1. Welcome, Introductions, Apologies, Notes of the Last Meeting

Minutes

Meeting Chairs’ and Governors’ Forum

Venue Grey Coat Hospital

Date of Meeting 5th October 2011

Time of Meeting 6.45 – 8.30 p.m.

Attendees Anne Wolfe – Grey Coat Hospital (Chair), Aslam Merchant – Hallfield, Anton Young – St Saviour’s, Sarah Hacker – Gateway, David Ward – Essendine, Martin Morton – St George’s RC Secondary, Mary Therese Fardon – Westminster Cathedral, Linda Hardman – Gateway, Auriol Blandy – St James’ & St Michael’s, John Kitchen – St Peter’s Chippenham Mews, Naomi Goldman – Queen’s Park, Cllr Barbara Grahame – Quintin Kynaston

Westminster City Council: Daria Wignall – Head of Commissioning, School Standards, Tom Manneh – Head of Attendance Services, Ann Foster – Commissioning Manager for Governor Services; Amanda Price – Senior Business Support Officer

1. Welcome, introductions, apologies, notes of the last meeting Anne Wolfe welcomed everyone and introductions were made. Apologies had been received and were accepted. The notes from the last meeting were agreed.

2. Change of chairmanship / election of committee for 2011 / 2012 Under the constitution the 2010-2011 vice chair, Anne Wolfe (Grey Coat Hospital), took the chair. Martin Morton (St George’s (Maida Vale) RC) was elected as vice chair on 19th May to replace Tony Howells who had stood down as chair. Nominations for the vacancy of one more committee member were invited. Sarah Hacker (Gateway Primary) agreed to take the role and was duly appointed for 2011/2012. 3. Local Authority Report – Daria Wignall, Strategic Commissioner, School Standards

3.1 LA Restructuring and Tri-Borough Update The implementation plan and proposed new structure for education, including SEN, has been circulated to headteachers – See Appendix 1.

Under the new structure, there will be one tri-borough Director for Children’s Services – Andrew Christie. A tri-borough Director for Schools Commissioning will be appointed to start 1st January 2012 and headteacher representation will be on the appointment panel. Currently there is only one candidate for this position and that person is the interim Head of Education for RBK&C and H&F. A governor felt that governor representation on the appointment panels should have been considered – DW will take this back to the tri-borough, however, these are member appointments.

Michael O’Connor is due to retire at the end of December 2011 and Angela Drizi will be retiring in February/March 2012. The three authorities will retain sovereign Heads of Commissioning for School Standards and for Vulnerable Children; Westminster’s being Daria Wignall and June Simson respectively.

Andrew Christie is due to attend the next Chairs’ and Governors’ Forum on 7th February.

Westminster has been operating with a very small commissioning team over the past two years, buying in from an external group of reliable and respected experts if and when required. Schools have not reported any difference in the service provided to them and this level of service will continue. Governors should advise if their schools experience any problems.

A Westminster education mandate has been produced and is currently with the cabinet member. The mandate, with includes Westminster’s vision, cannot be compromised under the tri-borough arrangement.

One of the advantages of the tri-borough arrangement for governors is through joint training. There has already been one joint governance event.

3.2 School Organisation Update (academies, free schools etc) The LA has no influence over schools’ decisions regarding academy status or where the DfE takes over a failing school to convert it to academy status. St Marylebone converted to an academy on 1st September and Quintin Kynaston has put in a request to convert. Schools should ensure that they understand the small print involved in conversion, for example, on conversion the land the school is on may transfer to the DfE. They should also be aware of the level of support and services the school would have to buy in that were previously provided by the LA. The LA has asked the DfE for a list of statutory responsibilities the LA has for academies but this will not be produced until December. The new free school – Atwood Academy – opened on 1st September.

Alan Wharton will be presenting at the February Chairs’ and Governors’ Forum on pupil placement, covering issues such as the growing pupil population in Westminster, the need for more places, the impact of a housing cap. This year all Westminster schools are full and some have large waiting lists.

The issue of the position of the new free school was discussed and the impact it has had on a Westminster school close to it. This would be covered by Alan Wharton during his session at the next forum meeting.

The school standards SLA is offered to all schools in Westminster, including academies and academies are currently the best customers.

3.3 2011 School Standards Report and National Test and Examination Results The 2011 standards continue to improve and DW thanked governors and headteachers for all the support and work that has been put into this achievement.

 The results for EYFS were excellent, reflecting the impact of children centres. The LA will be keeping an early years post and team.  KS1 results are moving in the right direction.  KS2 results plateaued, with some schools up and some down.  GCSE results were in the top 60%, moving towards the 75% aspirational target set by the Education Commission.  A level results were disappointing and DW will be meeting with secondary headteachers to discuss the suitability of the post 16 options they are suggesting to their students.

The annual education report is due to be presented to scrutiny panel.

Under the new Ofsted framework, Ofsted will check targets that have been set by the school. The LA will no longer do this. With the changes that have taken place in education, the LA is no longer aware to the same degree of what is happening in schools and may not know things are declining until it is too late. This puts a much stronger responsibility on governing bodies to monitor targets, performance and attendance.

4. School Attendance Issues – Tom Manneh, Head of Attendance Services TM presented appendix 2. The following were specific points raised:  Persistent absenteeism (PA) includes authorised and unauthorised absences and is measured on terms 1-4, although the data published is from terms 1-5.  Schools must have robust policies and procedures in place to support attendance. Policies should be shared with the whole school community.  Westminster has moved from being in the “red” as an authority for attendance to being one of the best. One school improved its PA from 10% to 1.2%.  The latest figures show that Westminster primary schools have improved compared to the national average but some schools still have a problem in this area.  Governing bodies need to know the Ofsted framework on attendance.  It is recommended that a senior member of staff has responsibility for attendance.  Responsibility for setting challenging attendance targets and monitoring attendance has moved from the LA to governing bodies.  There is a model attendance policy on the governor website http://webfronter.com/westminster/governors.  School displays are a good way of evidencing the work being done to improve attendance.  Pupils with attendance under 80% should have an action plan. Governors could ask the headteacher for this data and what is being done with these pupils to improve their attendance.  EWOs liaise with schools on attendance. St George’s RC Secondary is very pleased with their new EWO.  Schools should be aiming to achieve good and outstanding attendance and targets set should reflect this.  Schools should be aware of specific problem areas, eg, year groups, holidays during term time, persistent illnesses. What strategies are in place to address these?  Schools should refer a missing child to the attendance service after 10 days. This should be in the school’s attendance policy. No child can be taken off role until the school knows where they have gone.  It is important that schools can evidence their attendance monitoring, strategies and procedures for Ofsted.  Action: Include relevant attendance information, including various percentages and what they mean, in next governor newsletter.

AW thanked TM for his presentation and for bringing to the forum’s attention the important role governors play in relation to school attendance.

5. Governance Update AF circulated a briefing note (Appendix 3) which included action points that governors should note.

The following points were discussed:

 Academy conversion – Following the Governors’ Conference in July 2011, a number of schools have asked for an event dedicated to academy conversion. A copy of the proposed programme is included in Appendix 3. This will be an impartial event, looking at all the issues to be considered, including the option of smaller schools considering converting as a cluster. Emma Knight from the NGA will be presenting. She is very impartial and has a good view from across the country of academy conversions. There will also be a speaker from a school that has converted and one from a school that has decided against conversion. A representative from the DfE will be on the panel to answer questions. It is planned that this will be a twilight seminar from 5-8.30pm in November. Details will be sent out shortly.  New Ofsted Framework being implemented from January 2012 – Governors will continue to be inspected but not under the same criteria currently used. The governing body will no longer be judged separately but will be included in the leadership and management judgement. This does not mean that the importance of governance has diminished or that governing bodies will not be scrutinised as much but judgements will be based more on the impact the governing body has made on the school and pupil achievements. Training sessions for governors on the new Ofsted framework are being held on 24th January and 12th March. Details can be found in the Governor Training Programme and on the governor website.  Ofsted will NOT inspect less often. Westminster anticipates 26 inspections this year. If schools were deferred and their performance has fallen, an inspection is extremely likely.  Education Bill – It is understood that the new Bill will remove the requirement for governors to be “present” at meetings. This will allow for on-line voting but how it will actually work is not yet known. Once the new regulations are introduced, governors will be updated.  Money for the pupil premium went into school budgets in April 2011.  There is an interesting article by the NGA based on the Sutton Trust covering the pupil premium and research on the high impact/low cost in the schools where the premium was piloted. Action: copy of Sutton Trust report presented to headteachers to be included as Appendix 4.  Schools must ensure that one person on any recruitment panel has safer recruitment training accreditation.  It is important that schools include all pupils eligible for free school meals in the January 2012 school census as this is what the pupil premium is based on.  School performance data published by the DfE in January will include 10-12 new indicators including those pupils benefiting from the pupil premium (ie on free school meals). Governors should check that headteachers are analysing this new data.  Target setting – schools who have bought into the School Standards SLA will continue to receive the FFT data which can be used in the setting of targets.

6. Dates and venue for next meetings St Mary’s Bryanston Square CE Primary School in Enford Street, W1H 1DL has kindly offered to host the next meeting on 7th February 2011.

7. Any other business AF thanked Grey Coat Hospital for hosting the meeting and for their excellent hospitality.

8. Close