Central Bedfordshire Council education attainment support plan 'needs radical approach'

The policies pursued by Central Bedfordshire Council since 2011 “haven’t been radical enough”, the local authority’s children’s services overview and scrutiny committee was told.

A suggestion that education officers adopt a “relentless and focused” approach to driving up standards was insufficient for Conservative Heath and Reach councillor Mark Versallion, who chairs the committee. “That’s not radical enough,” he warned.

“It seems like what we’ve been doing since 2011. It’s the doom loop of managed decline, and it feels like that in terms of Bedfordshire’s school results, which have been much lower than they should have been since the 1980s.”

Head of education and inclusion Claire Mosseveld explained: “We know our attainment has declined and fallen at key stage two in particular for the last ten years, but also at key stage four for the last seven years.

“The plan sets out what we’re doing alongside headteachers and (trust) chief executive officers to reverse the decline in attainment. We’ve 60 per cent of two-year-olds hitting their milestones, rather than the national average of 85 per cent. Year one is a problem and we’re addressing that already.

“The school improvement team has no jurisdiction to go into schools and teach, but we can signpost, support and set training. We can do that with our maintained schools and increasingly with our multi academy and single academy trusts.

“We’ve created an education strategy to encourage everyone to work together to form a plan to improve attainment. The ‘Wellcomm project’ for two-year-olds, which assesses speech and language, and considers milestones, is being extended.”

Deputy executive member for children and families, and Independent Barton-le-Clay and Silsoe councillor Liz Childs described it as a “comprehensive” report, saying: “There’s plenty of hope in there.”

Conservative Flitwick councillor Ian Adams asked: “What’s the key strategic stuff which can be done to disrupt a decade’s worth of poor attainment?

“The training, mentoring and trying to help governing bodies are all good. But it feels like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. I wanted more. It’s just an incremental shift again, isn’t it?”

Central Bedfordshire Council’s director of children and families Amana Gordon replied: “When you’re considering performance improvement and change to processes, it’s really important to avoid a pillars approach and a linear improvement plan because that means you have single points of failure.

“I’m really confident in the different conversations we’re having and our approach, and the eco-system of support, improvement and challenge to our schools that we’ll see an impact.

“Some of our school leaders choosing to exercise their distress at my team is actually because we’re having those challenging conversations about the areas in which they need to improve.

“We’re campaigning around our funding, which is the lowest in the country and therefore our children have the lowest attainment. This is very strategic, and I think we’ll have every success this year.”

The committee recommended Central Bedfordshire Council’s executive fully endorses the education attainment support plan and monitors its progress.

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