Management Information Sheet

Briefing Paper

Cabinet set up the Small Schools Working Group as a result of issues raised in last autumn's schools Fair Funding consultation.

The Working Group is chaired by the Deputy Cabinet member (Education) Children's Services. The Working Group consists of County Council member representatives of the Schools Forum and Children's Services Officers. The full membership of the Working group is Bill Borrett, Cabinet member for Waste; Barry Stone, Deputy Cabinet member for Schools; Janet Murphy, Deputy Cabinet member for Efficiency; Bridget Carrington, Schools Forum JCC Teacher Panel representative; Sue Cooke ex-small schools partnership head; Terry Cook, Children's Services; Paul Fisher, Children's Services; Martin Dutton, Schools Forum governors representative; Martin White, Schools Forum, Schools Forum SNAPP representative, Andy Mash, Diocesan Director of Education; David Orsborne, Children's Services.

The Working Group is currently collecting evidence and views on small schools as the first phase of the work.

The Working Group has met on three occasions and has received evidence related to the numbers, costs, performance, OFSTED outcomes admission patterns etc. of schools with particular emphasis on small schools. Attached as Annex 1 is a general briefing paper, that has been considered by the Working Group that covers definitions of categories of schools, school governance models and some of the issues that the Working Group has considered.

The Working Group will now be undertaking four sets of activities events to seek views from various groups of stakeholders who have an interest in education.

		Community - to seek view from stakeholders on the future role of small schools in Norfolk;
		Expert witnesses - to receive evidence from expert witnesses;
		Parents - to seek views from parents on the reasons why they chose a particular school from their child, and
		Pupils - to seek view from pupil on their experiences in different size schools.

Community engagement is being organised via four workshops across the County. Invitations have been issued to a variety of community organisations, including to schools via cluster chairs. The invitation strategy was developed to ensure a good cross section of community voices attend these events. It was not intended that these events engage only with schools. Attached as Appendix 2 is a copy of the invitation that has gone out to invited parties & the booking form.

Expert witnesses have already included three partnership Headteachers and a number of heads from small primary schools and all through schools will be invited to future meetings of the Working Group.

Parents - a sample of parents will be contacted by email in the next few weeks to seek views on why they chose their current school. The sample will be drawn from parents who have gone through recent admission rounds and for whom we already hold email addresses.

Pupil views will be sought by a peer review exercise focussing on a limited number of schools. Those school invited to be involved in this process will be contacted separately to explain what is proposed and to seek agreement to being involved.

It is expected that the results from these various activities will be fed back to the Working Group in December. This first phase of work will result in a report by the Working Group on their findings.