Transcript

Hiya, good evening everybody. Good evening and welcome to our first Children's Education Student Subcommittee Meeting of 2025. My name is Councillor Abdul-Mannan and I will be chairing this meeting. This meeting is being held in person with the community members and key participants present in the meeting room while others are joining online. Should a technical error happen to prevent online attendants from participating, I will decide if and how the meeting should continue after taking advice from officers. This meeting is being filmed for the Council website for public viewing. People who are participating in the meeting will be included in their footage. I asked members at the meeting wanted to speak in my direction and to engage and speak clearly into the microphone so that they can be heard and their comment can be properly recorded. Justina, do you receive an apology from anyone please? Yes, Chair, I have received apologies from Shiblu Mia, the Muslim representative and Dr Philip Rice, the Church of England representative. Sorry, just one more thing. Joanne Hannan, the parent governor, she's unable to attend in person. She said she was going to join online. Thank you. Any members, House Green Team, be clear please? Just to declare, we participated in eating some of the meals that the local authority provides. Thank you. I know we went there, you're old school, I think all of us, most of us was, went there and was arranged by the, Jay, and it's been very, we should thank him for arranging that and also Jenny as well from contract services. Thank you on this. Thank you, John. It was a minute from last meeting. Anyone has got any comment on the meeting or shall I say we greeted the meeting? Anyone online? So can someone second it please? No. and the update on action log just enough the action lock has been circulated to all members if you have any comments please let me know by email thank you our first item on the evening this evening extended the spotlight on the school food in time as free school meals the chosen area for this subcommittee challenge session this year additional time has been granted to the officers to present and members will have more time to ask questions as a subcommittee we have engaged in serious activity together helpful evidence from the scrutiny challenge session we have visited five schools in the borough to sample the meals engage people and senior school staff we also had an engagement session with the parents carers in their grocery wing last week and with the meeting with the youth council together the view on a free school meal just a little bit on the parenting of we had more than 75 parents turned up on the on the council wing so that was a good turnout all this provided really helpful evidence and I in encourage members to use this opportunity to ask questions based on what we have observed I would like to thanks all the members who attended the visit attending and visit visits and the officer and the school who helped arrange them I would like to welcome deputy mayor and cabinet member for education youth and lifelong service councillor mine tarugda corporate director children services still ready head of contract services jenny pitam and head of health healthy living privy sorry cool pv and the public health program manager robot brownwell to present this item as I mentioned earlier this extended spotlight and you will have the slightly more time to use to present and share our monitor the time may intervene if I feel need to be concluded for the questions thank you overton good evening thank you chair I'll start off introducing the item I mean a report is attached I hope everyone read it so if we want to go to the discussions afterwards avoid the presentation but it's up to you chair anyway when it comes to a free school meal we time it has been a national leader we're the first borough and only borough to introduce universal free school meals for all primary and secondary peoples people's this has been a life-changing for families with 92 percent uptake in primary schools and 80 82.3 percent in secondary schools saving parents per child 550 pounds per year but while the benefits are clear we must ensure consistency meal quality fair pay for catering staff and improved lunchtime experience for secondary school people especially we also need to ensure that this vital policy remains financially sustainable so that every child continues to benefit last week we had as you've already mentioned as you've already mentioned uh chair we had over 70 parents um it was a very fruitful um workshop i i attended and i spoke to nearly every every you know all the parents were there our officers were there and i think it was a very constructive um workshop and a lot of the information we get is vital it is important um and also uh thank you to the scrutiny members for taking your time and you know time and going and you know tasting the food experiencing the atmosphere um there are challenges i mean our journey will go through those challenges but there are opportunities as well um and also just to let the scrutiny members know um so we will we are also organizing a workshop similar to the one we done with the parents last week with our young people so that we we listen um you know we listen to them we learn from them before we do anything or before we kind of comply with the feedback so young people are important they're the ones who are directly benefiting so i thought i had that bit as well so i'll pass on to jenny um good evening um i will um take over so thank you so much for inviting us to speak to you this evening um we're here to talk about school food which is something that we're all very very passionate about um and as i'm sure some of you who've come along with us for the last two months to visit schools to taste the meals as you will have come to understand this is a very broad topic and there's no way we can cover absolutely everything in 20 minutes but what we hope to do with this presentation is to provide you with a bit of an overview about the school food agenda in um tower hamlets um we will be referring to our notes um as i said there's quite a lot to get through um so we just want to ensure that we're capturing everything so um bear with us right so um this slide highlights why um school food is so crucial um for our children in the borough and why our university free school meals play a vital role within that it is important to note here that when we are talking about the importance of school meals we're talking about a meal that is healthy um a meal that's balanced and a meal that is properly funded um for our children um and i don't want to spend too much time getting into the research you have all received um these papers and can look up the research for yourselves um but i did want to touch on a few areas um the first one is that school meals provide um and enable children to eat more healthily during the school day there is research to support that only about two percent of packed lunches meet the school food standards that we have for school meals and we know that nutritious food is essential for children's growth their overall well-being as well as their development secondly universal free school meal enable all children to access a school meal it takes away the stigma that was long attached to free school meals so if everybody's receiving a universal free school meal it means nobody can be pointed out um and then thirdly um providing a proper school meal at school time um during the school day also improves um academic outcomes as well which we are um clearly very um concerned about and want to promote um and particularly school meals also support attendance particularly among children from the most deprived communities so again they continue um to kind of level out the inequalities that we see um in our borough and then just to add as well we know the school meals universal school meals are also economically sound for every one pound that we invest in school meals we receive one one pound 71p back in return and we see that through improvements in health improvements in education as well as reduction in these long-term um inequalities so why does this matter for tower hamlets um in tower hamlets we face some um consequences around um poor public health outcomes as well as social economic outcomes as well we have some of the highest child healthy weight rates um and oral health both of which contribute to absence in schools and we also have some of the highest child poverty rates so again this universal offer really supports um children not only within their health but also their um educational outcomes and reducing inequalities so this slide um just provides a bit of an overview about some of the key components um that we need in order to ensure there's quality school food for all children um firstly we need um to ensure that there's equitable access and we've been able to achieve this in tower hamlets by rolling out the universal free school meal offer to all children under the age of 16. secondly there needs to be fair funding and we have achieved this through a number of um funding streams for combination and some of those are listed on this slide and then thirdly we need to ensure that there's quality assurance within the school food provision as well as the operation and we do this in a number of different ways we can be done in a number of different ways we want to ensure that there's compliance with the school food standards we also want to ensure that we have abilities to um uh audit school food as well as the operation around school food to ensure that it meets with our local policies and also continuous improvement and in tower hamlets we do have some of that built in some of that quality insurance but we don't have a formalized process um to ensure that quality assurance um is embedded and that's an area that's a bit vulnerable within this wider program um and then this slide just shows a bit of a breakdown of how school food is supplied in the borough so if you look at the first um pie chart it symbolizes how um food is supplied in primary schools so you can see with the green color it represents our contract services it's led by the council and jenny um so the majority of our primary schools are provided um have food provided for through the council um and then we also have some schools um represented by the orange slice of schools that provide food in-house so the schools themselves provide the provision and then if we look at the second pie chart that represents how school food is supplied in secondary schools and as you can see it's almost the opposite of primary schools where the majority of food is provided through provocateurs or external providers and this slide we've included just to highlight some of the complexities of the school food um system so um as you will see there are many interconnected factors that impact on what food um ends up on a plate and as you walk into schools these might be some of the things that you might see so you might see what the food looks like on a plate you might see a school menu you might get a feel of the dining room atmosphere how noisy it is how subtle the young people are but that's in essence what you see however there are many many more factors that impact that top level that's beneath the surface that we don't see so these include things like um food price so the price is going to influence the quality of the meal that ends up on a plate um and also if we take another example school day pressures um so depending on how much time is allocated for school lunch it's going to influence how much of the meal that's provided for a young person they're able to eat within the time allocated that then also has an influence with how settled and how ready they are to learn in the afternoon so it is a quite a complex uh system and we haven't even captured all the various different factors here this just gives you a bit of an illustration of what that system looks like and some of those um complexities i'm going to hand over to my colleague um so this slide here is i'm just building on the iceberg image um in the last um in the last slide and um is there to kind of illustrate how complex school food provision is um with multiple stakeholders lots of competing priorities so within the school day when you have the senior leadership team of governors who set the healthy eating agenda and the school food agenda in that school they're influenced by local and national policy but really by the everyday interactions they have with parents and pupils and their school community and meanwhile in the lunch hall the supervisors they're often stretched thin they want to get through the lunch period smoothly um they want to kind of keep the keys moving keep the noise down and the kitchen teams who are kind of part of the school but um you know not necessarily managed by um by the school feel the pressures of food costs and budgets and constraints from one side um and on the other side and the kind of school's concerns as well as the challenges of like a really physically demanding job and in um and in the council um school food really intersects so many different um so many different teams which is kind of an amazing um strength of it but um also means it's really kind of complicated to kind of get it right on our side as well um and as a council we really want to maximize the nutritional value of every meal we serve and support schools um and discuss how we can influence and empower schools um so what is going well uh well as kind of as mentioned earlier we're one of the few borrowers to have funded um universal tree school meals for over a decade um it has really high take up and it's really popular of residents that was really apparent in the um the parent session last week um and our evaluators at queen mary highlighted just how embedded and valued this policy um is within our kind of tower hamlets community that's something that should be really proud of and celebrate um we've also established a fantastic food and schools program which we'll just talk about soon um which is kind of to help schools enhance their food provision um and the program brings together lots of kind of different key teams from the council um and there's really exciting opportunity to kind of continue to build on this foundation um and make tower hamlets um a leader in really exceptional school food um so this diagram on the right is um taken from the school food matters report last year and it kind of breaks down the cost of primary school meal um of roughly the three pounds spent on each meal most of this goes to labor um including pensions um with about a third of it or just over a third of it covering um the ingredients and the remainder um for overheads like kitchen equipment gas electricity things like that um so balancing menus and we've really kind of within tight budgets is really difficult i'm sure denny can attest to that um but there are great um there are many great examples of private caterers um in primary and secondary school in tower hamlets there are also ones that aren't doing as well um they're all ultimately profit based businesses and this profit can be um made by economy of scale from um catering thousands of schools across the country um and it can also be made by cutting costs um serving cake every day instead of fresh fruit or yogurt which is more expensive and reducing portion sizes um sometimes lowering the quality of food or as is often the case not paying the london living wage um while we no longer spend our own money on universal free school meals in primary schools we want this money to prioritize children's health above anything else um and ultimately what is important across primary and secondary settings is this level playing field um whether a school decides to go in-house or of our own contract serve um caterers or go private it's really important that we have um the insurances that the money is being um well spent uh so introducing fantastic food in schools um it is a primary school program um it's in the final year of its three years um public health funded um the aim of the program is to improve school meals provision across the bar so all children can eat healthy and nutritious food and enjoy a good school food experience and i think a really important word here is enjoy because it's not just looking at the food on the plate and making as nutritionally beneficial as possible it's about children kind of wanting to eat the plate and the food kind of benefiting from the nutrition of it rather than often throwing it in the bin which i think no one wants the food wasted um and it's a collaborative effort so the kind of three um teams that make up the program team a public health um contract services and healthy lives team kate smith who is here um with us um has kind of been instrumental in that um and can be part of the will be part of the discussion after this and for the three parts of the program um we've kind of done work on our own in-house catering service and we hired a development chef hassan who's kind of led on training and menu development um we're delivering a whole school series of support to all primary schools through the healthy lives team so this included a pilot school and pilot program in 10 schools that has expanded to all primary schools in the borough um and has been um done work around um writing healthy eating policies training kitchen teams and lunchtime supervisors um running kind of taste education classes and things like that and when the program started um the grant conditions which were the kind of thing that wrapped around all of this was when we paid universal free school meals as a borough to say this is money we're investing in um school food and we needed some kind of um quality assurances um alongside that um obviously the mayor of london's um funding at primary schools has changed that landscape and um while it's kind of saved a lot of money at a borough level um it has reduced our kind of influence um around uh yeah around the school food plate um so uh key challenges um we've had a lot of really notable successes and really strong partnership working in the council and really positive feedback on our menus and just like really amazing tangible work um kind of like in schools that's really impacting children um in the lunchroom environments um we have really um it's been challenging um engaging schools we worked with a lot of schools in the borough but there's still some that haven't engaged with the program um even though we know that their kind of food can be better than it is um not all schools comply with our um dessert policy and for a variety of reasons that's given um but ultimately yeah like we said we want to maximize nutrition um on the plate um we want to kind of go above and beyond the national standards um a small number of schools still don't pay the london living wage which does create the kind of uneven playing field like we discussed before um and um and as we know a lot of the kind of kitchen staff in the borough um live and work and have children um in the borough and so it's really important um to advocate for this and then monitoring um just kind of as kind of fee people will talk about later um this kind of continuous continuous improvement and really understanding where all of our schools are at um this last slide is just to say that all the work in primary schools and fantastic food in schools is being evaluated working with um queen mary university who are doing the qualitative evaluation and um healthy dialogues doing the quantitative evaluation um and these results will be coming out at the end of the program which ends in september jenny is that on the next slide there we go thank you so there's a picture of our national school meals week which uh deputy mayor was uh out visiting mayflower school and enjoying a meal with the children that week just one of many promotions we do throughout the year but um i'm actually going to talk about secondary school meals not too much because next week you're going to have a really extensive prince presentation uh by cohesion consulting who have done a full uh evaluation of all the secondary schools um and this is the for the third year in a row uh they were uh consultants that we used prior to the launch of secondary school meals and they did the initial surveys of the schools they then did an evaluation shortly after and then one in 24 and the results for the january 25 are hot off the press which will be presented to you next week so i mean all i can say is that um that the secondary school project is is fantastic it's pioneering um we are the first uh council in the in the country to do this and it's not just pioneering at a national level it actually is at a world level you know we should be extremely proud of it um and there is lots of uh of good information excellent actually results coming to you next week showing a significant improvement on the project from when it was first launched to now in its third year which just goes to show that a project like this does take some time to bed in and that's really important to understand because it was a cultural shift for you know some pupils having a school meal free but some paying for it to now everybody going into that dining room well not everybody but a lot more than they were and um you know there's some just some great information coming through next week on that um but we're delighted with the project um there's still room for improvement and there are some challenges and that will be presented to you next week as well um and without a doubt i mean one of the i think nearly 1700 pupils were spoken to in the recent survey nearly 100 per school um so the consultants really have got a very good flavor of what students are enjoying and liking what what they would like to see different and things that they they don't like about the services um and they're not all easy solutions to resolve but i think there's a lot there that we can take from this report and and work on um so i think uh you'll be it'll be interesting to see what you make of that next week but i just want to highlight just again that this is a tower hamlets needs to promote uh their secondary school meal project because there are people and councils and the government and including the child poverty task group that are really interested to use tower hamlets as a case study um to take this forward to help uh lobby the government to at the very least perhaps provide free school meals in the country for primary school pupils and maybe secondary is the next level but we're we're an excellent case study to to promote and we need to do more of that so on that note and i would just like to say on the next slide just um here's some early data that came out from uh universal free school meals in secondary schools was that um children are no longer or pupils are no longer having to share their meals with their friends everyone has an opportunity to uh a meal and that was one of the one of the really nice positive changes and that pupils are happier they're going in with their uh their their social friendship group and the free school meal pupils are not feeling so isolated um so there's just lots and lots of positives and those dining rooms are generally full um with pupils in enjoying uh that time of day so i'm going to pass back to um to phoebe that's you just check with the chair how much longer we've got you can yeah you can plan okay thank you just give us um two more minutes um okay so i guess we're just reflecting on where we where we are now and obviously we were called to scrutiny we see this as a real opportunity for us to share some of the work that has been ongoing around school food as well as taking you out to get the opportunity um to taste food so this slide is kind of outlined the purposes um of the scrutiny challenge um and the goals that we were aiming for so we want to um better work with schools to support and increase school food uptake and we also want to identify opportunities um for improvement in order to improve the school food quality the variety but also the overall experience that children experience during the school meal and again we just want to build greater collaboration um brad mentioned that we've had some challenges around engaging with certain schools so we really would love your support in order to improve that and this is just a picture from swanley school um which you visited i think was one of the first um schools that you went to um so yeah happy children enjoying um good meals um so in order to sustain all the great work that we've been working on over the last um three years or so we're really um keen to ensure that we are building systems that will enable us to not only sustain the work but to continuously improve it so this model is taken from the school food policy toolkit and we've adapted it slightly so that it reflects um tower hamlets and what it really does it outlines what we need to do in order to have a continuous cycle of improvement around school food so just want to talk very quickly um through those four elements the first element as i mentioned previously is around um auditing not only the provision but the wider operation and looking for areas for improvement this then leads to um having an agreed accountability policy but also having the funding to be able to implement this whole wider system um that you see whether that's through officer time or through um support from consultants such as cohesion who'll be joining us next week um thirdly we also want to then deliver that improved program and ensure that we're not just delivering but we're also building and embedding positive food cultures within our schools and then the fourth element is around publishing annual reports around school food activities so that includes any uptake data before we then work back around that cycle to look at auditing and improvement um just to say some i think i said earlier in the presentation that some of these elements are embedded but they're not formally embedded and as i come on to the next slide we have a list of things that would really value your support um as scrutiny and to enable us to not only continue to deliver good school food for young people but also to sustain the work that has already been implemented and started um so this is um you'll be glad to know is our last slide um and along my colleagues as well as our wider partners we had a conversation about where we really see the value of scrutiny supporting school food the details are on the slides i won't go through everything in detail but we really want your support um to advocate um and support the introduction of a um accountability policy around school food to really hold um all our catering providers um to account and that will enable us to embed good school food culture and sustainability and then secondly we want your support and your advocacy around school food funding um again not just for officer time but to ensure that we have evaluation and monitoring built into our school food system and so that we can access specialist consultants um such as cohesion and then lastly but not least um we ask for your support to advocate and promote the importance of school food um i think we've made the case here already and we're happy to take any questions um and to enable us to do that across the council and outside the council within our communities as well and i'll just conclude by saying that um investing in school food is investing in children's futures it's investing in children's well-being and it's investing in their education so thank you i'm going to move it thank you for your presentations and it was a long extended with but thorough and i would like to put to the floors for questionings from my my right and anybody want to questions any questions so i'll take your own name first or the left lilimia okay lilimia okay i'm sure you have i'm sure you have it's look and then shubo all of all of you yeah you know okay so lilimia do you want to go ask your question please uh good evening everyone uh my question to i think katie uh on your talking said i found the food is everything is okay the excellent service and good quality food and uh you said uh the people uh children are going to the dining room and someone paid and someone not paid and they're enjoying food together so i just want to ask you where is i know the food is free for everyone so why is someone paid what's the reason so it is the school the school lunch is free for everybody you said there's someone paid and someone not paid so um in secondary schools um there is a morning break service and that is a paid service so there might be children paying for the morning breakfast is free across secondary and primary schools okay so i just want to clear because i know that food is free so everyone should be cut free so if someone paid and someone's not in this discrimination so i'm i'm getting sorry to cut in thank you i also think um when jenny uh was talking about it earlier she was referring to what it was like prior to the universal free school meal policy coming in in 2023 so free at lunch for primary and secondary so there won't be anybody paying i think jenny was referring to previously some will be paying others wouldn't be paying so that's you're right there was just suffer for everybody thank you thank you do you have a follow-up question a little oh no okay uh then next is uh uh suluka sorry yeah do you have a question please thank you chair um just um i'd like to i mean this is a question but i just want to just um for clients um all i want to say is education is one of the important and first priority of this administration and um and our mayor because since beginning he was really keen to serve this um service providing um um equally uh provide you know as you mentioned a few times equally is providing healthy food food and um the choosing between what people people like to eat it is also important uh in you have to balance it both ways um having uh visiting uh there has been several visits by the councillors of this scrutiny committee i was one of them as well in some creation and the food that was provided we did ask for some feedbacks i mean i don't want to mention any schools but there was an um in my my opinion there was an excellent um um um taste of the opinion of the children's um i believe um so um what are you uh are you sort of in way in order to because the council serves the um pay for the food and the council we have also responsibility to to monitor whether the food are not being waste not going direct in the uh in back um how i mean obviously the councillors that we we've been visiting i mean we did um for like film just for at least one occasion we've seen how it's been done so do you have anything in place that to monitor the food that they're not being waste and it's being eaten by the uh children that's fine um hi um yeah i mean food race is an issue that every every school that we kind of talk to um has and some schools have huge amounts of waste some um kind of have sometimes too little ways which suggest that they're not putting enough food onto the child's plate and it's just the piece the food that they want um it's it's really complicated because you have food that have food waste that happens in the kitchen you have food waste that happens in the dining hall and um and it's partly to do with education it's partly to do with the lunch hall environment you want to kind of um make the you want to make the dining hall somewhere that's calmer where children aren't going to be stressed when they're eating that they have kind of more time to eat rather than kind of running out straight to kind of go and play and um i think one of the schools we were in the other day um called malmsbury said it was the kind of malmsbury twist was a dance move when you kind of got the plate and you kind of sometimes the children just kind of direct right to them because they want to go out and play football and so there's lots of there's lots of things you can do um we've been working in the healthy lives team on family style dining which is kind of um encouraging children to um having a lot of the food on the tables encouraging children to kind of serve themselves take as much they want um maybe have a bit less pressure than kind of going up to the counter to get served i think food waste is um it's very complicated and there's lots of different factors that go into it in the pilot program we weighed um we kind of literally weighed the food waste in all of the 10 schools that we we worked with and and it's it's when you to impact it it's a result of a lot of kind of different things um education the quality of the food how kind of making sure the portions are the right sizes lots of different things that go into it um i don't know if that answers the question enough but yeah um um yeah thank you um for explaining some of it but um one thing i've got a question like you mentioned mom's food and um the other food i believe these these probably food that provided in school and provided by mom is is totally different uh because in uh they are i mean um in in this borough you can you know if you look as a whole i mean we have uh we we have different background different taste of foods and uh throughout the borough i mean it's not so it's very difficult to understand for the food provider to provide something but we how how closely we are monitoring that's what i want to ask that the children are provided healthy on top of that what they like as well because from at least from one of the visit we did ask some of the children so they are not really happy with the food food and i've got my children also um in uh tahoma schools as well and i do ask them and they i mean wasn't really i mean one of my girls said how she comes and eats at home i mean i'm just being honest to be honest you know she's not liking the food so much she has a little but uh i don't think this is the issue with the um the hope you know all over the borough but this is something very important that because i have seen i've taken dinner with um with a group of students once um during the visit and we did ask some of the um key children um they are not sort of happy with the food so what are we doing to to increase the food taste according to the children's need possibly because of the uh the diversity of the borough you know so are you looking something into this okay um if i can start with primary school first um because it's a very different setup to secondary schools um but obviously all caterers have to abide by the government school food standards um and that's really important because we have to serve a certain amount of fish and non-fried foods and just it's it's quite it's controlled so we have to provide certain foods and then within that we have to provide a variety and you know for from contract services point of view we change our menu twice a year and we try to bring some creativity into it we have different theme days throughout the week um traditional days international days street food days um and popular days and before we uh actually launch any of our menus we send them all out to the individual schools and we get the head teachers to look over them and we get them to share it with whoever they think is important in their schools quite often they've got a school food council who will who will come back and they are allowed to tweak the menus to a degree if we allowed them to tweak it completely they would bring back uh desserts and sponge and custard every single day of the week and pizza and fried foods every day of the week so we don't allow them to do that um but yes they can tweak it and every school is slightly different you know it's interesting some won't like lasagna but they'll like spaghetti bolognese it's a bit bizarre but they do um in a secondary school um completely different it's really where and you'll see next week there are a lot of things students would like some would not like and with the big asian muslim population in tower hamlets one thing is clear they don't like curry and rice in school they get that at home and they get it made by mum and uh it's very good and unfortunately the school caterers i don't think can replicate that and they probably never will and um actually the muslim asian population do like our classic british traditional food so but not the opposite is the case in a school that has a white population white british population they love curry we are a nation of curry eaters and so it's really down to each school uh working with their caterer to get devised menus that are suitable for the population of that school that is the key thing um and we in swan lee school for example share our menus with um a big student population who who very much have an influence on we what we eventually launch there um but we're only in one secondary school so it does vary across the council that provision just quickly um since um the last visits from the councillors what was the uh did you um actually i was in one location and i was one of them as well but what was the uh did you take any feedback yet from the councillor who visited the um the schools um uh i think it's quite few schools have been visited what was the outcome of those visits i'll answer that thank you so after the um the feedback we haven't had any i'm not sure if we had any feedback have you given us any feedback yet through the scrutiny so it's down to the scrutiny committee to provide feedback yeah so councillor sulok i think you are talking about the site visits that members went on and attended the different schools all of the notes from that meeting is being compiled into one evidence space which will be circulated with members in advance of the challenge session next week so that they can consider it as part of the evidence gathering um and in terms of the feedback from the parental engagement session that's being held by the parent and family support service and once that's shared with us i'll also share it with members so that they can consider that as part of the evidence thank you thank you jay yeah i just want to um a councillor saluk mentioned about taste i mean look um i have children they go they attend schools in tower hamlets um and on the other hand we've got we we we are a council that we're really pushing for we are quite um how do i say we're quite strong on when it comes to healthy nutritious meal i mean that's one of one of the challenge we have that we're you know we're quite firm on that and and because you know we've got issues within the borough healthy health issues um obesity and so on so we're kind of quite strong on that so i think that that could be one of the issues my own children i mean they're not healthy food eaters and a lot of the children i'm not saying all but some of the children they're not healthy food eaters um and that could be one of the reasons i'm not denying your comment or rejecting what you said i mean the all because of the healthy aspect that could be one of one of the reasons why they don't like the taste but we need to look at everything all the feedbacks that's important but i just want to say it is a difficult um you know situation where you you know you need to balance it with um healthy taste and so on some food when it's healthy it's not tasty so that's that's the challenge unfortunately thank you uh no so i'm going to ask a question then i'll come to you on this uh i'm going to ask a set of questions probably to jenny as well um from the some of the information we get from the parents and children we visited as well just highlights a few things they one of the things right they in servicing time on a long queue in the lunch time and they don't enough time to eat because there's major concern when we visit some of the people although some of the parents mentioned as well from last week what's the vibe been taken to ensure the smooth online service and reduce queue time to me to us is very important to we tackle that second uh subsidy question to that is that as a council consider piloting or rollout of pre-watering system in primary school where on the reception time no reception registration time children get the opportunity what means this is that's the menu they get to choose so therefore caterers or the kitchen get advanced that class that many we have in and therefore it doesn't get short also get meal satisfaction from the children they choose the meal registration they know what they gain last time and and my third question is also uh to jenny how often do we change the menu and when we do introduce new menu when children don't like it we get you get a vibe within a few weeks okay that particular venue that example jackfruit burger no children likes it with all the schools and therefore it's one of those things that we need to change it how often do we change it change the menu and if it's something that's not there suitable for the kids okay do we change it or do we stick to it thank you thank you okay um can i first start with queues um queuing comes down you know when we showed you the iceberg picture um and this is a prime example of you know we as a caterer can provide excellent food but if that dining room environment and the management of queuing is not well organized by a school um you know that that experience for a child going in and eating meal queuing might not be a pleasant one but is this is this comes down to school management we don't have an influence over it and so it depends on the the length of the lunch break particularly in secondary schools so when we launched the secondary school free school meal program there was a lot of pushback from secondary school head teachers who said we're not changing the length of lunch time that's that's that's a fact um and so that immediately put pressure on secondary school provision and hence why we ended up having pods put out in the diet you know in playgrounds to help provide you know give other other outlets and i would still say in secondary schools the lunch time break is too short but again it comes down to the school decision in primary schools um you know they tend to rotate it bringing in classes in from the playground usually quite organized nevertheless there's still a bit of queuing um and um in terms of so yeah school responsibility that area if you could have any influence on that that would be great um the the other thing is um pre-ordering um yes i would love to introduce pre-ordering it would help us as a catering service um it would reduce wastage and it would ensure every child had what they wanted um i did after come up that visit to columbia school recommend it as an opportunity for them to pilot and they they haven't come back with much enthusiasm i'm afraid um so it's a shame because i've worked in other local authorities where that has worked extremely well um and in regards to the menu from contract services point of view we change it twice a year for primary schools and you're absolutely right if there is a product like the jackfruit burger which a number of schools said no not popular we changed it within the first three weeks of the launch however we did have schools who's had children who really enjoyed it so um we didn't wipe it out of the menu completely but we changed it for those schools who said it's not going down particularly well of course we'll always be flexible we want children to eat the food at the end of the day thank you jenny for answering those i'm going to come to i have the name in the list rebecca then shubo then hassan and then the you are online thank you mr chair um i know that some of you already covered this question but still i got to ask you um because many parents are saying that the portion of food and the quality um are very small um and food not very um tasty so as from my experience i have visited to the school with my colleagues as well counselors and spoken to the students um while visiting and then there was um you know expressing they said it's okay the food is okay but it doesn't seem seems that there was they are very happy and satisfied about the food so is there any review uh menus and feedback for the students and the parents need to give and also um do you have any different option like if the child doesn't like burgers like you said spaghetti or the any other pasta so do you have any other option to give or provide the food because if the if the child doesn't have any food then he's going to go hungry without food you know so it's not good so my question to you if you can you know uh come to me please with it thank you sorry you got to can i take a question from shubo as well so are you good for your question okay so did anyone answer those questions yeah so with regards to portion sizes i'm going to revert back to the fact that the government school food standards stipulates portion sizes um both for primary and secondary uh from a from a it's it it is actually a bit it's not right because the portion size for a reception child is exactly the same as it is for 11 year old boy that is not right so what we do in our service we we ask our caterers to apply some discretion and yes give smaller portions to the very little ones because that's all they want otherwise there'd be a huge amount of wastage and then we allow them to offset that by giving a little bit more to the older children and if there are leftovers those older children can go back for seconds um but if you were to stick by the government school food standards that's not what we should be doing um and yeah we have children with healthier appetites and some with much smaller appetites um in terms of into the question around taste one of as we presented earlier one of the key areas of the program is also around how we improve the quality of that food and that includes a lot of work that rab and kate's team have been working on in terms of um training um and hassan as well in geneseam around training kitchen staff and supporting them around even the preparation of the food as well so we if we are able to improve how we cook it and make sure it's a good offer we're hoping that the taste um is then a lot better i do also just have to add which is probably something that's a bit alien to us as adults with more developed palates the school food standard um really it kind of monitors i think it's no salt in school food so as you imagine from kind of the cultural foods that our young people might be eating we you know they might be using a lot of spices salt including the food that's cooked at home with the school food um standards we can't have um salt in food so also that is a bit of a difference in terms of tastes that children might be used to at home first thank you please thank you chair um i wanted to um i've got a few questions and i want muslim backgrounds they've got proper british palette um but um but some of the things um we noticed and you know i think it was olga primary school um olford olford yeah yeah yeah um you know um i understand the differences in primary school meals even with like ravioli and stuff you know it's it's it sounds a bit fancy do you know i mean not everyone knows what ravioli is people the young people are like we want italian um names that are popping up um that's not even on my palette do you know what i mean so um um we that was my thing um i think let's let's take it back to base i don't know if it's correct can we still say dinner ladies kitchen staff yeah so the kitchen staff uh we're not on um london living wage um for me um i think it's you know not maybe not acceptable so a what are we doing as a local authority to push schools who are not um providing that and what as we as a local authority can do to maybe um and let me see what else uh you also mentioned that some of the schools were not working closely um also in terms of how are we what are we doing and how are we monitoring proportions based on needs um is some of the portions big enough some of the portions some for some small enough because i was there i used to always go for seconds you know so um but yeah um that's it really um so do you want to answer those questions quickly as possible please i'm really sorry we're running out of time um i'm going to try and do my best i was actually going to bring in um our colleague kate smith to support this one there's a lot there that you have said and we were lucky enough to be having conversations with you about some of the challenges um that we have particularly in terms of engaging all schools um i talked earlier about the fact that we don't have any formal processes for um ensuring that that quality assurance is embedded i think that's one area that scrutiny can really support us with um i talked about implementing an accountability policy around school food which would for lack of a better word sort of strongly encourage schools to pay the london living wage that's something that all our contract contracted services schools do however it's not necessarily the same in the private catered schools um and brab talked again about this graph which looks at you know how the money that is given from the council for school food how that is split that we can build into an accountability policy and with the change of school meals being provided um by um the gla it means we have lost some of that um financial clout basically so if there's anything that can be done through scrutiny to ensure that we're embedding that back in so all the areas that you talked about um i believe that'll be really helpful and i'm just gonna hand over to kate to see but but there are a few that aren't and so i think always um always um if you can encourage schools um to take part in the fantastic food in schools program and to really play an integral part in it because both from when my children were little and going to school in tower hamlets and now seeing the queues in schools it's a big thing for for children i do that but if they can just try a little bit of this and try a little bit bit of that in a much more relaxed circumstance that's really great and finally as well we know that when we have fewer queues children are much more likely to have packed the school meals rather than packed lunches which is what we really want we really want the children to be having i think food standard trading standards or something um they wrote about packed lunches um and about the number of students something as little as two percent of them are actually balanced meals but one thing i found out with our free school lunches in primary schools and even so in secondary schools there were still some young people who were having um packed lunches and i remember in the primary school i asked the head team you know great guy um but he was um speaking about how they invite the parents to come in and try um some of their school lunches but when i asked did you ask some of the parents for those kids who bring in the packed lunches have they been invited in there can we do to encourage parents to maybe even come try their food because i've also read i don't know how true it is but it's usually it's usually it's usually sorry chair i'm still asking the question it's no but this is important i understand that you can you come to the point where the question i am this is part of the question chair sorry um what are we doing to encourage parents to at least come try our food because i know that parents who weren't allowed uh free school meals or had or couldn't afford school meals who were bringing in school packed lunches in school when they were kids they are giving those kids their school lunches and have got this ptsd or some sort what are we doing to break that generational issue sorry chair so what would sorry um what we're um doing um is twofold really um jenny's team um do fantastic um tastings um for parents to come in and try the food and very much parents whose children are having packed lunches should absolutely be encouraged um to come and try the school food we're also developing training um around um schools working with and supporting children um um who might be anxious about trying different foods or might be just quite fussy eaters and that's a problem that we see again and again with parents getting anxious about food and anxious and schools get anxious about how to manage children who say oh i only eat this and um and so the the parents concern is that unless they have a packed lunch they won't eat lunch so we're developing training to roll out um to all of our primary schools about supporting parents and schools with fussy eaters can i just add something here that i have known and this it just takes strong leadership this um but i have known schools where they've not allowed packed lunches they have a culture of they say no you come to our school everyone has a school meal that's it and unless that child has particular allergies or it says you know other emotional needs no it's a it's a school lunch it's free this is what we offer and that's what you will accept if you want to come to my school and and and i tell you where where i've seen that it's brilliant it works good leadership and uh it's a very positive environment it's just something to think about and the hassan can i'm going to online i think thank you chair um i'd like to thank uh the team and the council for presenting uh council officer presenting their important information uh to us also i'd like to thank all those behind this um uh free school meal universal being a model for united kingdom really that's something proud that we are so uh world is well actually yeah this is very important that we ensure that quality of the food and everything standards is missed uh the minimum level of it so my question will be on secondary school compliance well the compliance um with the school food standards improved on if you look at the page number 30 31 to about 88 percent uh for the lunches what step i've been taken to address the remaining of the non-compliant 12 percent of the secondary schools while we have visited a number of secondary schools and especially the private caterers we have seen the teachers themselves they are waiting by the standing with their plate full of uh you know lunch in the lunch hall where the students are queuing up and when we ask the students how long is the queue they said at the end of the line they might not have enough but where the teacher is himself eating in i understand there's not much probably room for the council to say how the management of schools should organize but is there should be a minimum level of professionalism to say ensure the staggered amount of school children have been uh in you know director in the right direction to get enough food and you know not eating in front of the children probably in a such manner where the children are hungry and you know the teachers are eating in front of them that's thank you next week you'll have a lot more information on uh compliance and the improvement that um yes it's gone um you'll see what what the difference is and it is a great improvement obviously still room to go to get to 100 compliant um but they are on a journey so i think um like i said it's a step change for secondary schools and they've done extremely well and some are doing better than others and what you'll see next week in the presentation is that there are some strong performance and some that are very much need to improve and um one of the things we want to do is share the presentation next week with all schools that have been evaluated and they will see where they lie in terms of uh performance against each other and i think that's a good thing um because no one wants to be um at the bottom of the pile or not performing against their contemporaries so i'd like to think that when that does get shared um there will be um you know um motivation to improve particularly those that are not where they should be at the moment thank you jenny and before i go online i have got to be uh well gonna ask a question but don't have time to do straight away uh have we consider other london boroughs how they do it and have we this have we got anything to take learn from them i know we are the one first barra given free school mill to uh in in the nation uh with the first barra in the whole nation the product free school mill but there are other boroughs within london that provide me did we take any information from them out have we learned anything from them have we considered their how what they do uh that would be one one of my first thing uh questions and the my last question would be can i just ask a point of clarification is it in relation to the question that's been asked around secondary school food or more broadly um around around secondary school foods very much um okay around well around um around primary schools that there are three other boroughs that did universal free school meals before um the mayor of london introduced universal free school meals so it's newham southwark and i believe islington um and yeah i think they've all had challenges in um having that funding not coming from their own boroughs being able to influence schools um in newham they uh yeah in all boroughs they've kind of i think in newham they kind of reinvested into into kind of the second into secondary schools a lot a lot of the money that was saved in southwark they also did that um i think maybe the main difference in southwark is they have permanent offices working on school foods they have a um they have about they have a team of about three or four people um that work permanently on school food and um and that so i guess embedding that kind of continuous cycle of improvement and auditing schools whereas yeah i think we have a more limited um limited resources around that and so yeah that's that's one of the kind of big differences um trying to can't think of too many other ones um no i think that's pretty much it in terms of some of the we've presented today also challenges our neighbors face in terms of implementing um that school food provision across so many children and across an entire borough um but certainly we are in contact with those um with those leads in the different boroughs and we do share learning between between the boroughs basically and i um also i was in a meeting actually earlier today with um newham and southwark and westminster who are all i think another thing that they were looking at is um early years settings as well so that's something that's also really on the agenda is um food in kind of nurseries which isn't funded at london level and how you can kind of encapsulate all school food around that so yeah that's something that a lot of other boroughs are looking at um and it's a very that's also an incredibly complicated area which but it's an area that we have identified as a gap and one that we wish to to kind of make some progress on there's a supplemented question to that to probably generally i know we go coming up next week as well like um different borough has go uh like a figure the feedback from them they pull another portion is set by the government standard but we can find out from other borough are they keeping keeping the same standard or there's a room for improvement that information will be valuable because as you said it's a year one group two years six group group portion size is different but governments have the same standard same so if we compare to other borough portion that would give us a good feedback that whether we have a chance to change it or not or make implementation on those i think i would think they probably have this similar problem well similar setup they have to follow the government school food standards at the moment but um you know like us they probably uh use their discretion to balance it out a bit more amongst primaries um but i do think the the school food standards are being reviewed by the government so there could be a change there uh coming forward uh completed yeah joanna sorry to keep it kept you waiting do you want to come online please hi joe um would you do you want to ask a question apologies for the wait I just want to add a final comment, I mean we're not that bad, I mean we are good, I mean our officers they work really hard, we've won awards, you know all parliamentary awards and we're shortlisted for one next week, so I mean we're doing well, I mean, and I think other boroughs can learn from us, we can learn from them as well, but the session next week is very important, the feedback we're going to cover from the scrutiny, you know, for you lot are important, and then we can see how we can make improvements, but this is a continuous, you know, we will continuously make improvements, but we can't do it in like, over a couple of nights, but it will take time, as long as the willingness is there from us, politicians and our officers. Chair, sorry, I just wanted to make one last comment, and it's really just to acknowledge the wider teams that are not here, so the Healthy Lives team that Kate leads, we have some fantastic colleagues who are so committed, so passionate, and supporting schools on the ground, and colleagues also in Jenny's team, so I just want to say a huge thank you to them, they're not all here today, but just want to acknowledge the work that they do. I'm just going to, I'm going to conclude on this, thank you all, that was a very helpful discussion, I remind members, we will be holding the final challenge session next Thursday, from 6.30 to 8.30, we'll hear the findings from the University Free School Meal, Phases 5, Evaluation and Secondary School, we'll also consider the evidence gathering and make our recommendation to conclude the final report, and I'd like to really, really thank you for the Jenny's team and all of the team get involved, and all sub-committee councillors who've given their personal time to visit the school as well, I really thank you on this. Okay, thank you. Our next item on the agenda is focus on the school curriculum, with the exception of the inclusion of RSE and PHSE in the school curriculum, and guidance of issue about hamlets. I'd like to reintroduce Deputy Mayor Maim Tarugda for Education and Lifelong Learning, and also Steve, Brady, and Lisa Fraser, and Kate Simit to present. Deputy Mayor, is your floor, please. Thank you, Chair. This is a very important topic, RSE. It's a very sensitive and as parents, educators and the Council, we are all we all share the same goals, ensuring our children our children grow up safe, well-informed and prepared for life. Schools in Tarahumda follow a national guideline from the DfE, but it is essential that we understand how this this is thought in practice, ensuring it is age-appropriate, culturally sensitive and respectful of family values. So, I would like to hand over to Kate, who will be going through the presentation, and if there's any question, we're happy to take. Thank you. Sorry, a slight technical difficulty there. Thank you so much for inviting me along this evening to talk about relationships and sex education. So, I wanted to start with a quote from the Department for Education. Children and young people need to know how to be safe and healthy and how to manage their academic, personal and social lives in a positive way. And that's what the curriculum really tries to ensure in schools. So, just to sort of start with where we are at the moment, So, the previous government published draft relationships, sex education and education guidance in May 24. However, since then, as we all know, we've had a general election and the new government have not made any announcement yet about new guidance. So, at the moment, what we're advising schools in line with the national body, the PSHE Association, is that schools follow the 2019 guidance. And so, really, at the moment, the position is, as it's been for quite a few years, since 2019. The draft guidance that was written by the last government, over 100 organisations signed a joint statement of concern in relation to the May 24 guidance. And so, but as I say, it's, we're following the 2019 guidance at the moment. So, what is the position currently? Well, in health education, by the end of primary and secondary, pupils must have covered these topics. So, there's a lot in here, I think we would all agree, that is about keeping children safe. So, basic first aid is a really important part of the curriculum. Drugs, alcohol and tobacco education, healthy eating, following on from what we've just been talking about, and internet safety and harms. I think all of us are very well aware of the dangers and risks that there can be in young children accessing the internet. So, what is relationships, sex education and health education currently? Well, in relationships education, by the end of primary, these are the topics that children need to have studied by the end of primary school. There's a lot about friendships and respectful relationships. There's a lot about being safe as well and how to try and keep our children as safe as they possibly can be. And again, online relationships are a very important part of the curriculum. By the end of secondary school in relationships and sex education, the topics are very similar, as you will see, but obviously, in an age-appropriate way, they go into issues in much more depth than you would get in primary schools, including sexual relationships and sexual health. So, the 2019 guidance. What did it say? There is often concern amongst parents about the teaching around body parts and the scientific names for body parts. And sometimes there is a lot of concern as well about teaching about same-sex families. So, I think it's really helpful just to look at what the DFE have said in quotes from the guidance. So, they've said by the end of primary school, pupils should know how to report concerns or abuse and the vocabulary and confidence needed to do so. By the end of primary, pupils should know that each person's body belongs to them and the difference between appropriate and inappropriate or unsafe physical and other contact. And finally, families can include, for example, single-parent families, LGBT parents, families headed by grandparents, foster parents, carers, amongst other structures. So, a whole range of different families there. Oh, sorry. It's just... It's stopped moving. Oh, there. Primary schools are strongly encouraged. Again, this is the wording from the DFE guidance. Primary schools are strongly encouraged and enabled to cover LGBT content when teaching about different types of families. Now, sometimes, understandably, parents are really anxious about what their children are going to be taught. And there is sometimes around relationships and sex education, there is a lot of misunderstandings and a lot of misinformation. When children are taught about different types of families in primary schools, it is very light touch. It's, generally speaking, just through a collection of photos. So, there might be a photo of a family with a mum and a dad. There might be a photo of a single-parent family. There might be a photo of a child being brought up by grandparents. There might be a photo of a child with two mums. There might be a photo of a child with two dads. A whole range of different families, just as the DFE outline. So, Tower Hamlets advice to schools. You've only got three minutes left. OK. I shall whiz. Yeah. We've only got a few more slides, so I think we'll do it in three minutes. So, Tower Hamlets recommends teaching about LGBT relationships in the context of different types of families in the statutory part of Key Stage 1. LGBT recommends that children are taught in Key Stage 1 in the statutory part of the curriculum the naming of the sexual body parts as a safeguarding issue. Also, medical leaders in the borough borough, when they were consulted, that's the GPs and other medical professionals in the borough, they felt strongly that children should be taught about the scientific names of the body parts, that particularly when young children have urinary tract infections, infections, which can be quite serious in young children if they're not treated. Young girls, for instance, often say they've got a pain in their tummy because they don't know the vocabulary to say where it's painful. Now, for a doctor trying to diagnose that, that's very difficult, and so medical advice in the borough was very much that children should have the vocabulary. It is also recommended that lessons about puberty begin in year four. We know that more and more children are starting puberty younger, and so it was felt very important. Our advice, some schools don't, some schools take a bit of it and feel that the other bits aren't right for their school community, so it's entirely at a school's discretion. Finally, my final slide, this is an Ofsted review of sexual abuse in schools. This was interviewing year nine pupils, so children that were around 13 years old, and looked at the percentage of children who'd suffered sexual abuse, and that's why these lessons are felt to be so important, that the whole overarching aim of this part of the curriculum is to keep our children safe. Thank you, Kate. Question on the floor, Hassan will be the first. Keep it simple, please. Shubo. Okay, Hassan, do you want to go, please? I've got a few questions, Chair, if possible. So, looking at your presentation slide on page number 55, joint statements has been given from over hundreds of organizations, and it's quite culturally sensitive in here, in the entire hamlets, how RSE has been taught, especially stage one, or by the council, giving a direction to encourage to children to be taught at the early age, where I myself, as a parent, I've met many parents also, there's been a number of concerns that that way that's been taught, and, you know, the, but after hundreds is going beyond where maybe the concern is there that they shouldn't be, where government is just giving you a draft of the guidelines, how, you know, it should be taught and whatnot. Ofsted has their own guidelines, why, my question is, providing extra sort of level RSE to, in primary schools and secondary schools, where there's a national guidelines. Also, I would like to request that to be reviewed by the members of the cabinet and so on, if possible, that how can it be moving forward, is there something that view of the majorities of organization and cultural sensitivity can be taken on account in terms of giving your guidelines or encouragement? Thank you. I mean, again, I would stress that the advice is just advice and schools absolutely do not need to follow it. That's very clear in all the written communication to schools. The advice is in line with the NSPCC, who say that very clearly in terms of safeguarding, that children should be taught about the names of the sexual body parts. so that they have the confidence and the ability to report abuse if it occurs. It's also, the Tower Hamlets advice, in line, as I said, with medical leaders in the borough. It's in line as well and connected to, just to clarify, the hundred organizations who expressed their concern in that slide you mentioned. That was about the draft guidance that was issued by the previous government. government. But that draft guidance never became statutory because government changed. The Tower Hamlets advice is linked to the 2019 guidance. And so whilst the 2019 guidance stands, the advice is connected to that. Thank you, Kate. Do you go? So the question, as I would ask it to you, if the guidance is 2019, why still Tower Hamlets is out there in the schools going, giving them extra sort of encouragement to your teachers to say, RSC, to be taught on that level? My concern is the majority of the cultural resistance city people live in here at the time. Why Tower Hamlets is not taking the consideration of this community where we serve. I think a great deal of time and effort has been involved in talking to community groups within the borough and to religious groups and representatives in the borough. And the advice, as I say, was in line and still is in line with the NSPCC and what they recommend in terms of safeguarding. it was felt that when the advice was issued that everything possible needed to be done in order to ensure that our children could be as safe as possible. So that if they did suffer abuse they knew where to go, they also knew the language of how to report it to people. And that was felt a very important information to give them and a crucial bit of information in life. Thank you very much. I just wanted to request that if possible is the member of the council majority from this borough or here. So if I could request a full review of that for on a full council meeting or where you do it for the guidelines on a cabinet member with the cabinet members that would be probably a good idea to come and a best solution where the council should be. how much extent it should give the guidance to the schools. Asking, saying we should consider the review of the guidelines in 2019 to the full council or the cabinet. No one is a cabinet who whoever the lead member which is the deputy mayor his team to look at the review. Is that what you're asking for? That's right chair. Thank you. If I can just add we're still very much waiting for the new government to issue the new guidance and we don't know exactly when that will be but there will be new guidance at some point so we're just waiting for that. Until then should we not just wait instead of giving guidance from council to the schools then until the government gives us some sort of guidance shouldn't council wait and not give any sort of So we're still following nationally schools are still following the 2019 guidance because that's currently the statutory guidance that schools have to follow. My understanding that was just a draft guidance. The 24 guidance is the draft guidance but the guidance that is statutory at the moment is the 2019 guidance. Shibu, do you want to come along on this or your question? Sorry, can I just come into this? I want a clarification on the Hassan question. Are you saying the DFA guideline is like we should follow like other boroughs or is there we have top of what the DFA guideline is we have a special top of that we've got other rules. So what Hassan was having understood was asking that whatever additional guideline time we put in whenever it was put in that need to be he's asking for that to be reviewed. I think I would assume that when the new guidance is issued by this government and becomes statutory that then the advice from Tower Hamlets would be reviewed then in line with the new guidance. mine's a quick one chair. Are we working with other third party organisations and faith based organisations when it comes to RSHE? So as a borough we've held many meetings with the Tower Hamlets Parents Association and with groups community groups and religious representatives who schools work with in terms of if they ask external providers to come into their school and deliver some of these lessons that's down to schools. Schools make their own decisions about that about who they feel is best placed in terms of their school community who they have the links with and things like that. We can advise them we can offer advice about resources and things but ultimately schools make the decisions. So my question is if the new guidelines with the new government waiting for the guidelines what interim step is trying to take to give school clarity over the coming academic year so is it a draft guideline for government but that could be six months cut with three months down the line what step are we taking now to give the guideline to the school so so so at the moment schools are still following the 2019 guidance that's the statutory guidance as things stand my team regularly meet individually with schools to support them in their delivery I delivered a session today for PSHE leads in schools detailing what they needed to deliver in terms of statutory and non-statutory requirements of the curriculum and I did the same yesterday as well I think I'm just trying to remember and so we hold a lot of individual meetings and across the borough meetings as well we also do a regular newsletter for schools and any changes or anything from central government we thank you chair what I think is the sexual education is really sensitive to many especially for many religious parents throughout the country not only Muslim but other religious communities as well and I think if there is we have to as a diverse community with many religion within the borough we should consider it is true that we have to follow the government guidelines as well as much as possible and also we have to keep in mind that we have to balance with the willingness of parents as well wherever we can legally so I reckon like this is it will be best to go through the cabinet again for their opinion and their consideration as we you know we Mr Hassan mentioned so that's going to be my opinion thank you I absolutely hear what you say and agree with you that it can be a very sensitive subject with a lot of concern from parents I think that there are some areas within the curriculum just as you say that legally schools have to cover that they have a legal obligation to cover how they deliver some of these lessons there is much more discretion over so for instance in quite a few other boroughs the teaching resources that they use are photos quite often I advise schools in our borough not to use photos at all and so for instance if they're teaching about scientific body parts only to use diagrams and I work with parents a lot in individual schools looking at the teaching resources and seeing what parents will find the most comfortable also nationally generally speaking the advice is and the advice from the PSHE association is that children are taught in mixed gender groups always in Tower Hamlets I give different advice sometimes because actually parents frequently feel much more comfortable if children are taught in single sex groups and where possible by either a female teacher or a male teacher as appropriate and so with parents as humanly possible to show the lessons to show parents what their child will actually be taught in each year group it's really impossible to show them exactly what their children will be taught and we are running out of time so since the councillors have raised all of them issues should we go for vote see if you want to refer the review to the cabinet to see the additional government guidelines but on top of that we have special measures put in so that's the thing I'm asking for the government guideline okay so that's what the am I right that's right yes yes so extra revision that put in on that if there is different from the guideline that do review when the 2019 guidance was issued by central government schools asked for our support in helping them interpret the guidance and understanding it and there were some schools that felt quite confused by the guidance and so that's why the Tower Hamlets advice was developed for schools it was also various religious groups within the borough developed alternative advice to schools that was also sent out to schools as well and so throughout the whole process it's been made very clear to schools that it is just advice and a lot of schools that I work with say no that doesn't fit with their community and so they do something else and as I said some schools take a little bit of the advice the picture is very varied because it doesn't have to be followed it's not like central government guidance it's just advice that is exactly what I'm talking about that particular advice and that can be reviewed by the government I'm not asking for central government guideline to review I think that's what my colleague was asking on the floor so just to clear out I just wanted to conclude on this that whatever the national government guidelines since 2019 was is there any additional guidance or advice council is providing if that so can this be reviewed by the members of the cabinet and get reviewed properly done so there is Tower Hamlet's advice that is linked to the 2019 guidance which we're expecting but we don't have a date from central government we're expecting new guidance at any point and so yeah the Tower Hamlet's advice is very much linked yeah can I can I can I can I yeah can I make a suggestion could we come back to you at the next meeting and we will go and find out from government what their time scale is and we'll update you at the next meeting and if if they're saying it's it's months and months away then we could do a piece of work to look at whether there's any variety in terms of what our guidance is compared to other areas because if the government are going to do something in the next few months then this committee is probably better off looking at that and being part of that consultation than doing something additional instead of if you're clarifying so I want to clear among ourselves that we are sticking by the government guideline we're not asking for that what Steve said wait for the new one if the new one is going to be delayed then we'll look into it so that's a good conclusion on the next week meeting or even following one we'll get some information I fully support what Steve just said we should if it's near about then we should we shouldn't just intervene like changing things because we have guidelines coming anyway so we can add anything we want on top afterwards I just want to touch on another things on the same subject probably Steve or Katie we have seen rapid rise in use of pipe outside the schools canisters gas and things like that especially secondary schools among young people how the council is ensuring that we are on top of that and how we can tackle it do we have any ideas I know it's expanding like wildfire at the moment so yes it's a really important part of health education and in science curriculum as well is drug education it is a really big issue absolutely and there is more and more information and research coming out about the dangers of it my team regularly assess different lessons for schools that reach a really high standard and so we send out those teaching resources to schools we also go in and train teachers how to deliver drug education and we will do central training for schools as well around drug education and so we will try and support them and make it as easy as it possibly can be for them to deliver really high quality drug education the only other thing that I will take away as well is in terms of how do our trading standards and enforcement teams make sure that traders are not selling to underage children because that's certainly an issue I think in other parts of the country anyway Deputy Mayor do you want to add anything to this as well well we are working with the schools and the community safety and as Katie already mentioned but we're also launching a strategy I've seen something on comms on vaping so we can update you at next meeting on that Deputy Mayor can I suggest from my personal view that we have taken the youth service in house and that would be probably the start point to educate through the youth service as well vibe thank you for your presentation thank you for giving your time appreciate okay thank you you may you can stay or you may we should leave up to you thank you for everyone attending today today's mission is conclude and is there any AOB and there's no AOB today unless then I asked them before so thank you mission conclude you