School organisation
Building Schools for the Future and the Primary Capital Programme have become catalysts for change – improvements to buildings and school reorganisation
But this needs to be undertaken in the light of the Children’s Service/ECM agendas and together with corporate policies on regeneration and neighbourhood communities and wider social inclusion issues.
1. School reorganisation requirements:
- Reassessment and extension of PPP (Pupil Place Planning) to ten years from initial engagement in the BSF wave
- Proposed changes must address:
- 14-19 education and training
- Surplus places
- Basic need
- Schools in the right place
- Size of schools
- Specialist schools and academies
- Choice and diversity
- Agreement on post 16 plans
- SEN and PRU provision
- plans and timescales for consultations and statutory notices, including competitions
2. Diversity, fair choice and access are essential and will need to underpin the vision and strategy and align with corporate policies;
3. Key priorities and strategic plans – regeneration strategies, corporate policies, community strategy, neighbourhood communities – the need to join all of this up to ensure that school organisation supports the development and implementation of these strategies – the development of a series of options based on a depth of understanding across the council and communities which also takes into account extended school, integrated children’s services and use of surplus accommodation to enable community use;
4. Consultation and engagement – vision to reality – following on from 3 above and highlighting the need for a full consultation process with all stakeholders and engagement of the whole community to support the implementation of vision into reality; giving due regard to the political and democratic processes within the authority;
5. Tackling underperformance and raising standards – seizing the opportunity to close/transform underperforming schools, make use of federations and other structures and maximize the opportunities for collaboration among schools;
6. 14 -19 collaborative post 16 arrangements – that schools, colleges and other post 16 providers can work together in the most beneficial way and that the organisational structure gives maximum choice to students whilst retaining high quality provision;
- linking this closely to the LA commissioning role - places planned in schools need to be put alongside that likely to be commissioned from other providers both FE and work based learning. This in turn needs to tie basic numbers in the cohort to prior attainment data to indicate what proportion of 14-16 yr olds require courses at Level1/ Foundation Tier and how many are likely to be realistic level 2 students. This will then give an indication of how much provision is likely to come from outside the school sector
- similarly for post 16, but for 3 levels plus the planning for pre apprenticeship and apprenticeship places
7. Specialist schools balance, reapplications and second specialisms – by working together with schools and communities to secure a breadth of provision building on existing good practice and developing strategies to provide for areas in most need;
8. Inclusion (including SEN, behaviour, PRUs) – one of the most difficult areas for LAs because of conflicting tensions; equally a significant opportunity for school reorganisation to remove some of the structural barriers to change;
9. Meeting the needs of communities - the opportunity to provide alternative hours/other provision to meet the needs of communities or groups where attendance is a significant issue.
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For more information on our school organisation services please call us on 01223 463751 or email us at info@camb-ed.com |