GENERAL FACTORS EMERGING SINCE THE PUBLICATION OF THE KPMG REPORT

Standards

A full discussion is available at Paper B of the Education, Community Development and Lifelong Learning Select Committee – 22 March 2004.

In Summary

Key Stage 1 results (for 7 year olds) have been at, or better than, national averages for some years. There has been a recent ‘tailing-off’ (2003).

Key Stage 2 results are well below the national average and in the lower quartile, in all but Science, compared with our statistical neighbours.

Key Stage 3 results improved significantly in 2003 and are closer to the national average than in previous years.

Key Stage 4 results at 5A*-C have been ‘flat’ for 2001 and 2002 and declined in 2003 at the same time as national standards have continued to improve.

There is volatility from year to year and the LEA OfSTED inspection described the results overall as unsatisfactory. There is questioning of the current system’s ability to provide curriculum continuity. The LEA’s analysis shows that improvement at one Key Stage, eg KS3 in 2003, may be accompanied by worsening elsewhere, eg KS2 in 2003. This raises questions of the capacity, particularly for relatively small Middle Schools, to sustain improvement across all years.

Post-16 A level and AVCE show a pass rate comparable to the national average, with good performance for the relatively small number of students on vocational courses. The average points score, for both per student and per examination entry, is below the national average and may be a comment on the suitability and breadth of curriculum on offer to students at six separate institutions.

Issues of sustainable improvement to all levels of school performance form an important part of the debate about the type of school organisation that should exist on the Isle of Wight.

The LEA’s school improvement team was praised for its work in helping to improve standards at schools that have qualified for intervention but these standards have not always been maintained after the intervention teams have moved on. The size of central teams is small and is spread thinly over the number of schools in the current system. The size of some of the schools makes sustaining improvement difficult in some cases.

Size

87% of the schools on the Isle of Wight have a school roll of less than 400.

Apart from the High Schools, most of the schools would be considered small by national standards.

There are advantages in small schools, particularly in the ability to know all pupils well. There are some disadvantages that apply to a number of our Primary and Middle Schools:

· Ensuring enough professional development time for all staff.

· Ability to cover the range of specialist requirements across subjects, key stages and special needs.

· Disproportionate financial support that needs to be provided to maintain the smallest schools.

· Difficulty of attracting staff at all levels and, in particular, to senior posts including Headship.

· Difficulty of retaining staff who are seeking promoted posts.

Appendix 2 provides a picture of the school population. It is evident that a smaller cohort size may affect the viability of some schools that are already small.

Finance

a) Capital

The Government has changed the nature of funding capital for LEAs. The reduction for the current year has been c. £9 million (c. £12 million to c. £3 million). The reduction has been brought about to help fund the national scheme called Building Schools for the Future (BSF). This will help finance rebuilding and refurbishment costs for secondary schools over the next 10-15 years.

LEAs have to propose plans for their secondary school estate and wait to have these approved for a ‘wave’ of funding. Credits towards the costs of rebuilding or refurbishing Middle and High Schools could be obtained by providing a comprehensive plan that describes our vision for the next 25 to 30 years.

When the KPMG report was produced the biggest impediment to any possible restructuring was the lack of sufficient capital. BSF does provide a route through which capital could be made available in sufficient amounts to contemplate restructuring if this was the outcome of consultation.

b) Revenue

Any consideration of existing or altered systems of providing education needs to include the costs of running those systems. Factors must include:

· How the available finance is distributed to each school’s budget.

· Transport Costs.

· Economies of Scale.