I think that's fantastic you know the more SEN provision the better but that won't serve the children that attend Bradstow unfortunately thank you councillor apps thank you and thank you first of all for coming from the school in Kent today having made the journey as part of our visit you know I really appreciate that it's a distance you know and it's a real effort for you to come here tonight so thank you so much I wanted to ask about you know you've been very clear and it's been very useful to hear about the specialised help for children which is so important I know that we need to ensure that there's a financial sustainability for the school in the future so that we can safeguard those children and make sure that those children are well looked after I understand that the work that you've done indicates that the cost per child is about $254,000 so what I'd be interested to know is what work you've done perhaps with our officers perhaps yourselves to find out how many of the 10 local authorities that currently have children at Bradstow how many have agreed to pay at this level at the moment thank you so in terms of the second part of your question how many have agreed to pay at this level we've not yet at this stage had those conversations with each of the local authorities our benchmarking gives us great confidence our benchmarking includes schools that we know placements have been our young people have been assessed for placements whether or not they're available but we know that our benchmarking is in line with very similar comparable provisions that our young people would be being considered for we haven't had those conversations with local authorities yet for a few reasons and one is that we still need to talk to local authorities about the unpaid fees from the autumn the spring term fees the summer term fees and then that forward-looking conversation for September we are in the process with the support of the ones with officers of setting up those meetings to have those conversations about fees and they are of course conversations we need to have in the time frames we've had to us so far for putting this business plan together for coming up for doing the work to calculate those fees we have not had the opportunity to have those conversations but given the benchmarking I'm confident that we are in line with the broader provisions that are comparable in terms of the work that was done to come to those fees we've done a very big costing exercise we have a restructured proposal that we have been in conversation with ones with officers about bringing our costs right down in the short term while we have fewer pupil numbers and that has enabled us to do a detailed pricing analysis that allocates our cost across our day provision and our residential provision and we've done a detailed bottom up to get to those fee levels thank you very much for that answer we're best thank you I have Councillor Osborne next then Councillor Owens then Councillor Corner and then I saw Ms. Haroon with your hand up and then I think we need to move on to the other part of the yep okay just can I give notice that I really ought to come back and explain in greater detail the position of the GMB because Councillor Corner's description of it was less than 100% fully accurate but never mind I'll come back to park that for now I'll come back to it the question I want to ask is about academization and the that's a decision for governors to make and I'm interested to know what has happened already and what's happening as we go forward on this possibility of academization and there were some points made earlier on that I want to come back and check up on so first of all obviously if you're looking at academization then there is a premium on having a strong financial position to go into that kind of a relationship so before we got to this process has there been any contact was anybody approached beforehand about that kind of academy type relationship we've heard about Cygnus this evening but then we heard a reference I think earlier on to three other bodies waiting in the wings and I'd be interested to know what those other three were and if they'd been contact with them earlier than the process we're involved in at the moment thank you for the question let me try and work my way through that structured way if I can first of all you said something about beforehand you know what sort of assessments analyses were done beforehand if you're referring if you mean by beforehand prior to the declaration of the intent to enter consultation closure the answer is none there was no contact with any academy prior to the announcement to initiate consultation for closure of the school that was something of a surprise for us and it was particularly notable that one of the key tenets of the closure rationale was that there were no viable alternatives all we've been able to ascertain about that is that there was a conversation that was held with the DFE and it was a view expressed that there would not be any academy interest in the school that's all we know what we can say is that we were not aware of we were not involved with nor did the governors until November the 11th have any clear need to have any conversations about academization of the school since then as I said earlier we have done our own detailed research we have reached out we have had conversations we have had day-long meetings with a number of CEOs and leadership teams of different academy trusts they're all multi academy trusts no single our analyses to shortlist those that we wanted to speak to included as I mentioned an assessment of prior performance Ofsted findings on all of their schools across their portfolios the academies ranged from having a complement of three schools up to over 30 schools so it was quite a range that we looked at and financial status was also a key part of our thinking and that was on multiple levels you know it was about debt levels it was about cash in hand and in bank it was about the progression of their cash positions and their investment plans over recent years now all of this of course is subject to further due diligence at this time so we're working through that together we have a long list of questions we are asking of sickness to make sure that we are happy that they bring all that we hope that they do so far all the lights are green and I said that we had some other academies that we have spoken to and after those meetings we have taken the decision to speak to them and say because we want to focus our efforts on one particular leading academy with whom we have now signed a mutual agreement to proceed we want to put those other academies on hold to not waste anybody's time does that clarify just a quick supplementary do I take it then that you're not in a position to name the other three academies that you've talked to I don't wish to in a public environment like this I don't think that's fair for them and I don't think it's appropriate I hope you'll respect that absolutely Councillor Owens and then Councillor Corner thank you and the visit we had last month was incredibly helpful it was a really interesting day we spent at the school I just have a couple of questions ties in a bit to the academisation and the proposal but also around what we've been led to believe in terms of demand because we had been told at various stages that the numbers of children that are in residential places that once was placed alone has collapsed and numbers that I'd heard I may be getting these wrong but at one point we had maybe 50 children and now it's 18 or something like that and that is not unusual across the country and at the same time obviously you yourselves have local authorities that you're talking to but another area we've also learned is that subsequently that obviously the children that are currently in the school all apparently have places or most virtually all of them will have places by the end of the school year I'm just curious as to where you obviously see demand coming from because there must be demand as you have said in the past that there are children who won't have places even though we've been told something else and where those children would be coming from and how you would be building the school up because obviously at the moment there's only 28 pupils with a capacity for 62 and you're not clearly overnight going to be doing that thank you yeah I can give you some brief responses to that my colleagues may wish to add to it let's bear in mind the context there are very limited schools nationwide that have the capability and the levels of provision that could support and cater for the needs of the cohort of children that Bradstow has and continues to serve I'm a parent I've done my own research we've been doing our own research for the last four years it took us best part of 18 months to even get a chance of getting our child a foot in the door at Bradstow we have done our own research to establish how many schools and of those few schools how many places might they be able to offer us because that's what's important here so we have a situation now where there are very few schools that we could consider and we have so far been turned down by multiple schools on the basis that they do not have the places available they are all full and oversubscribed there's your first point of evidence about the demand that's out there second point of evidence is that we at Bradstow continue to have every week multiple new requests from local authorities and families who are desperate to find a placement of this kind for their children some of these children are in desperate situations their families alongside them we have more than enough demand to make sure that we can run the school at capacity as we all know there is a desperate need for placements like this across the country thank you I have Councillor corner next and then Ms. Haroon and Ms. Wiltonholm and then I think we really must move on to the next part of this which is then to go to the paper and members of the committee will be able to ask officers questions so Councillor thank you chair I actually think Mr. O'Dwyer gave what would be the answer to my question very eloquently just then so I won't ask a specific question although I would just draw attention the committee's attention again to the letter from the chief executive officer of the Cignus academies trust who has asked us today to support the request to halt the proposed closure thank you Councillor corner Ms. Haroon yeah thank you Paul for sharing such a comprehensive report with us so I have a question regarding the school finances so on the page number seven you just mentioned there's a surplus in year 2324 which is roughly 9000 and then 2425 you budgeted roughly 1 million so my question is is kind of like very severely unbudgeted the finance balance by the variance almost 500 percent so could you clarify this point because to be very honest this is kind of very unrealistic so sorry just to clarify so the variance between the 24 to 25 budgeted amounts and then the estimated where we're going to end up so the difference between those two is the fact that in the summer the decision was taken to reduce the pupil numbers drastically the 52 week homes were closed at that point there was a rebudgeting exercise again before I joined the school but there was a rebudgeting exercise done that the outlook for the year with almost half the number of pupils was very different so that's the reason for the very different look of the original budgeted numbers and the estimated numbers for the end of this year and apologies that wasn't made clear in the narrative for the table thank you thank you very much Ms. Wilsonholm did you have a question you may have answered much of this already I was just wanting to ask specifically about Kent the school is obviously in Kent and a good number of the peoples come from Kent we have been told that actually Kent think that they can find alternative educational provisions do you feel that that is the case and if so would that actually drive them well make the budgeting that you have done actually null and void shall we say let me think carefully how to respond to this question I'm a Kent parent we had our first engagement with anybody from Kent a week ago today I'm in touch with all the parents at the school and Kent may claim that they perhaps hope and intend to find placements for 10 people do they have those placements active in motion do we have offers for 10 Kent pupils on the table today no we do not does that answer your question thank you thank you very much Mr O'Dar for that very candid answer so we're going to move to the other part of this now our cabinet member Councillor Stock would like to say something thank you very much chair I just wanted to it's been I'm very grateful that you've come and been able to share your views and the committee have had the opportunity to listen to everything that you've been able to share with us about where the school is at now where it's been where we hope it can get to in the future so thank you very much for that the committee is here to listen as am I as our officers and I hope we can continue to work together in the future just from my perspective while you are here I just want to really thank you for welcoming me and I know other members of the committee have been to the school as well visiting during school time was a real privilege it was I particularly enjoyed seeing some of the rebound therapy in the gym and I know that's very popular with pupils and also the opportunity to hear directly from parents about their poignant experiences I do hear that and I do understand what you've shared then and what you've shared tonight and what's coming out I'm sure through the consultation in terms of the impact and the provision of young people we understand that and that will be taken into account also really grateful to come down Saturday at the weekend as well to your community day and really see a celebration of Branstow in that wider community in Broadstairs in Kent so thank you very much for putting that on and that I was able to join as I said I think I understand what's being said about the impact that the school has however I think everybody around the table is acknowledging the financial impact and that can't be wished away that the school does carry currently a £1.2 million deficit and that's driven by financial challenges generally within this sector but also very frustratingly the unwillingness of some councils to pay for the support needed for the pupils at school and we're committed to supporting children with special educational needs in Wandsworth it's absolutely imperative that we meet their needs and it's very frustrating that other councils particularly I think Kent County Council has not taken that view and I know parents who I've spoken to directly some on Saturday are equally frustrated with that and in fact are coming to us to say how can we support the school and the council in recovering that debt just in terms of academization I suppose I think I am optimistic about that prospect that we can pursue that to secure the school's future and I think it's clear from what's been shared and from what I understand that the council is committed to supporting that but I guess I'm pragmatic also about the financial challenges that the schools face and as I just said that can't be wished away I think we should all be conscious of the fact that discussions were had with the council from the document that you provided an academy who have experience of running five special schools were also interested in the transfer but they've stepped away recently so I think it's really important that we progress this academisation conversation at pace I am slightly concerned to hear that there are other academies possibly waiting in the wings that wasn't something that I personally was aware of I don't know if that's something that has been aware of it's absolutely transparent if we're going to work in partnership to secure the future of the school it's absolutely paramount that there must be transparent conversations to ensure that this can progress so I would just hopefully if this is a dialogue and it's a two-way conversation then I hope that's heard and things can progress to make sure that this is a transparent and open conversation about how the school can for children so we're now going to move to the other part of this so we're going to then ask officers questions on Bradstow so I think we may are the officers that need to come to the table and join us is everybody where okay thank you very much so this is going to be questions to officers and I can see lots of hands up very very quickly so I can see Ms. Harin down there and then Councillor Kona so who are you addressing your question to Ms. Harin I don't know the finance so Mr. Halleck yes so actually the questions I raised before about you know when they budgeted is relating to this so my question is why did the Woundsworth Council make their decisions when they cap and the second question is did you realize you would lose out financially by putting the cap so yeah so just the fees of the school are driven by the costs of the school the basic premises that the costs have to be fully recovered so if costs go up we have to put up our fees pretty much unless there's a recovery plan and that is all planned out etc etc but in the end of the day the school sustainability relies on recovering its costs and having a surplus the cap probably not necessary for me but it is the result of the journey that's been explained at 62 places it was nearly 300 staff 24-7 52 weeks a year obviously not all at the same time but a large provision 16 million working towards 16 million of cost with 15 million cost 16 million of revenue obviously prior to the reduction through that process it was agreed with Ofsted to reduce the provision to make it more manageable and I don't think I've been approached by anyone that says that was not the right decision when it came to not finances obviously but managing it and making it sustainable into the future in terms of management of the provision that did leave financial position where we had quite a lot of costs set up for 52 week and coming down to just having 38 and pretty much half the children however nearly 3 million of the costs was was agency and nearly all of that has been removed from the school plus obviously other staff have left in that time bringing the cost down from nearly 15 million to 10 million at the time when we were doing the budgeting work that was explained we've worked with the school on setting the fees obviously on the premise that we do have to recover costs those have varied from the beginning of the year to now obviously but where we are at the moment is we have very few agency I think there's 13 or so based on the school's latest submission and that has pulled out a lot of costs I'll let Lisa continue yeah I think and again just to make it clear the decision on the 52 week it's a children's home it's the responsibility of the DCS to make that decision because she's ultimately responsible for safeguarding of children in a children's home and further to the inspection where they raised significant safeguarding concerns that decision was taken by the council to safeguard children and at the time was the right decision to make and again that was taken in discussion with offset because we wanted to protect school and we want to safeguard children and make sure then the school had the capacity to make the needed and clearly from what we've heard that happened so the improvements were made and obviously the homes then were judged as good in their November visit so that was the reason that decision was taken to close the 52 week homes to protect children and safeguard thank you our councillor callers next I think thank you chair this is a question probably to Mr. Halleck around this table at many meetings we've often discussed the nature of the children's care sector and how private provision can be exceptionally expensive obviously Bradstow is not a children's care home in that traditional sense I just want to make that clear but it does provide similar support like an adjacent sector if you like to the children's care sector looking after some very vulnerable children and if the school was to close many of those children because of the shortage of places nationally might have to be provided for in a private setting which is typically more expensive and my concern is that risking the closure of Bradstow school which is what this consultation process is doing would actually be a false economy for Wandsworth Council the other councils that place children there and the SEND education sector as a whole it seems to me that Bradstow is a very special and rare form of state provision for these children that provides in the long run a cost effective way of councils placing and providing education for children like this indeed one council leader from another council actually said to me they'd give their right arm to have provision like Bradstow school and be able to place their special needs children at a place like Bradstow so could officers offer their reflection on that do they think that providing the equivalent care for children at Bradstow in the event of the school closing would be of a higher cost or not the theory does go that the independent providers would be more expensive I think over the years Bradstow became less and less competitive on a benchmarking scale scale however we've only got four children there at the moment of our own when looking at alternatives those have not been dissimilar and some have been lower I cannot talk for other councils but Kent have not expressed that they obviously we went from 62 children down to 30 very quickly during the summer of last year those children I do not know necessarily where they all went but Kent haven't shown any interest in taking on the school for financial reasons which I don't know I might allude to the fact that it's not necessarily the case that those children are going to cost a lot more elsewhere but it's hard for me to comment precisely but the theory is that they are benchmarking does show a varied picture but it can be competitive at about 250 thank you Mr. Hallick I can't sell a Paul I think was next just following on what you just mentioned about the four children at can you confirm or clarify whether these children are looked after children from Wandsworth Council or who we have corporate responsibility for thank you we have looked after children previously placed at Bradstowe but the current four children we have placed there are not looked after and therefore there are no corporate parenting responsibility for Wandsworth Council for those four children thank you for clarifying that Councillor Davies and then Councillor Apps yeah so we've heard this committee before some of the measures and indeed at the last council meeting something about what offices have been doing to support the leadership of Bradstowe exploring options trying to find a way towards some more sustainable position but could you just go over that please about the involvement thank you so that's the support we provided post proposal right I think we offer extensive support to Bradstowe there's not a school maintained by Wandsworth that we provide any sort of level to this extent and we just continue with that monthly meetings monthly recovery all that sort of thing extensive support doesn't abdicate responsibility or productivity I will say we have though in the last post the proposal worked on the restructure Garrett's team the finance teams in particular the HR teams working closely with the school has been mentioned analyzing options for fees into spring into summer and then possibly post that what is possible and some of that has gone into the proposal from the education point I'll post over to we have ramped it up definitely in terms of our support and this is an offer that we made to the school for the last couple of years actually was to work with them on the structure to ensure that it was delivering as per the children's EHCPs as opposed to just going down the lines of the support that they felt the children needed because obviously in terms of local authorities paying for a provision it has to be outlined in the child's plan because that is what local authorities will pay for so I am really pleased to say that recently our head of Centred Inclusion actually went to the school and worked with the leadership team along with the academy trust that they are obviously engaging with to really look at that staffing structure to make sure that it aligned with provision in children's plans and really looked at what was needed for those children because as I said that's the only way you will get local authorities to fund because obviously they have a duty then if it's written in a child's plan that has to be provided and therefore local authorities have to fund it so we've provided that and also more widely we do have a link advisor to the school who still engages with the school to ensure quality of education and also we do have a commitment to the staff at Bradstow our principal education psychologist has been in contact with the school to look at a plan around how staff are supported through has been considerable support and we will continue to provide that support obviously it has to be guided by the school themselves and have to engage with us in those conversations but I do believe that we have worked well with the school in terms of providing any support that we can we've engaged with as I said the academy trusts in fact we've engaged with two another well three actually another independent provider and interesting that conversation we talk about benchmarking they're an independent provider that provides provision for children and they again felt that the costings were very similar to the types of costings they would provide in independent settings so in terms of that benchmarking asking whether independent sector would be much higher that wasn't the conversation that we recently had with a provider in the independent sector councillor apps thank you very much on our visit to the school in kent we particularly it was really good to hear from the parents and particularly wandsworth parents who were there and I'm conscious that there are four families who've got a child in Bradstow and that you know obviously as a wandsworth councillor as we all are here we're all wandsworth councillors we have a particular responsibility to children in wandsworth so I'm very keen to find out more about demand for places from wandsworth places to Bradstow how many requests have been received recently and how many have gone to appeal because the council has refused to offer a place to them thank you so the last request that we had for a placement at Bradstow was March 24 but that was at the same time there were issues around the residential provision so because of that reason we did not proceed with that placement we've had another assessment last last academic year we didn't agree a change of placement because the needs for that child could be met in their current provision with additional support so that has been retained I think our last starter from Wandsworth was placed in 2023 and in the last four years I mean I've been in Wandsworth now for just under five years in my time and the head of send and inclusion who's been here for four years there's not been a single appeal for Bradstow school yes and do you share information about Bradstow with parents looking at this type of provision absolutely so obviously the the provision is outlined in our local offer it's in our admissions brochure as well so parents have access to that information our coordinators in our send team again we'll have that conversation with parents any consultation with a special school is based on parental preference and if they ask for us to consult with a provision we are duty bound to do that so there's no way that we could if a parent actually wanted that provision we would have to consult with them and I have explained to you the position that we're in in terms of the number of requests that we have received in terms of placements at Bradstow Councillor Paul I think you wanted to come in thank you just around restructuring costs on the current restructuring proposal what are the redundancy costs that the council would there sorry the multiple permutations but the likely outcome somewhere between £300 and £400,000 Councillor Cawna Thank you Chair we seem to have a narrative emerging that seems to reinforce the misleading idea that there is not any demand for Bradstow simply false given all the evidence that members of the committee have received from the school from the visit to the school and also from just general knowledge of the sector that we all know about and the testimonies we hear about how hard it is to place children at SEND schools I know that the school for example have been contacted by Wandsworth parents just this week for a placement at Bradstow and in the last five academic year they assessed five children from Wandsworth for a placement at Bradstow school so there is demand for Bradstow school it's not the case that the school is struggling for children the phone is ringing off the hook for children and their parents and families who are seeking to place children at Bradstow it is completely wrong for us to be seeking to close the school on the false premise that there is no demand for it quite the contrary it's one of the most in demand schools that we have as a council and it is outrageous that we are seeking to close it on that misleading basis making some quite inflammatory remarks there know where your information is coming from this is what the school community have told me and I just want the committee to be aware of that I do have a question can officers confirm or deny that Wandsworth parents contacted Bradstow about a placement there perhaps they didn't know about it but I would just be interested in that because it's clearly not the case that parents and families from Wandsworth do not have demand for Bradstow Ms. Van Rolly would you like to respond I mean there is a statutory process that has to go through in terms of placement in a SEND provision when a child has an EHCP you have to go through the SEND team there is a legal process in terms of consultation so I am getting my information from the head of SEND and inclusion in Wandsworth who will engage with all of the families that require a transition or requesting a change of placement so to suggest that the information I'm providing which comes directly from the SEND team is inaccurate I can only comment on a legal process in terms of consultation that has to happen in terms of placing a child with a plan thank you very much councillor Lee you had a question I think was it on this it wasn't on this it was to go back to the children who are currently placed at Radstow so my question was I wanted an update on the four Wandsworth pupils and I wanted an update on how the placement planning the placement planning is going for a potential new placement if the school does close I understand that one of the pupils is leaving the school already anyway this summer but for the other three pupils and then I also wanted to ask about the 13 Kent pupils what is our duty of care as Wandsworth council for those pupils and is there a duty of care under code of practice or legislation that we have to uphold and also will we be able to provide any support in their placement planning thank you and obviously you know we've heard from parent governor this evening and it does sadden me that other local authorities aren't engaging with their families in the way that we have in Wandsworth because that is not our approach to managing change transition so in terms of our four children as you said one of those young people will naturally transition from Bradstow at the end of this academic year and we are awaiting the outcome of an assessment on parental preference for that young person and we already have secured the actual living placement in that area for that child so that's the first thing in terms of the others we have engaged quite considerably with the parents we have offers for all three children in terms of parental preference again we are awaiting some assessment outcomes and also where parents have changed their preference we've also booked visits for them to schools of their choice so as I said I'm confident in terms of our ability to place these children everything is guided by parental preference it's not for us as a local authority to determine where a child goes that's that's parents choice and we will work with families through this process if we need to in terms of other local authorities children obviously through the CEN code of practice the statutory duty is on the resident local authority to place children we have contacted all of those DCS's we've reached out to their head of send and inclusion we've encouraged them to parallel plan because it is right and proper that people have those conversations with families we can't force them to do that we can only encourage and as I said I would hope that other local authorities would act in the same way that we would in terms of thinking about next steps for children thank you very much if there are no further questions Councillor corner was it you next I'm so sorry it's Councillor Osborne and then Councillor corner I've been asked to ask people to move closer to the microphone because apparently it's not picking it up on the live stream yeah so clearly not a great demand for places at Bradstow if any at the moment from Wandsworth as was made clear so well I'm afraid there seems to be a question mark over the accuracy of some of the things that are being said by the minority party tonight but let me go back to one of the points made earlier on correctly by Councillor corner when he said that the GMB at the school had called on Wandsworth to keep the school open it's a nuanced position from the GMB first of all I would be surprised disappointed I think if the GMB hadn't said that it's their duty to say something of that type but look at what they're actually saying they're not calling on Kent which is where the school is to support the school not calling on Kent which is providing considerably more students there than we are to support and save the school they're calling on what they refer to as the labour run council of Wandsworth they're making a distinction between Wandsworth and the conservative run Kent county council but the nuance goes on because they call for Wandsworth council to take direct control of the school which is an unusual and probably impractical suggestion but they have to call for direct control for us to take direct control because if you go back to the point of my question earlier on about the position of the GMB and their confidence in the process that's being proposed by the current leadership of the school they voted by 80 odd percent to call on the current head teacher to do the decent thing and stand down that's why they say that we as a council would have to take direct control because there wouldn't be a head teacher there presumably so there is significant nuance to what the staff are saying as represented by the GMP and we have to look at the threats and dangers that we're dealing with here in this school we need to see a proposal which has the full support of the staff at the school and clearly it doesn't have because the GMB have taken a very clear position and questioned what is being done and similarly I'm forced to ask if we go further on this why is it that the GMB are rejecting the position any suggestion of going to Kent County Council and we've heard from the officers tonight that we're not getting any leeway at all on this from Kent County Council on any possibility of any kind of funding or support for what's going on at the school and my question I think at the end of this my question to the staff is can you update us on the legal action that we might be taking to recover the outstanding debt from Kent County Council on this school because these threats these problems are at the heart of the decision that we're going to have to take at some stage in this consultation process we can't base what we're doing on inaccurate information about what's going on we can't base our decision on assertions which don't seem to have any kind of basis in the reality of what's going on we've got to take realistic decisions based on what we are faced with at the moment so obviously it's a big decision for any counsel to take another counsel to court and in good faith we delayed following through on our initial legal action over a year ago because of how this has played out we have now re-initiated that and the letter has gone out last week and that will follow through we're waiting for Ken's response obviously thank you Mr. Halleck for that response and all the responses I've just looked at the time we have three hours for these meetings and we haven't even started on the other papers yet and we're an hour and a half in so this incredibly important issue and I've let it go on because I know how important it is for this long but I really think that we should start bringing this to a close I think Councillor Corny you had an amendment or a suggestion I have an amendment although my strong preference would be that the questions that are yet to be asked are able to be asked because as you rightly say this is a vitally important issue and we need to consider it in full detail would you prefer the questions to be asked and not to go on time now would you prefer not to bring your amendment I am going to bring my amendment no matter what happens but I would prefer the question could you go ahead and do that and bring your amendment I think you have shared it with everybody everybody had sight of it can I check yes it was shared before the meeting obviously this paper is for information it's not actually for decisions so we that in the previous overview and scrutiny committee and that paper has gone to the executive and gone forward so it's for information but Councillor Corner has shared this so I will ask for a vote on that amendment if you will have sight of it do you want to go through it look I'd like to address colleagues on the committee councillors and co-opted members this is a really difficult position as was actually mentioned at the council meeting last week this isn't a discussion that should take place along party lines or through politics or anything like that this is a decision that needs to be carefully considered and taken in the best traditions of Wandsworth Council which is a caring council that cares for the children and takes pride in its schools it could be argued incentivized and forced academies to come to the table and consider academizing Bradstow School that is an argument for the consultation I'm just saying that because it's not a totally one-sided debate here there are pros and cons on both sides but it's also clear to me that the consultation has triggered resignations at the school because staff are uncertain and they obviously have their own careers and lives to look after and their own families to look after and weaken the school community and that is a tragedy for the families and children who have children placed there Councillor Osborne mentioned the GMB article and the statement I believe they made that statement on the 28th of January we received members of the committee received a report on the 7th of February a very detailed report which I really thank the Bradstow community for coming up with which sets out in detail how they proposed to go forward and it's accompanied by a letter from an academy trust CEO which asks this committee to recommend that the council ceases the consultation process so that the academisation process can take place that this is now a way forward we can work together to support the academisation of this valued state school that looks after some of the most vulnerable children in our society rather than continuing with this ill thought through and unproductive consultation process which is essentially akin to hanging the sword of Damocles over the school and threatening it with closure when there is a perfectly sustainable route ahead for them there are three other academies in reserve as we've heard tonight which means that there is a significant likelihood that the school can move to academy status soon but not necessarily within the tight constraints of the consultation process we need to reflect on why we're in education why we choose to sit on this committee and serve children by being members of this committee the threat of closure to Bradstow is a living nightmare for parents and families at this school it's caused significant distress to children as we've read in testimonies from the children it is something that threatens the lives and the family life of all of the members of the Bradstow community including the staff there we can save Bradstow school we just need to vote to pause this consultation and work together as a council as academy chains and as the Bradstow community to form a sustainable way forward and I have every faith that the consultation response represents a way forward that can achieve those the aims that we all desire the amendment to the paper that I have proposed is simply asking for what the Bradstow community have asked for in their consultation response that is to extend the timeline of the statutory school closure consultation process until at least the end of 2025 which isn't a long time still be a time limited process so it still protect the long term financial interest of Wandsworth Council second to end the statutory school closure consultation process as soon as possible in the event that the DFE agree to the academisation proposal and finally brief all Wandsworth councillors on the nature of the school and the process to date to make sure that all of our colleagues not just the ten councillors who sit on this committee are fully understanding of this important and for some people life changing decision that this council is about to take so I really do commend this amendment to the committee and I really hope that everyone can support it today thank you councillor corner councillor stock our cabinet member would like to respond before we go to a vote thank you very much chair thank you councillor corner for your proposal I understand where it's coming from in terms of supporting the school community so I'll just kind of deal with each in term and I have an alternative proposal and commitment that I can give to the committee that perhaps can be taken into consideration if members feel that that reassures them as to the council's way forward so in relation to extending the statutory school closure consultation until the end of 2025 in my view that's a premature decision to take the executive decided last year to commence just an informal consultation and that consultation closes this Sunday as members of the committee are aware closure consultations come in two parts they come with an informal part followed by a pause and a reflection and then a formal consultation if that's deemed appropriate so that consultation is still outstanding we still have the opportunity as a council to review those responses and consider next steps and we will do that what we know now following the consultation is that an academy is interested I understood coming into this meeting that it's one academy I'm now interested to hear that it is more and we're committed to supporting the school to explore that and I think that came out both from the school deputation and also from officers but the financial viability of the school does remain there is a considerable deficit of 1.2 million that is driven by some councils refusals to pay and it's unclear at the moment what commitment we or the school have in terms of payment of different fees as outlined within the document and where we are at the moment is four children from Wandsworth currently attend the school 13 children from Kent they're not willing to accept a transfer and the position still remains that their risks and liability to this council are significant and disproportionate and it sounds to that that is something that is shared across both sides and both political parties that there are considerable risks for Wandsworth council for a lengthy delay so that's why I think at this stage it's inappropriate and premature to make that decision in relation to looking at ending the statutory closure process in the event that Bradstow's stall academization proposal is agreed by DFE we're not there yet a due diligence has to take place an application has to go to the DFE and they will do their own due diligence I understand in exploring whether an academy order they will make an academy order as I said earlier and I'm optimistic about the prospects but I am pragmatic because there have been a number of conversations that haven't been able to go forward so it is important that we maintain pace it is important that conversations are transparent and we also need to maintain pace because we need to ensure that if an academy is to take over the school in the September term that they also want healthy pupil numbers right because a special school is just the same as any other school as a member of the committee they need pupil numbers so we do need this process to move at pace so that the school and the academy can get that reassurance and then in relation to an all councillor briefing in relation to Bradskow School in Kent I don't think that's appropriate at this stage I think your council motion that unfortunately you weren't present at full council to speak to refer to the fact that you want an all councillor briefing because of our corporate parenting GC I think Miss was clear earlier that we have looked after children currently at Bradstow so I'm not clear that that's the basis for asking this myself and Miss Bobovici as director of children services we're available for private briefings with you as opposition member you haven't sought those briefings since this proposal came about and that's something that you're able to take I will continue to brief my group you are entitled to continue to brief your the right place for this discussion is children's committee other members of the council are able to come and listen or watch online this committee I know some members of the council do and we also have other democratic councils other democratic functions across the council such as full council meeting no oral questions were asked in relation to Bradstow Schooling at the December full council you know there was a question that was asked at the full council meeting last week but unfortunately you weren't there to ask it when the time came for it to become and again you put a motion on the agenda but you weren't there to debate it and I asked for the council meeting to be adjourned so you could come back so we could debate this issue so all members of the council could be updated and I was able to update in relation to questions that were asked for those members that were there but you unfortunately I'm sorry to say weren't there and I do think at this stage it is disproportionate to provide that briefing when no decision has been made and looking at the number of children in Wandsworth I will keep the position under review I have committed at the previous meeting to provide a briefing to all members of children's committee between the informal consultation and if and when we get to a formal consultation I stand by that commitment and I will continue to update children's committee members as I think we have been very good at doing if I can say as a committee and I was really pleased that we were able with the support of the chair to support all members of the committee going along to the school not every committee necessarily would have done that from what I understand so let's try and work together and I can continue to make that commitment in terms of an alternative way forward I think we are clear that we want to support the school with pursuing an academisation option it is something for them to move forward with they are in engagement with the academy trust and academy trust are going to have to undertake their due diligence and we do understand that time might be needed for that and we will take that into account when moving to any further stage in the consultation so I'm happy from my perspective as cabinet member for children that this committee kind of notes the executive decision that was taken on the 9th of December last year delegating authority to the executive director for children services in consultation with myself to decide whether to publish the statutory proposals for closure that's that second stage of the process as I explained earlier and we will not exercise that delegated authority before the 16th of March which is the date as I understand Cygnus have provided in terms of the time when they will finish their due diligence this will allow any academy trust interested in academisation to complete their due diligence to submit proposals to the council so that's the step that we can take now and I can give that commitment and that can be noted in the minutes I also think just again on the point of transparency I think it's important that committee members and the public understand if the school is going to look to academise what a realistic timetable looks like and that's transparent that's public and people can understand that and we can try and move at pace so as I understand it there has been engagement with stakeholders around an academisation timetable so I would also ask for it to be noted and happy for it to be noted in the minutes that in the event that a viable proposal is presented to the council I would invite the committee to note that there is an academisation timetable that would enable academisation by the end of this academic year based on the discussions to date with stakeholders so as I understand that would firstly be academisation due diligence for six weeks starting it's already started 3rd of February finishing on the 16th of March and then a week for due diligence to take place sorry a week for a review of the due diligence and a commitment then coming forward from any academy to take on the provision consideration for that can take place between 17th of March and the 23rd of March and then for an academy to send an application to the DfE by the latest of the 11th of April of this year with the target date for school academisation and conversion by the 31st of August ready for the new school year so that's a transparent position that I'd ask the committee consider as an alternative that can be noted and taken forward Thank you very much Councillor Stock do you still wish to vote on these recommendations based on obviously there's been some movement I'd still like the amendment to be put to a vote for the reasons that I set out also just I'll keep this brief but to the point around the council meeting the reason the council meeting panned out like it did last week was because the motion on Bradstow school was placed at number 13 on the agenda for the meeting which meant it would never have been debated in a month of Sunday we voted we brought forward a motion to bring it forward up the agenda and you voted it down to silence debate on Bradstow councillor councillor can you respond on that because we can't have that but then we have to draw this to a close you can read the media coverage on it sorry that's not expected I think it's quite clear from the amount of time we spent on it tonight and that it was top of the agenda that clearly we do understand the impact of this and it's not about political points it was a political stunt regrettably by yourself and it's just not acceptable because these are young children really vulnerable children that we do care about and we need to prioritise them and it's not fair to undertake cheap political stunts like that I'm sorry so if we could take a vote no all right if we could which is new recommendations on paragraph one so I will start with these new recommendations in paragraph of one amendments from councillor corner all those who are for those amendments for all those for one two three four is that right four and then anyone abstaining would anyone like to abstain one two three abstentions and all those against one two three four five six so the amendment falls thank you everyone for attending this evening and I'm sorry that we are so late in but it was very very important that those discussions were had even if they weren't what everybody wanted to hear have a safe journey back and we're just going to take a couple of minutes to rearrange where everyone is good evening everybody and also to those watching online we are now resuming the meeting we are restarting the meeting just to let everybody know and we are going to our next paper it's paper four and it's on Wandsworth's maintained pupil referral units I am so sorry and I apologize to Miss Tara Bell and Miss Jackie Addison the head teachers for having to wait so long I hope as fellow teachers you would understand it was really really important that we gave that the time that it needed for Brad so when these things come up where schools have to be closed so welcome and our pupil referral units are outstanding here in Wandsworth we've had visits I know I've been to Victoria Drive and then just recently we had the pleasure of going to Francis Barber and being shown round and the work is truly impressive and the collaboration with students families stakeholders to develop the very personalised learning plans that the children have which are both academic but they also address their emotional needs which is so important holistic this holistic approach and you can really see the good outcomes that you get from that and that the pupils have a successful transition to further education training or employment or indeed back into mainstream education and it really is a tribute to all our teachers who I know go above and beyond very very often for our pupils so I'm going to hand over to Mr. Hoff to introduce our paper and then we'll be able to hear from our head teachers thank you thank you chair and anyone who's been on this committee for any period of time will know that I take every opportunity at these meetings to mention the work of the proves because I think they are so important to the work of our education department I'm therefore really pleased to be able to present a paper on our three pupil referral units it is a paper but it could easily have been three separate papers because they are complex organisations that fulfil a number of roles but I hope at least this paper gives us something of an overview of their work I'm delighted that two of our head teachers could join us today Jackie Addison from Francis Barber and Tara Bell from the hospital home tuition service and I know they'll be happy to answer any questions unfortunately Eileen Shannon who's the head of Victoria Drive has had to give apologies but she did however ask me to say the following on her behalf Victoria Drive valued the visit from five councillors on the 28th of November thank you for taking the time to learn about how we support children most importantly a huge thank you for liaising with Lady Anne and Adventure Playground on our behalf following your support we've now secured the Thursday afternoon session you truly made a difference I know that all of our approved welcome visits and I encourage you if you haven't already visited please do so in the meantime as I say I hope this paper gives some insight into each of the three organisations and we're fortunate also to have two members of the management board on the committee as well so I'll pass over first the share to say a few words if they so wish I confess I come to the post of chair of the pupil referral unit as somebody who'd never had any experience at all of such organisations or for that matter not much experience of the education system I'd never been a governor or anything of that kind I'd attended a few committees like this one but not very many and I don't pretend to be an expert on the subject but I've spent time with the head teachers and the teachers and other staff at the schools and indeed with some of the pupils at the schools and what I say to people is I fear that a lot of people don't always quite get and understand how the pupils come to be there and sometimes they're a bit dismissive about how they come to be there and I am duty bound to explain that we have children sometimes children who couldn't find a slot anywhere else because they were refugees for example often children who've been badly damaged either by their experiences or by a physical accident we run a kind of school in St. George's Hospital for example as a part of the HHTS set up and a more extensive element of that in Springfield Hospital but there are a number of children and pupils who have suffered trauma and abuse beyond anything that most of us could imagine and the schools carry them forward give them a reason to study and have an astonishing record of getting them back into mainstream schools first of all and secondly getting them through a good set of exams and on to fulfilling lives later on it is an astonishing achievement and our PRUs are absolutely cutting edge and ahead of the game compared with all the others in the system and I am proud to be chair of the PRUs thank you thank you for that very impassioned introduction Councillor Osborne here here so we've got questions yes Councillor Corner and then Councillor Crivelli Councillor Davies thank you I'd like to unlike with the last item entirely associate myself with the comments of Councillor Osborne I think the PRUs are a really fantastic good news story in Wandsworth something we should be very proud of we need to give them all the support they need to do I did have a little bit of experience in the education system before I came to the council or to be a counsellor and I taught in a school where some children were sadly excluded and went to the local pupil referral unit not the Wandsworth one but one down in Medway and Kent and I bumped into that child a few months after they were sadly excluded from the school and had a chat to him about how the Prue provision was helping him and he was having an excellent time for the first time in his life he was on track at school studying for GCSEs able to engage in education able to learn from his mistakes and build himself back up it was really I was really pleased to hear that and it's certainly a memory that sticks with me and I have seen myself how the Prues in Wandsworth have a similar impact it's really very very inspiring and all counsellors should try to visit them to just learn about the great work they do I do have one question for Mr Hoff which is that one of the important things that I think the Prues do is prepare children for life after school and I wondered if the officers or Mr Hoff could talk now to how the Prues support children and what those children go on to do after they attend the Prues and maybe I would encourage thinking about how we can make that even better I know it's great to see the children studying for recognised qualifications but I think it's important that we help them into employment and further education wherever possible yeah I think destinations is an absolutely key issue for all the Prues the first thing I would say before I'm going to pass on to my colleagues is that I'll speak on behalf of Eileen is that obviously we have a primary people referral unit and outcomes for them are just as important as those at secondary almost without exception the children at the primary Prue are dual registered almost without exception they will go back to their mainstream schools and in some small amount of cases they'll be supported into specialist provision with specialist support so that's the first thing is that in terms of reintegration our primary Prue is absolutely key I think since we have the head teachers here I think it would be remiss of me not to pass over and let them talk a little bit about the work yeah Francis Barber we have around 86% of our youngsters who leave us in year 11 go on to education majority of them will go into education in terms of further education colleges like South Thames Kingston Richmond and then we have last year we had about six children who didn't go into any education employment and they get we refer them to ones with lifelong learning service so there's support there for them we also if they have a social worker which many of our youngsters do we in Ghana their support to get them into some next steps of education but we had some success last year we had two students went into apprenticeships which are quite rare at the age of 16 and then we had a few students who managed to get into about three students who got into work placements and they're often through family members that type of thing so we're very successful in terms of Peru getting children into next steps of education and employment that that is a high level for alternative provisions I think Councillor Cruevelli was next actually and then I've got Councillor Davies Councillor Paul and then I'll take Councillor Owens Did you wonder should I respond sorry I'm so sorry you're both of you yes I do apologise sorry losing the plot here yeah just our reintegration rate into schools is about 93% on average so it's really high we're lucky in that we've got a stronger multidisciplinary team around children who are being discharged from hospital as well but yes it's it's actually quite good I think in respect of improving it it's less about what the Prues are doing and more about the environment that the children are transitioning into so what's happening out there in schools and colleges to incentivise effective inclusion practices but essentially I think the Prues I think essentially we do really quite a lovely job with them as I think a lot of our feedback from professionals and parents and students testifies to that thank you very much I think am I being told that to speak closer to the microphone when we come to the questions I know that's really hard you can pick it up and move it and put it sort of near to you Councillor Crivelli can I can I just say that Wandsworth does have a low rate of exclusions and suspensions from schools and I just think it's fair to say that you've played a very important role in achieving that so I think it's fair that we recognise the very dynamic role that you've played in that overall I just wanted to perhaps you can assist people who are not familiar with the role of Prue on this committee we all understand that exclusion from school is actually quite rare could you give us perhaps more or two examples of maybe people who have been excluded from school what they've been excluded from and how you've then set about trying to to resolve that by reintegrating them to mainstream schooling yeah first of all I'd say that whilst some children are permanently excluded from school some children come out of school because they're managed moved out some children the parents take them out of school before that happens sometimes we have children who move into the area in year 11 who can't get school places so there's lots and lots of different reasons why children come to us sometimes they've been taken out earlier in the years possibly for home education and parents have realised that that's not the route they want to continue in so there's a whole raft of other reasons we have children who move into the area because of domestic violence and social situations so I think first of all I'd say don't think about as purely as pupils who've been permanently excluded so that's the first thing so that gives you a sense of the breadth of complexity that our youngsters have faced I would also say those children who have been permanently excluded there's just not one size fits all they very often have experienced many of the social issues that others I've just mentioned have gone through but yeah we've we've had you know children who had criminal records have committed criminal acts but we we treat them all the first thing I'd say is that it's a very forgiving setting took we see children as children their behavior is communication those are us I'd say our two adages that we for everybody and then from then on it's around trying to engage them that's the third way I would use three words and those are the three words I would talk about in school and I think the other thing I would like to say is that if you want your youngsters the most vulnerable youngsters in the local authority to do to close their gaps in learning and to achieve like their peers they need to get better than what they're getting in mainstream school and that's that's the message I would want to share I hope that helps in some way to answer your question yeah just Tara just as in context for the medical proof so hospital schools and medical proof and can you hear me okay is that so the students that we would see the students that we would see wouldn't be excluded obviously but they will have they're not able to attend because of medical or mental health needs so by that they will have been receiving treatment from cams or be on the waiting list for cams they might be private psychotherapists and they might be ill with a various physical illnesses they might be in st george's hospital receiving treatment or outpatients for st george's or in patients or outpatients at springfield hospital so there's a whole range of medical needs that that comes with we see children obviously who are undergoing mental health trauma they've had sort of mental ill health at some point and that's what they're recovering from so that comes with parents the families needing support parents needing support and vulnerability because they're not in school they're not able to go in school so there's no oversight and parents and children are not held by a school at all what we do in the hospital schools is we look at and we make sure we've got so curiosity model for education so it's the idea of a passion for living passion for education the passion for living so about making sure that there's a curriculum there that children see is relevant to them that makes them want to be part of the world to continue on in life especially for children with suicidal ideation or serious self-harm presentations and so we have very much curiosity model of education trauma informed practice is part of the bedrock so very welcoming and nurturing environment and very much an acceptance and listening so all our staff are trained in that also and really high quality of teaching and I would thoroughly agree with Jackie's point there on you have got to do better and that's I think what proofs are for proofs have to have the very best of on offer for education and often that's missed because children come to us at the very worst stages in their lives and where they've already missed a lot of children we have have already missed at least a year of education through ill health and so they might be a year to three years out of education by the time they come to us so you have to catch up fast you have to deliver something really of high quality very very fast and to get those children through GCSEs or through any accreditations thank you so Councillor Davies I had then Councillor Paul and then Councillor Owens hello good to see you again I was a primary school teacher for a period of my career and actually saw the benefit of the prison children who had dual registration and then seeing them come back to the classroom in a calmer state and much more ready for learning and how that impacts you not just on the child but the family unit so you know it's really nice to sort of yes it from both angles in the visit to the pre that we did last week you know I think there's about four four of us that went along was so eye-opening and learning much more about the different types of provisions that were done so thank you very much for that but my question is that in the paper there was a bit about challenges and one of them was about some I think some frustrations or tensions possibly about the relations with MASH and I just wondered if you could explain that a little bit more or how that could be sort of eased yeah I mean one thing that's been successful is the social worker in schools and what I'd say there is we just need more of it you know bringing our children and their families tend to be hard to reach they've got a fractious relationship with authority figures and with you know people that they see that might harm them kind of bringing help but they don't see that in that way so social services in particular so anywhere where we can strengthen those links is helpful and as I said the social worker in schools being one of the programs but for us certainly at Francis Barbara that we haven't got enough of it is certainly one of them yeah is that okay so starting point I think for for all services education and you'll hear this from any head teacher or education is the hub schools are the hub so we see everything and we have low low thresholds for concern so we're concerned about everything and so if we say and and so we'll we'll be contacting you know we'll be saying where's the police officer where's the school nurse and where's where's the social worker we'll want people in place reacting super fast and we're usually right and services you know a difficult difficult you know position so they're trying to reach out and do what they can but yes the fractions are because we have high expectations high standards and we're always asking for support often not quite enough of it to go around Councillor Paul I think you had a question next I know how passionate you are about the proofs yeah thank you I echo what Councillor Davies said about last week's visit because it was really enlightening and I'm really glad that I attended this is just following on from what councillor corner had mentioned about the transition into I don't know whether it's employment education do any of those students actually come back and do any form of like mentoring or support with the children that are there I'll be able to say a little bit from from us it's in the hospital in hospital education there's a right to be forgotten so we're really careful about contacting or liaising or having ex students back often because it's been a really difficult time in their lives we do put names forward for other events where they might be talking to teachers and but not coming back into the hospital it can be being admitted to hospital is a traumatic event in itself so you have to tread really carefully we keep in touch with our students they email us they phone us in the school office sometimes just to give us a download on what's going on and but we don't really have them back in and to talk about it's too too raw I would say but talking to other teachers we do and so that's part of the hospital education conferences that we're part of we'll have students go and talk to those yeah from time to time we do it Francis Barbara it tends to be a little bit more rare but we had a couple years ago we had a ex pupil who was now do he was now an architect he came and just popped in and told us about what was doing we often have ours in a much more informal ways that they they colleague will bump into them in the town and find out how they're doing I know that we had an ex-student who went on to study medicine she did really well one of our ex-students was the head boy at John Bosco school when he after he was reintegrated so we get lots of good stories there and we were sometimes some of our ex-students the architect one he came in and spoke to some students so sometimes they'll come and offer to do that we often find that it's more in the more recent years they come back and and then they're a little bit too young to to necessarily come in and didn't do that in in in the setting but yeah it's it's a nice experience when it happens our council Owens thank you all very helpful I have a question around some of the challenges that was listed in the report and maybe some questions mr. half as well I was particularly interested in the Victoria drives cohort shifting to towards younger pupils many of us around the table have had our children in ones with schools for well over a decade now certainly mine we're in ones with largest primary for over 10 years and we are very very conscious obviously of lockdown and COVID and the impact of that but I've always been quite curious as to how the crew works with the dual setup with these schools that in my time the the number of for example teaching assistants has collapsed for a lot of the younger years within the primaries and it strikes me that actually that some of the support networks that were in place say 10 12 years ago for younger children are not there to the same extent and that's not necessarily just a question of funding under the academization process a lot of money is shifted in lots of our schools and our academies to leadership and management but I'm curious as to sort of working with those children because obviously you've got more children that are now within the dual system and how that works and also having chaired a school for over decades with a need high needs block as well within Wandsworth obviously that's a huge challenge so some of the funding issues there I'm curious about thank you so in terms of Victoria Drive most of the children who are on roll there will be attending one or two days a week and will be attending their mainstream school for the rest of the week there has been a significant shift towards the younger age groups one of the ways that the PRU has addressed this is by offering more outreach work actually in schools because sometimes parents understandably very young children are reluctant for them to go off site so that that's been something that they have developed previously their bread and butter was as I put in the paper was year five and six and that's not so much the case now not that there aren't complexities in year five and six but that cohort coming through and I think there is there is clearly an element to do with with lockdown and lack of socialization but the PRU are use their resources very effectively they have a play therapist who's valuable speech and language they have access to cams on site which again is is so valuable because I'm sure Jackie can say the same thing about Francis Barber when you have therapists who are working on site it's so much more effective than giving someone a an appointment in a strange building with a strange person actually they can build relationships and I think a great example is Eileen at Victoria Drive runs a parenting group but she doesn't call it a parenting group she calls it stress busters so again it's about how you're framing the support and in ways particularly effective ways to engage with with young people but yes I think clearly for every school that there is you know there are rising costs and so often the first line to go in a in in cost savings is support staff so thank you um I've got councillor virtual next I think then lee and then apps and I'm not going back for a second question because we've got papers to get through so one question each thank you very much I'm interested in knowing about um the children who are the school avoidance and I you know I see that you know you start sometimes by engaging with them at home I'd just like to know a little bit more about the process how and how successful it is and are you getting the children back into school we're getting them back into our school it takes about a year it takes it yeah it takes around a year I would say for a child who's been out for a prolonged period of time I'd say it takes about a year um and that's where ideally we'd be picking the children up earlier um but this is a situation that we're in and the quicker you put it the quicker you pick that up the easier it is and the way that you pick it up and the way that you hold the child and the family and the way a school listens and reassures and builds a plan a pace that the family and the child can access that that will create the most difference so it's really it's very much an individual response I'd say when we're talking about it we we do a team around the child but it's also a team around the school it's the same when you transition it's a team around the next school to make sure that everyone delivers that kind of soft landing and holds the family and the child through that um that's so that that would be our approach our when the children are with us when we're doing that transition there will be weekly meetings with the family parents might be um contacted every day so they'll get an update on how their child is doing every day there'll be a handover so you're really about building the trust you're building an enjoyment and learning but you're also building the trust with the family sometimes when we start with children we'll start in the home or we might meet them in a car park we might have sessions where the child is in the car and a teacher is beside the car we might be at their bedroom door we might be in their living room it's it's really about where the child is meeting the child where they are also making sure that there's treatment going in place as well so if it's just education going in ideally you would have therapy going in at the same time that can be problematic because sometimes uh that they're not able to attend appointments so teachers are going out on their own and is a bit of a limb but essentially you're really listening to that um our dsl and our senco are super busy around the families and all the time making sure everything's safe that they have all the information that they need that they feel informed um so yeah i'd say it's it's really like forming a protective cushioning team around around the family and the child and holding them through the process that's councillor lee then councillor apps hi there yeah so i i think one of the the positive huge positives that that came out of the paper as well was the multi-agency collaboration between the schools and other organizations the the um with cams with social workers with with other schools um and obviously we all know how important this is to ensure that our children are getting holistic support i also saw that was interested to see that the pru all three pru share a management board and i wanted to ask a little bit more about how the three schools work together um through that management board yeah thank you yeah well i'm um speaking from francis barber but i think there's there's a lot of strengths there's a lot of collegiality there's support for us as head teachers i think having a commonality of the the youngsters that we work with um and some of the challenges around them is really useful um yeah so yeah it's lovely as i think they they often say that head being a head teacher is a really lonely job but it doesn't feel lonely in in the model that we have because you've got heads we you know we're sharing we share practice and you know and share kind of well we listen to each other at the management boards and go they're trying that one okay we can try that there's often we're stealing bits of good practice from each other and we also have other head teachers on our management board as well and that's lovely so we get to hear about them and they'll say oh the mainstream this is what's that we're looking at that this way or or so there's really nice sort of crossover and collaboration in in that way um but also sharing the differences between the different the different settings is also really crucial so we develop a an awareness of what's happening across each sort of group of people need i think it's worth saying as well i think we've appreciated having the influence of cancer osborne on our board as well um in the last couple of years that's been really positive um yeah thank you i think yeah that's what i wanted to sort of follow up on as well is um whether there was anything more that we can be doing as counsellors on the children's committee to advocate and support you and and the three proves since you're asking yeah um the the the francis barber sites one of them has been identified by the dfe dfe with a fantastic um accolade has been one of the schools with the worst uh one of the 50 schools in the country with the worst buildings um so they have identified one of our sites to be rebuilt and the other site is is in dire need of um it needs to be more appropriate site for the school and i think i'll let tara speak for the uh yeah so for as far as the medical crew we have two hospital schools but we don't have a physical medical proof so there isn't actually a medical crew there's a service that goes out and sees children we use church halls cafes uh we use anything that anyone will give us for free so we're really looking and i i think the local authority supports this and we'd love to actually have a medical crew where children could come and would our approach would actually be bricks and mortar and and they'd see it and feel it and have somewhere to go during a period of ill health that they we could then transition them from so i think that that would be our wish list isn't that it's an actual if i can just say one more line we just moved into a temporary build as ours has been demolished and one of our children with quite a few of our children said oh it's like a proper school now and that's what we'd want for our children um no um because we're having one question each because it is so late uh jesse snuck in the supplementary there um but no because we're not going to we've got two uh papers for decision and we're absolutely not to get through uh councillor apps and then um we will go to the next paper well actually i was going to do the exact opposite and actually withdraw my question because i thought that was such a nice moment to finish on and i want to say thank you so much for you it's been so enlightening and i hope i get to visit the proof soon sorry i couldn't come on the last visit all right uh councillor stock just wants to say something i've asked her not to speak for ages yeah i'll take that i i just wanted to it's difficult to see sometimes up here but but thank uh you both for for for coming um thank you to councillor osborne for really pushing that this item come forward to committee as an agenda item you know really raising the profile of the school i think it's important that members know and that we continue to um support the proves and the excellent work that they do you know it's really been good to have a discussion about the impact of pupils on on the work that you do but also recognizing some of the challenges and i'm so proud of the way that uh the proves in onesworth are leading and the best practice that they're giving both locally but also nationally so um we should continue to be fortunate to have you uh in the borough serving serving children here so thank you so much note the report thank you thank you everybody bye bye thank you so much for coming um so we can move on to the school's finance uh budget allocations paper uh it's paper number 25 to 65 um um and i in the interest of uh time i am going to go straight to gareth evans um to uh introduce this paper and this report is for decision just to let you know uh thank you um yeah this paper looks at the school's funding um and more widely with dedicated schools grant for for onesworth and the first part of paper looks at um pupil numbers and how they've moved since last year uh and then the paper goes on to um look at the changes in the schools block the high knees block and the early years block and the funding there um schools forum has already looked at these numbers and agreed the um formula allocations are shown in the in the appendices as the sort of formula rates and the the allocations to the schools so the paper's looking for uh approval of those from from the committee um i can take any any questions or go through some more of the paper that's the corner thank you for this paper i know we get every year but it's really interesting um insight and um data actually into what's going on in terms of schools finance um two very quick questions the first is what are the alternatives to the recommendation that we're trying that we're being asked to approve here um really the formula is the formula to the extent of my knowledge so i'd like to get your reflections on that and secondly um looking at the um detailed breakdown of the schools on the first fold-out um spreadsheet i see there are a number of schools which um look to be in a quite concerning position actually um do you share that um assessment and um to what extent do you think that um you know uh maybe the top three schools for uh year on year decrease are actually at risk here of serious uh dire straits financially um yes in terms of the the flexibility within the formula um the funding that comes to local to the local authority comes to wandsworth that's a national funding formula set set by government we then have flexibility in a local formula to distribute that to our schools uh we can change the rates within that formula that's already been debated in schools forum and they've agreed with these figures here so there's flexibility at that stage um in terms of our schools in the borough um i think on the whole our schools are in a strong relatively strong financial position compared to schools across the rest of london in particular we have very few in an overall sort of deficit position having said that um pupil numbers are falling and pupil numbers is a is the key driver behind schools funding so um those schools with uh falling people numbers are going to have a lower allocation this year compared to last year um so they could be you know they could have financial difficulty we work really closely with the schools um before they get to that position or try to help avoid that position by um offering as much advice and guidance uh as we can um in terms of trying to um avoid avoid the school going too far uh into that negative deficit position if that that's okay that makes sense yeah i think i had councillor osborne next and then i've got councillor davies councillor uh yeah can i ask uh be blunt with us uh how how does this this year's settlement compare with last year's settlement just give us the the the bald facts the blunt facts on it okay it depends on the on the part of a dedicated schools grant so for the for the schools block part um once we've rolled in all of the grants that were granted last year into this grant they've they've all become part of the same grant now the the increase on the various levels is about half a percent um so for the schools mainstream schools block um not not a huge increase for the high needs block um it's a larger increase so an increase of about 6.67 in the high needs block which is the area where we have the most um difficulty in funding pressures so that equates to about four and a half million pounds extra for ones worth um next year and for early years the there's a significant increase in that part of the formula and of the funding as well um that's down to primarily the um increase in um the uh free um the free education places for uh for children so um last year uh children of work two year i'm sorry um two-year-olds of working parents were eligible for free 15 hours from april last year and for under twos from september last year and from september this year september 25 those entitlements are increasing to 30 hours so as such the blocks significantly bigger to to accommodate that and within that the rates have gone up as well so for the um two three uh two-year-olds three and four-year-olds and under twos the rates have gone up around about 3.8 to 4 percent um i've got councillor davies and then councillor apps and councillor creveli um hi my questions i'm really building on that point about the um early years um and so i just wondered about how the take up in early years is compares to the dfe estimates um on the extended hours elements of the funding so we've only had a couple of terms of it so far but the um in both cases well for the for the two-year-olds um the take-up has been higher than the dfe estimates and for the under twos we're still compiling the the data but it looks like it's also going to be higher than the dfe estimates yeah significantly higher yeah uh cancer apps thank you it's it's pretty clear that um falling roles is having a major impact on schools um what impact has managing the sufficiency and the number of vacancies in the system had on supporting the overall position and sustainability of schools um across the borough so i think the the the impact can be seen uh more clearly where we've capped um pan at various schools so a school that was maybe um receiving applications for 35 or 40 children at reception we've kept that at 30 in many schools um that has two two effects really it means that the school can then um have uh just one class at reception level um rather than two so therefore um there's fewer teachers and it's a more efficient financially efficient way of teaching the children and also those children that don't get to that school will go to the other schools in the in the um locality and so increase their numbers as well which impacts their funding councillor crevelli can i ask you a question about the schools block in paragraph 19 you've said as well as schools block funding it's expected that a further grant will be distributed to schools in the financial year 25 26 to fund at national level the increase in national insurance contributions applicable from april 2025 um firstly i i assume that that cash you can't say whether that money is in effect guaranteed and you also i assume couldn't say what impact that would necessarily have on on wanderer schools um have you factored in the likelihood that some schools may have to absorb some of that cost themselves so we know that there's definitely going to be a grant but we don't yet know the methodology and therefore we can't work out on a school by school basis the the impact the grant will have um we will do that once we can and obviously provide support to those schools where where we need it and where there is a gap but uh as you mentioned on a national level it will be it will be funded um that's what we understand councillor owens thank you i just have another uh follow-up question on the early years on page well six of the paper page 32 um the obviously that you we went through the changes in terms of early years funding from nine months to age two with the currently being a maximum of 15 um and that changing i was just wondering what the nursery schools that we have and and their funding because of course they don't um work on a sort of um full-time 52 weeks of the year um you know 10 11 hour day and how obviously with the system changing and it has changed over several years now for for working parents and that's what it's designed for um and a lot of this funding those changes came under the previous government i was just wondering how the the nursery schools and ones with the coping with that because obviously they require different block funding to what is what is uh available under the the the set out for for those with small children so the rates set up considerably higher than the rates at three and four year olds so that does account for the additional staff required um some pvis are providing a top of charging parents a top-up um how they articulate it's different um but on the whole we're able to with our schools cover our costs with the funding that is required it's 12 pounds or so towards the lower um age groups okay uh thank you everybody um for your questions and thank you to mr hoff i think we can um now move to the recommendations as i said this paper is for decision and diocese and parent governors can um vote on it and we are recommended um to vote on the recommendations it's page 28 and it is paragraph two so we support the recommendations at paragraph two support thank you very much we can move on on the next paper which is education performance report um another good news um paper with the exceptional quality um of our schools that continues and i have to include the other side in that as well um and hopefully we're carrying on that tradition of having these very high performing schools this is mr hoff again so if i can go straight to you um in the interest of time uh mr hoff and then we can take questions and this is to note there isn't a decision on this paper um yes the first point i'd want to make is that um you know people outcomes on the whole and ones worth are extremely positive as notable that primary attainment early years and phonics is significantly higher than national and higher than london and at key stage two while slightly lower than london is still significantly higher than national uh secondary all of our secondaries have positive progress eight scores and you'll see that we're in the top 10 ranking for progress eight nationally now ultimately these uh outcomes uh are down to the quality and determination hard work of our school leaders their teachers and of course their support staff we're also fortunate as a council we have positive instructor relationships with both our maintained schools and our academies across both sectors our advisory and support teams work extensively across both sectors to support and promote positive outcomes for these pupils our priority areas include disproportionality and underperformance of some groups including our disadvantaged cohort and we've done extensive work at key stage five to understand the reason for the lower attainment at this stage this is of course related to the fact that all of our secondary schools have sixth forms we rank second nationally for the percentage of young people attending a state-funded sixth form schools of course do not work in a vacuum and one of the most striking bits of data you may have noticed in the is the altogether unsurprising correlation between school attendance and outcomes our education welfare service provide advice and support to schools but of course influence can be brought to bear through many avenues our social workers our early health professionals all have a part to play in promoting attendance as do health professionals and our education welfare service have done extensive work with all of these groups to raise awareness of the importance of school attendance my welcome introduction to family hubs of course which bring agencies and services together to support families uh prioritizing supporting school attendance is a key part of this i'll leave it at that and if there are any questions happy to i think councillor davies was jumping straight um yeah thank you very very much a good newspaper um which was um good to read um but i just wanted i mean the one thing that's the one little thing that stands out from this is about the the key stage five so i'd just like to know what's been done this year to improve the outcomes um there thank you so i think i think a really key thing was for us to actually understand what why do the figures look like they are and and what can we do about it and when you consider that three and five state-funded secondary schools and in england have sixth forms but all of us have sixth forms you know obviously there is a much higher percentage of our young people who are going into our sixth forms and when we look at where there are are large numbers of sixth forms children with lower attainment many more children with lower attainment are going into sixth forms the analysis we've done in terms of teaching and learning is that the outcomes that our young people get in terms of their attainment going in are actually where they should be the issue is and and we we had a really interesting piece of analysis we did and we presented to our sixth form leaders and some head teachers which essentially pointed out that uh if we were to take out so we hypothetically we took out 30 percent of the lowest performing um uh lowest attainers at key stage five to see what what would that look like well that that suddenly takes us from 100th to 32nd in the league tables um and it was hypothetical the people that obviously affected the most were not surprisingly mainly children on free school meals and people from global majority backgrounds one of the head teachers who wasn't actually at the meeting um and picked it up second hand accused us of trying to say let's stop providing uh a levels for global majority and free school meals children in order you know that we would boost our our ratings in the table look well of course we weren't going to do that what it does however um illustrates and what they said was that actually it shows that our schools are very inclusive they want to make sure that the young people are going into their sixth forms young people on the whole they know and are staying there the leverage that we have is to make them consider what are the best options for those young people to stay in so the analysis showed if you take chemistry for instance a lot of young people with low attainment were doing chemistry and not getting good outcomes so that would indicate that possibly chemistry is not a good option for some of those young people so it's about making sure that schools are aware of of of what are appropriate and also looking at the making sure that the young people and their parents i have to say because i think and many parents are very keen for their children to take sciences for instance um but it's really important there is the right information and guidance given to those young people to ensure that they take the um courses that are right for them our performance in btex it actually is is very strong so again um we're thinking about how can we promote vocational courses but of course there's quite a lot of uncertainty in that and in terms of what is the future of btex so again we're working with our schools to negotiate you know their way through a changing environment in that sense thank you um councillor owens thank you just just following on from that and i'm one of many hundreds of parents who are currently going through around all the ones with states state school six forms uh and i can tell you all about ashcroft versus graveney versus chestnut grove um but i was just just on this isn't it sort of the reality is that if you have lots of state funded six forms and and you have this second nationality so nationally for the percentage of young people attending part of the problem with that we have with the lack of btex is because we don't have the six form colleges perhaps that they have in in other boroughs and obviously a lot of and around the country a lot of our children obviously leave the bar and go off to each college in places like that and i really noticed that and then maybe there's something for the council or maybe it's something for schools but that there is a lot of misinformation out there so for example when you were talking about us chemistry as an example um you know our hugely successful school graveney um which offers at sixth form an additional 200 places on top of the 150 to 200 already has of children i mean more or less categorically says that those places are not really available for children studying set stem subjects because the current graveney cohort take up because they have a let's face it 50 grammar stream i mean they might call it slightly less but that's what it is take up most of those places and i think one of the problems is for parents is that there's a lot of misinformation out there in terms of what we should be looking at and what we should be doing and perhaps there aren't the btex that there should be thank you well and and one of the things that schools have been considering is is t levels um and in in terms of our sixth form conferences this is for we we've had speakers uh about t levels but but uh and but would of course were were the early adopters in in onesworth and have had some some success with it but of course it's a big investment for schools uh and a little bit of a gamble when it's slightly unclear of what the future of those um uh qualifications is i think again it's hard and i think one of the things that we've managed with having a key specific key stage five advisor is to get south thames more involved with our sixth form colleagues as well so that is better information about what are some of the other options out there counselor paul i think you had a question thank you um i just wanted to go back a bit on the question that counselor davis arts around um i think you answered in relation to um people or students and families being realistic about what subjects they're choosing how would you well how would the council ensure that there's no sort of bias set into any model of that nature to make sure that kids who are capable but just don't fit um you know the mold the look whatever it is are not being disadvantaged it's a good question i think we have to consider as a local authority what leverage we have um and i think in terms of sixth forms it is to a degree it's going to be limited because uh we can't tell sixth forms what they should offer i think however it is in the interests of schools to make sure that they are making an offer that's appropriate um i think in terms of access appropriate access um and and equalities i think we're working with schools generally and i would certainly hope that applies as much to the sixth form as it does to lower down the school um you know the sixth form is a separate judgment on on an ofsted report so just from that point of view it's in their interest that they are able to demonstrate that the offer they are making it is appropriate um we can work with them we can share data we can show where you know what what we feel they should be offering and actually by bringing them together there is much greater collaboration in terms of schools being able to see what each other are offering and possibly where some of the gaps are probably leads on to my second question is that okay yeah it's just what support are we giving to our schools to help to close the disadvantage gap i noticed that it's small anyway but what are we actually doing um so when when i spoke earlier about um you know uh the the attendance issue i think it's it's much wider than just the school issue it is of course school is at the heart of it but i think um many of those disadvantaged pupils are you know they're they're poor attenders i think we're doing a lot of work around um because again the the intersectionality between um you know different groups in terms of disadvantaged um some uh some ethnic groups um send for instance that there is there is great crossover so i think it is absolutely key that first of all schools are engaging young people and that's making sure there is a sense of belonging i think also again when i talked about that multi-agency approach in terms of actually getting people into school in the first place so i think a big part of it is attendance that's not all of it uh there is a huge piece about aspiration and again i think that's about making um schools absolutely clear in terms of their equalities agenda and making sure that their um equality statements are are not just lip service on their website because they have to all put them which again ties into our colleges and curriculum advisor who's been doing audits and actually schools have been remarkably open and more so over time to to allow her to come in have some disruptive conversations it's quite difficult conversations and actually we're making sure that we're using peer-to-peer support which i think is one of the most powerful things because we often as a local authority we can talk to a blue in the face but actually it takes fellow practitioners who will say this this is what works and also it helps that that our curriculum and qualities advisor is a self a very recently has been a onesworth deputy head so again has you know a certain amount of cachet amongst her peers thank you mr hoff for a comprehensive answer um so um bringing this to a close because we're up against the clock this report is for information noted for information thank you i'm sorry miss haroon we have to go on to the next paper because they're for decision and we're not going to get there so that brings us to the general fund capital program of capital maintenance schemes to schools in 25 26 it's paper number 25 to 67 um just quickly the committee welcomes proposals outlined in appendix a which detailed the important work that several schools across our borough uh will benefit from to enhance the learning environment for our onesworth children and mr booth is going to introduce the paper um and it's for decision good evening councillors so the paper relates to the uh to the school condition allocation or sca uh this is a capital grant that comes from the dfe and it's there to support uh for major maintenance within the community schools uh it does not include the academies because the academies receive direct funding from the dfe for this type of of work on it so around about uh june july we we go out to the schools and we ask them to bid for major maintenance items um we encourage multiple bids as well as each bid is assessed and then it's scored by uh by four criteria which you'll see in paragraph nine which is health and safety safeguarding the impact on curriculum and the potential for closing the school it is not based on cost uh it's based on the requirements and if you like the condition on there uh we then put all the bids and they're all ranked and they're prioritized which you can see in in the appendix uh and we have a certain amount of money that we receive from the from the dfe from from from the grant uh which we base on this year we're basing it on the current uh level of funding we have which is 1.65 million uh there is also some a little bit of uncommitted these uncommitted funds from previous years so it's effectively it's savings that we've made on the previous program or programs of 288 000 and we also ask for the schools to contribute 10 of the cost of the works up to and it's capped at 20 000 so that has generated another uh further 100 000 so we have a total budget this uh this year to add to the capital program of 2.038 million with it and what we do is essentially is we go down the list until we actually get to the point where we can you know till we reach that level and then we have to cap at that point what i would point out though is that the level of the sca has remained predominantly unchanged for the last four years and with hyper inflation in construction back in about 2021 22 and a much higher level coming through as well at the moment we can do uh much less for the money and we are now uh having a fair amount of kind of backlog maintenance that's uh that's starting to come into the into the program and that's why we include the list of of uh reserve projects you'll see on the list that should we get any further money from the dfe uh we would bring those into the program thank you very much mr mr booth can we go straight to questions councillor corner and then councillor osborne thank you chair thank you mr booth for your presentation um and um your uh warning if i'm gonna put it that way um on the the nature of um schools capital funding it'll be interesting to see how that plays out over future years um just a very quick question could you just confirm on page 73 what the unidentified urgent health and safety works is um it looks like quite a small piece of work but i just wondered if that was something that was um something that the committee should be concerned about no we carry within the program a certain amount if you'd like a contingency of which one of them is urgent health and safety funds it's only a small amount but it's in case a boiler suddenly falls over that we weren't expecting and we have to go in and sort it out yeah i've got uh two questions really the main one is this additional funding from central government on school maintenance when will we know how much we're going to get and what we're going to be able to do with it and you did talk about the process of prioritization of projects and uh i was going to ask about that so if you wanted to expand on what you said in your presentation please feel free to do so but if you feel you've answered that already uh then fair enough so we prepare the program in advance effectively income to the committee in february time we don't get the full announcement from the dfe um it's normally around about april it can be may it can even be later than that if we waited until that time when the announcement was made we would not be in a position where we could go in predominantly over the summer holiday to do the urgent urgent works uh so we are going slightly at risk at the precise moment however if the funding comes in less than we're predicting then we have to reduce the budgets accordingly uh it seemed to work okay for a for a number of years so far um it'd be nice if the dfe actually provided further funding and i think we're in no different position than a lot of other boroughs across the whole of the uk with this backlog maintenance and i think we're all looking for additional funding to come through but again the paper sets out the the projects we would bring into the uh into the program if that funding was available uh thank you very much mr booth so this paper is for um decision uh the recommendations are on page 67 the executive is recommended paragraph two a b and c is that agreed everyone four yes thank you very much and that brings us to the final paper i know we're almost hitting the guillotine but we did have um an adjournment when we went out for a bit so i think we can go on to the final paper um which is uh paper number 2568 uh cautiously monitoring q3 2526 budget including annual review of charges and that is mr hallick to introduce briefly um i'll just keep it brief um this is the standard paper but it does have an appendix with next year's budget so um that is what you haven't seen before uh happy to take any questions yes anybody got uh councillor paul we do are you ready smiling there um so we do see that the overspend has crept up um it's just to understand why that is and what can we do about it yeah yeah so it is the similar question to the last couple of committees uh most of our pressure is in the placements market um and yeah the single placement does have a big impact on the finance it's the biggest risk for us um we have managed demand very well in this area um through our practice models and keeping children at home etc so i yeah thank you and and and well done on the um excellent uh cost control and financial management in a difficult situation um that the sector finds itself in um the going back to the theme that um councillors should um be briefed properly on the care of vulnerable children in the borough uh i just i know i know i have raised this in an offices briefing but i'd just like to um let the committee know that i i would like the the committee to be briefed on the uh on the children in an anonymous way of course um that that commands such high fees that are detailed in the appendix and i think it would be valuable for us as committee members to really understand uh what the care that those children receive and and why it costs so much what the drivers are and how we can potentially look to reduce costs um so i think the the officers have already committed to running that briefing and i really think it'd be really valuable to to do so that corporate parenting principles can be met there you go councillor could i just say that these are slightly different cohort to the bradstow which are funded from dsg yeah thank you thank you councillor corner um um for that contribution i think that's uh quite a good way of bringing uh this to a close except sorry it's for decision so we actually have to vote on this the recommendations are on page 75 and the executive is recommended at paragraph two a and b oh yes a and b and the parent governor and diocese uh representatives can vote i cannot vote cannot vote because it's because it's not just it sorry i'm losing the plot uh so i think that brings this meeting to a close no no we need to vote we need to vote agree you can thank you councillor

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