Agenda item

To receive a report from Alasdair Smith, Director of Children & Families, Children's and Adults' Services and Shereen Moussa, Head of Schools Human Resources, Children's and Adults' Services and the impact of school closures and amalgamations on:

·  Black and Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) school staff and pupils

·  Male and Female members of school staff (data breakup)

·  LGBTQ staff

·  Disabled members of school staff

·  Senior Leadership Team in schools 

·  School Support Staff (low-paid) 

·  Governors

In addition to this data on

·  BAME school staff disciplinary data

·  Flexible working requests in schools (job-shares, part-time)

Chair’s update on KW nursery school (attached appendix 1.)

·  Thirteen staff redundancies took place on 31 December 2023, significant impact on children especially with regards to Special Needs and Educational Disabilities (SEND) provision

·  Need for early years strategy for SEND provision, however positive signs, council’s acknowledgement of the work needed in this area.

·  Overall national issue with funding for nurseries and SEND provision in nurseries; next meeting agenda would include these topics.

·  Currently creating a budget deficit recovery plan over a 5 year period

The commission then received a report from Alasdair Smith, Director of Children & Families, Children's and Adults' Services and Shereen Moussa, Head of Schools Human Resources, Children's and Adults' Services on the impact of school closures and amalgamations (HR schools data) covering the following points

• Report pt. 5 lists types of schools maintained by Local Authority (LA) with the exclusion of academies and free schools
• Multi-layered legal framework (education law) for educational operation in schools in addition to equalities, employment law and data protection etc.
• Schools have day to day responsibility for data protection management, LA having very little control
• Data provided is a combination of schools works census data and HR schools advisory service which schools can opt in to, 60 schools have opted in; Data provided anonymously to protect confidentiality
• Section 23 provides the impact of school closures and amalgamation, and council’s ‘Keeping Education Strong’ strategy to mitigate the impact
• Only protected characteristics data (pt. 26-31) of age, gender, ethnicity and disability are collected by schools
• The exercise as a result of this report has led to changes in data collection forms for schools.
• Varying levels of redundancies in different schools; varying levels in ethnicity data; gypsy, roma, white British, white- Irish  and non-white ethnic groups
• Gender data suggests women proportionately more represented than men in schools
• Disabilities data vary from 6% in one school to no disabilities in other schools and some people opting preferring not to say
• Mitigating impact on support staff jobs- admin, catering, cleaners, supervisors and also other full time jobs such as teaching assistants.
• Influencing and supporting schools and governing boards in minimising the impact of redundancies by helping staff find alternative employment through HR workshops (job hunting and upskilling) with Job Centre plus.
• Working with schools, trade unions and external service providers for finding jobs for redundant staff; advertising jobs from schools outside the borough like Kent
• Schools independently manage day to day HR processes with regards to disciplinary to avoid it turning into a formal hearing; 4 out of 5 disciplinary cases listed in the report are Black British which is a cause for concern, underpinning data shows varying levels of ethnicity
• Efforts being made to ensure Governance panels and council’s HR business partners are from diverse backgrounds; also ensuring all necessary steps are taken prior to any formal hearing for dismissal
• Managing and mitigating issues linked to women of a certain age (menopausal) with regards to behaviour and performance; working with trade unions and Department Level Committee (DLC) issuing menopausal guidance
• Working with schools to identify training needs linked to disciplinary cases and ensuring such issues are managed in a diverse way
• Flexible working (pt. 102 -104) legislation dictates a minimum period of 26 weeks prior to applying for a flexible working request, one request a year; New legislation coming into force allows employees to make a request from day one and shortens the employer response time to 2 months to 3 months previously; and also employee not asked to reflect on what the impact would be on the employer; two applications a year are now allowed
• Governance in schools; no equalities data for governance in schools, on-going work with governing boards and anti-racist training to be delivered to governors as a part of Southwark Stands Together in governing boards.
• Senior Leadership - As a part of Southwark Stands Together (SST) professional curriculum group working with Senior Education Adviser David Brumfield, teachers and LA officers to increase representation of Black leaders.
• Working with trade unions to create a strategy to reduce inequalities by sharing their best practices; Southwark council endorsed UNISON Race Charter; action plan for next steps with senior leaders

The commission then asked questions on the following themes

• Main issue/s that could be resolved by looking at systems, processes and service strategically; also looking at governing bodies and senior leadership
• Redeployment for recent redundancies at KW school; Possible red flags in the report; safeguarding complaints and processes for written response
• Strategic issues and priorities within the report; and steps taken to manage them; 100 % ethnic group data not adding up in report; pt. 8 School staffing population, Governance board for appointed, management and dismissal of staff seeming to be operational and not strategic

Shereen explained to the commission that the HR schools team within the council is diverse and always discussing better ways to solve issues by learning from past experiences. The main challenge is mitigating the impact of the uncertainty around school closures and amalgamation on school staff, ensuring there is a framework for staff support and clear communication. Partnership working within the professional curriculum group is core to resolving issues at governance and senior leadership levels.

The commission noted that 19.4% of school staff are Black-British and 80% of disciplinary is Black-British in the past year. Officer agreed to provide data for the past 3-4 years at future meetings.

The Chair explained to the commission that the data on Black members of staff corroborates with the information and experiences heard from teachers and school staff; that Black members of staff have been disproportionately affected by disciplinary; this raises questions of in-equalities and it’s important that safeguarding controls are put in place to avoid such occurrences. The Chair also requested that officers provide all redundancy data going back 3-4 years on all LA maintained schools.

Shereen informed the commission that Council have worked with schools to manage the redundancy processes, however there were staff who took voluntary redundancy; which is a different process. As part of the consultation, staff have had 1 to 1’s, where they could consider redeployment.

The commission learnt from Shereen that disciplinary data has been biggest concern in the report, the council are making efforts to communicate with schools on the overall management of staff prior to such disciplinary issues reaching the formal stages. Safeguarding complaints and action taken depends on the severity of the issues and are decided by the governing panel; also present are management and Union representatives, most severe cases could result in immediate dismissal. Efforts are made to ensure that governance panels are diverse, and any decision that governors make are based on investigations and facts.

The Chair explained to the commission that from her past experiences that interpersonal relationships have an impact on informal disciplinary which could evolve in to formal disciplinary; and also that it’s important, governor panels and decision making bodies are diverse.

Alasdair explained to the commission that since he has been in post as Director of Education since September 2023, and his main concern is the limited influence that LA has with influencing HR processes in schools, LA is only responsible in appointing the Governor of a school, the report only mirrors primary schools and we don’t have the complete picture as only 2 out of 20 secondary schools are LA maintained and even they don’t use the HR traded service with the LA. There is on-going work with ISOS (research and advisory company) in developing the ‘Keeping Education Strong’ strategy in Southwark.

The Chair and the commission noted that there is a need to ensure the governors and governance panels are diverse and representative of the schools’ demographic.

Shereen explained to the commission that in LA maintained schools, decisions are delegated to governing boards through the delegation scheme; the governing body might choose to delegate the appointment of staff to Head teachers and senior leaders. In foundation and voluntary schools, the governing board being the sole employer is responsible for hiring and dismissals of staff. In community schools, the staff are employed through a council contract, however, the director would need to issue a letter on behalf of the governing board for disengaging a service; but ultimately the responsibility lies with the governing board.