Annual Performance Assessment - a message from Lisa Christensen

I have spoken to you at recent area headteacher meetings about the annual performance assessment - or APA. Ofsted has published these official gradings this week for local authorities' services for children and young people.

This year, based on gradings from 1 - 4 for seven areas of service, we have scored three 'threes' (good) and four 'twos' (adequate) which gives us an overall score of two, one lower than we achieved last year. Please note that the grades go in the opposite direction to school inspection grades.

This is how we scored:

Being healthy	grade 3 (good)
Staying safe	grade 3 (good)
Enjoying and achieving	grade 2 (adequate)
Making a positive contribution	grade 3 (good)
Achieving economic well-being	grade 2 (adequate)

Based on these five grades, Ofsted concluded that the grades for our overall capacity to improve and our overall effectiveness were both 2 (adequate). If we had been graded higher on either of the twos above, these would have made the overall score a three.

I am very pleased to see the recognition about our work to keep children safe, healthy and able to make a positive contribution, but you won't be surprised to hear that I am disappointed that our other scores have not been graded higher. However, this does give us a clear indication of where Ofsted feels we need to continue to improve.

This is a set of judgements made at one point in time. We have achieved a lot in the last year in our recently integrated service and I know that there is widespread understanding of the scale of the challenges in Norfolk around skills, aspiration and achievement, which is why it is a top priority for us and our partners.

We have clear and focussed plans about what we need to do to achieve improvements. I fully expect the improvement work we are doing to pay dividends in our ratings for next year and am clear that our focus needs to continue to be on the services we deliver. I am confident that the work we are doing together will result in improved gradings next year.

You can access our APA letter from Ofsted by clicking here, which will take you to the Norfolk page. You will then have to click on the Annual Performance Assessment.