January 2000

OFFICE OF HER MAJESTY'S CHIEF INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS

in conjunction with the

AUDIT COMMISSION OFFICE FOR STANDARDS IN EDUCATION

Continued

Support for Governors

60. The support provided to governing bodies by officers and advisers is a significant strength of the LEA. The central support team for governing bodies is very lean but provides a very high standard of support. The quality of information and advice made available to governors is consistently good and the team keeps governors up to date with national developments. The courses provided through this team are relevant to the EDP priorities, well received and appropriate to the needs of both the LEA and schools. The team undertakes self evaluation based on internal performance measures and against other LEAs. A particularly positive feature of the work of the team is that it monitors OFSTED reports on individual schools and suggests appropriate training to the governors in cases where weaknesses in governance are identified.

61. The small central team makes strenuous and successful efforts to fill most governing body vacancies. Nonetheless some vacancies, particularly those under the control of Council Members, remain long standing.

Support for School Management

62. The support provided by the LEA to improve school management is satisfactory overall but there are areas of weakness. Inspection evidence indicates that weaknesses in management were identified in many schools. These related particularly to weaknesses in development planning, monitoring and evaluation. The LEA has responded to its analysis of inspection data and drawn up a comprehensive programme for management support.

63. The range of support offered represents a well-planned and coherent package for headteachers to access. It is well led, particularly since an adviser appointment for headteacher development has been made. Courses such as Effective Primary Leadership and the conference on Self-Evaluation were well researched and generally well received. Appropriately, these courses drew on the expertise of established senior managers.

64. Schools appreciate the range of management support available to them and, in most cases, headteachers have made good use of it. The LEA gives good support for school development planning. Until the recent past, schools used a variety of formats of differing quality and usefulness to present their plans. Following a successful pilot project the LEA has produced, in collaboration with headteachers involved in the pilot, a well-conceived format for development planning. This fits very well with the process for school review and provides a good basis for planning for improvement. The LEA is actively encouraging schools to adopt the new format so that practice is consistent.

65. The LEA meets its statutory duty to secure headteacher appraisal with a high quality training and appraisal programme which is on target to ensure that all headteachers will have been appraised in the two years leading up to April 2000. Good advice and training are available through LEA, higher education institutions and national training programmes, and initiatives such as the Curriculum and Assessment network represent an effective means of developing evaluation and leadership skills in key senior managers. 66. Whilst this framework enables individuals to assess their needs and access the relevant support, the LEAs practices of monitoring needs and responding to them are less consistent. The targeting of LEA support to headteachers who need to be challenged or supported in the discharge of their duties is inconsistent. Although there are excellent examples of link advisers working with headteachers, the inconsistency of this aspect of LEA support constitutes a weakness. Some new and acting headteachers have received very little additional support, for example through the identification of a mentor, and link advisers had not responded well to the significant management support needs of three headteachers in the schools visited.

Early Years

67. The LEA provides good support for early years. The planning for Early Years provision is efficient and the work is well managed. The LEA is making a strong contribution to the standards achieved in the early years settings, although it is not clear that this has contributed to higher standards in statutory education.

68. The Early Years team closely monitors the achievement and progress of institutions providing for under-fives. Information from regular visits by team members, OFSTED reports and information from link advisers is thoroughly analysed and the information is used well to plan further work. Team members give very good support by observing teaching, giving constructive feedback, and giving well-informed and perceptive advice on such topics as planning, curriculum provision, assessment and management. In most of the nine Primary and two nursery schools visited by HMI the quality of advice provided is held in very high regard. However, in three schools the LEA advice about provision for younger children was not sufficiently direct and incisive to ensure that teachers and other staff provide a curriculum that is well-structured to achieve the desirable outcomes for childrens learning.

69. The LEA has very good links and works well with the independent, private and voluntary sector through the Early Years Development and Childcare Partnership (EYDCP). A good Early Years Development Plan has been produced and agreed. The LEAs very good range of early years training courses are available to all of those working with young children in the maintained, public and private sector. The LEA has made good arrangements for accreditation towards gaining higher qualifications.

70. Some of the eight free-standing nursery schools retain their pupils until the beginning of the term following their fifth birthday. However, their governors were not invited to attend the initial training for the introduction of the national strategies in numeracy and literacy. The LEA has provided some supplementary training but HMI visits indicate that staff and governors are not sufficiently well informed about the national strategies.

71. The LEA, in consultation with the EYDCP, contributes to a mixed economy of provision for under fives through free standing and attached nursery schools, Family Centres, nursery classes and Early Years Units together with some integrated nursery provision for children with special educational needs. There is a strong political will to increase the LEAs provision. The LEAs admission policy is for children to start primary schools as rising fives, later than many other LEAs, although a number of schools are in the process of meeting the LEAs criteria to set up Early Years Units to provide for four year olds. This creates some inequalities of access to maintained provision. At present 60% of all four-year-olds and about 10% of three year olds are educated in the LEA maintained sector with the remainder 17 either using the strong private, voluntary or independent sector or remaining at home.

Recommendations

In order to promote school improvement and to achieve higher standards in schools

provide more consistent challenge to schools to set realistic targets which reflect more accurately the potential of the pupils

focus AIS time more effectively on schools with the greatest need

improve the analysis of the underlying causes of weaknesses in schools identified by OFSTED and the LEA as weak schools, and ensure that support is targeted more rigorously to address the type and level of need

increase Members oversight of the progress of schools with weaknesses

provide clearer guidance about ICT to schools which are not involved in the NGfL, especially secondary schools, and improve the arrangements for their training and support

ensure that the Early Years team give consistent and unequivocal advice about the need to structure childrens learning to achieve the desirable outcomes.

SECTION 3: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

Corporate Planning

72. Decision-making has often been a slow process in the Council; partly because of the lack of overall political control. Policy decisions have often been brokered through ad hoc alliances between any two of the major parties and have not historically been part of a clearly articulated corporate direction for the authority. Delays have resulted to important decisions about issues such as the review of the three tier system in the City, as well as to cross-cutting issues such as the establishment of a Childrens Services Sub-Committee.

73. The recent agreement of a medium term plan for Oxfordshire indicates a desire to establish greater clarity and coherence in the overall Council objectives. This has allowed departments to set out their own medium term plans with a realistic expectation that there is an overall commitment to them by Members. The approach has involved departments drawing together, retrospectively, a range of existing plans to establish three-year plans that are in keeping with the unifying vision, which Members have recently set out for the authority.

74. Against this backdrop the Chief Education Officer (CEO) has successfully established a clear strategic direction for education that has embraced the central government agenda of raising attainment and focused on efficiency and effectiveness. When the present CEO was appointed there was no Development Plan for the LEA and no senior management team in place. There has been a substantial improvement in the structure of the department and approach to school improvement since that time. Each of the statutory plans produced by the department such as the EDP, the EYDCP, and the Lifelong Learning Development Plan is of good quality and is fully coherent with the aims of raising standards and improving social inclusion. 75. In the recent Oxfordshire Medium Term Plan the Council support for raising levels of achievement in schools is one of the main service priorities. Performance review of schools, and officers, by Members is mainly through the Schools Performance and Quality sub-Committee. This group considers reports on standards in national tests as well as a routine prcis of OFSTED reports. However, although senior officers and some Members recognise the issue of poor performance in many schools, there has been no unequivocal statement from Members that overall standards in Oxfordshire schools should be better.

Management Services

76. The LEA provides central support services which are lean, efficient, expert, valued by schools and good value for money. Generally, individual staff are experienced and there are very good relationships between them and schools. However, there are insufficient staff in the financial support section in particular to meet the needs of schools fully and deliver an efficient service.

77. Each service and unit has a Service Plan setting out a consistent framework for their role, improvement and review. These are useful working documents aligned with concepts of Best Value, and national best practice and include a clear appraisal of strengths and weaknesses. They are monitored and link to individual performance monitoring through a corporate performance management process. The LEA has the management capacity to improve further, utilising Best Value reviews.

78. Services for sale are set out in the Oxfordshire Schools Joint Provision document which is being amended for 2000 in the light of full delegation; looking more closely at entitlement, costs and services, and improving the clarity of information to governors and schools. Schools bought back services worth £2,781K from the LEA in 1998/99 and are projected to buy back £3,611K in 1999/2000, around 2% of the Individual Schools Budget. In some technical areas the LEA has out-sourced and the contractor offers a service. The LEA has effective processes, involving schools, to review and evaluate services, including those provided by external contractors, though there is scope to improve the monitoring and communication about property support.

Schools Branch Link Officers

79. Schools Branch offers a part-delegated one stop service of management support advice. Ten Link Officers, one named for each school, work along with the Link Adviser to provide support. They attend an annual review with the headteacher and Chair of Governors. They are responsive and valued by schools and back up the small specialist personnel and finance functions with integrated administrative support on personnel, finance and funding and services for individual statemented pupils. In addition to leading on many areas of policy advice and formulation, they also co-ordinate admissions and act as advocate for the schools with other council services.

Financial support

80. Schools value the finance service, but almost all reported problems accessing it and most wanted more staff to support schools in budget support and approval.

81. Schools are provided with the tools to plan and predict their own budgets up to three years ahead. However, this does not easily match the schools own financial recording or the Councils central finance computer systems. These mismatches together with the delays caused by the overload on staff meant many schools reported that their budgets, and their carry-over from the previous year, were not agreed until well into the financial year.

Personnel

82. The service is very lean and effective in day to day support and advice. It is valued by schools, and has regular meetings with a group of headteachers to review the services within the Oxfordshire Schools Joint Provision offer. It issues model procedures, provides support for difficult issues and training, including a headteacher induction programme. Good partnerships with the TEC and EBP provide support for Investors in People in schools and management development training in schools.

83. Benchmarking suggests the service has half the average ratio of personnel staff to pupils, though the Schools Branch link officers also deal with some standard staffing issues. The service will be part of a corporate Best Value review of personnel next year. It has responded well to issues of concern to schools but proactive developments such as sickness absence analysis and preparation for performance related pay are constrained by the low level of staffing.

Premises and Asset Management Plan

84. The externalised service provided in relation to premises is not well regarded by many schools. The Council externalised certain property services under a single integrated partnership contract six years ago and the contractor offers a range of services to schools, of which 96% buy-in. The contractor also manages major capital works including design and management of new schools for the LEA and carries out detailed condition surveys for the Asset Management Plan (AMP) process. The AMP has been well planned and implemented. It is co-ordinated with other plans and sets out the scale of the problem and priorities for funding. Schools are expected to prioritise their own funding on premises in line with the LEA AMP priorities.

85. Schools are frustrated that the condition surveys have identified the detailed needs in each school but funding is not available to meet them. Preventative maintenance has been under-funded for some years and this has led to poor quality buildings in several schools. The LEA estimates the total backlog of repairs is £43m whilst the funding for repairs and maintenance in 1999/00 is £2.7m. The LEA acknowledges property has been under-funded for some time and is rightly concerned that it now spends more on reactive repairs than on planned maintenance to prevent problems.

86. Many schools believe there is scope to improve the property service the LEA has procured, and the LEA and contractor need to further improve their monitoring systems and their communication with schools. The LEA believes it has procedures in place to allay the concern of some schools that the contractor has two roles, as surveyor and then as contractor for problems it has identified. Eight of the schools visited believed that the condition of buildings was constraining school improvement and were unhappy with the quality of repairs or with delays or the project management of building projects. Three schools were positive about their experiences and the others were mixed.

Grounds Maintenance and cleaning

87. The quality of service provided to schools is too variable. Secondary schools in particular responded to the survey with criticisms of the quality of cleaning and grounds maintenance, which is provided directly by the Council, and of their ability to influence improvements. Processes for monitoring do exist but clearly are not sufficiently robust for the service to enjoy the confidence of schools.

Administrative ICT

88. The development of administrative ICT within the LEA, particularly in relation to electronic links with schools, has been slow. The LEA was late in taking a strategic direction on such matters but once it started NGfL, the installation, support and training was generally good. The LEA now has a clear plan to develop electronic links with and between schools and build on its improvements in data collection and analysis. Day to day support for administrative ICT is outsourced and provides well-regarded training and support to schools developing their administrative uses of ICT. The LEA has set up effective monitoring involving schools.

Recommendations

In order to increase the impact of management support services

improve the quality and responsiveness of the financial support to schools

broker access to well regarded property services.

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