Council and democracy

Agenda and minutes

Venue: Committee Room 1, Civic Offices, New Road, Grays, Essex, RM17 6SL.

Contact: Wendy Le, Democratic Services Officer  Email: Direct.Democracy@thurrock.gov.uk

Items
No. Item

11.

Items of Urgent Business

To receive additional items that the Chair is of the opinion should be considered as a matter of urgency, in accordance with Section 100B (4) (b) of the Local Government Act 1972.

Minutes:

There wre no items of urgent business.

12.

Declaration of Interests

Minutes:

There were no declarations of interest.

13.

SEND Inspection Outcome - Written Statement of Action pdf icon PDF 67 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Michele Lucas, Assistant Director of Education and Skills, introduced the service’s restructured management team that addressed the management issues Ofsted had identified. This team consisted of:

 

  • Malcolm Taylor, Strategic Lead for Specialist Provision and Principal Education Psychologist – responsible for Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCP), access inclusion panels and centres.
  • Andrea Winstone, Strategic Lead for School Effectiveness and SEND – looked after the operational SEND team.
  • Kate Kozlova-Boran, Service Manager, Preparing for Adulthood – responsible for learners and post 16 provisions.

 

Continuing on, Michele Lucas outlined the draft Written Statement of Action (WSoA) that would be sent to Ofsted on 12 August. The draft WSoA was a result of the recent Ofsted inspection into the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) service that had identified 3 areas of weaknesses. The draft WSoA proposed how to improve in these 3 identified areas of weaknesses and Michele Lucas gave assurance to Members that the service would also continue to work and improve on other areas within the SEND service as well.

 

Going through appendix 1, Michele Lucas outlined in significant weakness area 1 that it related to record keeping for young people where plans was not updated regularly but the service were aware of the stage a young person was at.

 

The Chair suggested that Michele Lucas summarised each page of the appendix and then allow the Committee to ask questions due to depth of the detail in the appendix.

 

Nicola Cranch, Parent Governor Representative, queried whether the service felt Ofsted had given a fair assessment in their inspection. Michele Lucas answered that the service had been aware of some areas that needed development and the assessment Ofsted had given was a sample which was how the inspections worked. The service accepted the assessment and the plan now was to begin improvements to ensure a cohesive way of working within the service.

 

Pointing out the sentence on page 14, ‘The system at any time can produce this information readily’, the Chair noted that this had been one of failings of the service and asked what the improvement would be for this. Agreeing that systems had not worked as well as it should have, Michele Lucas said training on the systems for staff was in place. This training sought to teach staff how to use the systems efficiently to enable more accessibility.

 

Adding on, Andrea Winstone, said the systems had been in place for many years. A comprehensive training package had been compiled to ensure the system was updated at the same time as a change took place. The team was currently sifting through the process to ensure information was up to date so staff could make full use of the system.

 

Nicola Cranch queried whether the data was validated. Confirming this was the case, Andrea Winstone said that the SEND operational team pulled the data and presented it to the SEND Development Board for KPI reviews.

 

Going onto page 15 of the agenda, Michele Lucas outlined the detail on  ...  view the full minutes text for item 13.