Minutes:
Councillor Jasmine Ali, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Education informed the commission that a head teacher and lead member task and finish group had been established to look at findings from the exclusions report, and ideas from the conference around ‘keeping children in school’. It was explained that due to the lockdown and schools being closed, the scheduled meetings had to be cancelled. This would be picked up again now that schools had re-opened. Councillor Babudu, chair of the commission would be invited to the first meeting.
The commission also heard from Jenny Brennan, Assistant Director of Family, Early Help and Youth Justice.
Jenny advised that permanent exclusions had significantly reduced. There was a peak of 50 in Southwark Schools in 2017/18, down to 39 in 2018/19 and the indicative data for 2019/20 was 11 (based on 2 terms worth of data).
Jenny explained that the latest published DfE data related to 2018/19 school year, but there was also census data from 2019/20 which was being reviewed by her team. Jenny highlighted that an area of concern was the rate of permanent exclusions for black Caribbean children which was 1.5 times higher than the rate for white British children. The rate for mixed white and black Caribbean children was slightly higher at a rate of 1.1 times. It was this level of analysis that her team were undertaking to try and understand the reasons for this. As the overall numbers were quite small it was possible to look at the individual cases.
In terms of fixed period exclusions, Jenny reported that there was a notable difference between the ethnicity of pupils being given permanent exclusions compared to fixed period exclusions with an overall highest rate of fixed period exclusions being given to black pupils, a rate of 5.22, and second highest rate being mixed ethnicity children at a rate of 4.83, and white children at a rate of 3.9. Jenny expressed that this was of concern. Jenny hypothesised that a reduction in permanent exclusions may have led to fixed period exclusion rates going up in the short term. The data was ready to be shared with schools, and head teachers invited to review the data and the policies within their schools around exclusions.
Nina Dohel, Director of Education informed the commission that the detailed analysis would also be considered by the task and finish group with a view to looking at the changing and shifting trends to feed into the longer term strategy around how the council works with schools with the goal of eliminating exclusions.
The commission asked questions around the following:
· The role of the task and finish group in relation to partnership working with schools
· Work around home schooling and identifying off-rolling
· The views of young people of who have been excluded being incorporated into the strategy.
Nina informed the commission that there would possibly be an increase in home schooling where some families had had a positive experience with home schooling and would like that to continue. Nina stressed that there must not be an increase in home schooling due to off-rolling. Nina reported that an additional resource had been obtained through the budget challenge process, which would be used to provide additional resource to the growing homeschool sector, and also to work with family early help to look forensically at where the council thinks/can evidence occurrences of off-rolling.
In terms of the role of the task and finish group, Nina hoped to see a school led strategy around the approach to inclusion and alternative provision. The thrust of the task and finish group was to come up with a new way of looking at how to make sure that children and young people are accessing the education that they need. Nina indicated that terms of reference were being developed for the task and finish group with a focus on being really clear of what the outputs need to be.
Councillor Ali confirmed that young people’s voices will inform the strategy.