Lewisham Education Commission Report

Lewisham Education Commission Report April 2016 Commissioners Christine Gilbert (chair) l Robert Hill l David Woods Lewisham Education Commission Report Contents Chapter 1 Introduction and overview Chapter 2 Establishing a new approach to school organisation Chapter 3 Developing a school-led model of improvement Chapter 4 Achieving more school places Chapter 5 Creating Lewisham Secondary Challenge Appendix 1 Education Commission members, remit, process and acknowledgements Appendix 2 Lewisham in context: data analysis Appendix 3 Summary review of secondary school Ofsted inspection reports Appendix 4 Distribution of additional primary places in Lewisham since 2008/9 Appendix 5 Forecast of school places in Lewisham 2 Chapter 1: Introduction and overview Background Education is important to Lewisham. It is important to the life of its residents and to the development of Lewisham as a strong and vibrant place to live and work. The council recognises this and in establishing this Education Commission was seeking to ensure that the significant advances so evident in primary schools over recent years were consolidated and extended to the secondary sector. It is clear from all we have done in undertaking this Commission that school improvement and raising educational outcomes, most particularly for young people in the secondary sector, are top priorities for the council, as indeed they must be for Lewisham itself. The establishment of an Education Commission underlines their importance to the council and seeks to accelerate change by bringing in an external team to work collaboratively with local stakeholders to shape a vision for education in Lewisham and make recommendations to the Mayor and to the community of schools in Lewisham for future development. If the council’s ambitions are to be realised, we believe there will need to be a widespread and working commitment to making more of a difference. This requires the emergence of a driving coalition for change from both within and beyond the council which not only increases pride in what is being achieved but also ambition for achieving more in the future. There also needs to be a proactive approach to the national change agenda. Both of these key aspects have influenced our approach in undertaking the work of the Commission. The council set a very ambitious and challenging time frame - 11 weeks - for the work of the Commission. We understand the rationale for this speed. However, not only did it mean that we had to maintain a very disciplined and strategic approach to our work but also that some of our recommendations would inevitably point to the need for more detailed work or follow up in certain areas. Within the constraints of the timeframe, we sought to make the process of stakeholder engagement as inclusive as possible and we have gained a great deal of insight from having done so. The details of our visits and meetings are set out in Appendix 1. The council’s specification for the work of the Commission pointed to five key lines of enquiry that provided the strategic focus for our work, namely: l school organisation, given the national and regional context l sustainable, school-led model of improvement for Lewisham l the best means of providing additional secondary and SEND places in Lewisham and of ensuring existing schools are schools of choice l leading edge practice at Key Stages 4 and 5 that could benefit Lewisham l improving how Lewisham’s system serves the most vulnerable. 3 As expected, there was considerable overlap in undertaking these five key areas of investigation. Nevertheless, we have provided separate chapters on the first four areas and ensured that the fifth is addressed within each of those. The White Paper and role of the local authority in education During the sixth week of the Commission’s work, the Secretary of State for Education published the White Paper, Educational Excellence Everywhere, which has been taken into account in making our recommendations. As was signalled by the recent consultation document on school funding, the government is: “…..reforming school improvement policy in the context of the overall drive towards a school-led system. This means that we expect LAs to step back from running school improvement from the end of the 2016/17 academic year and therefore they will not require funding for this function.”1 The White Paper makes clear that the local authority’s education duties will focus on three areas: l ensuring every child has a school place l ensuring the needs of vulnerable pupils are met l acting as champions for all parents and families. Whatever the statutory definition of its role, the local authority’s democratic base gives it leverage locally and local people will continue to look to local councillors to ensure education is of good quality. As community leaders, Lewisham councillors recognise the importance of education to their local communities, especially to parents of children at local schools and to prospective parents. They share strong moral purpose in wanting to raise aspirations for educational outcomes locally so the achievements of those leaving schools and colleges improve. They will continue to listen hard to the needs of children and their parents and help them navigate the system. Certainly, councillors will expect to play a key role in shaping provision in the area, particularly given the emphasis in the White Paper on their role in securing a school place for every child. As guardians of children in the area, Lewisham councillors are already vigilant about the needs of the most vulnerable, such as looked after children or those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). As they do now with health, councillors may want to continue to scrutinise how the needs and interest of young people are being served and seek to improve this by pressure and influence even if their statutory role is reduced. They may well want to promote the interests and needs of children in Lewisham by reporting on local quality and provision and by engaging with those providing it. Many local authorities will want to scrutinise too what happens to young people when they leave school and to find active ways of supporting young people’s transition into the world of work. 1 Department for Education, 2016, Educational Excellence Everywhere, Cm 9230, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office 4 Local authorities already see themselves as champions for parents and families and for children too. The councillors we spoke to certainly understand the importance of education as a powerful force for regenerating and sustaining the life of the local area as well as the main driver of social mobility. The Commission believes that many councils will continue to see themselves having a role in stimulating and articulating a local and ambitious vision for education locally, tied in perhaps to a borough or community plan. This should give active support to schools in their drive for improvement. Finally, as champions, Lewisham council will continue to be keen to make connections across people, services and places in the area that could benefit young people. The performance of pupils in Lewisham schools The context for Lewisham’s education system is aptly described as a tale of two halves. Standards and pupil outcomes in early years and primary are amongst the very best in the country and Inner London. No school performs below the national floor standards and the vast majority of groups achieve well above average outcomes. The borough’s secondary system sits in stark contrast, with average pupil outcomes being far below those for Inner London and London as a whole. Indeed, performance tables for London show the borough’s schools as having the worst GCSE results in London. A much lower than average percentage of Lewisham’s Key Stage 5 students go on to higher education study. Many people spoke to the Commission about the poverty and deprivation in Lewisham. Without doubt, this affects a significant proportion of Lewisham’s children; in 12 of Lewisham’s 18 wards, 22 per cent or more children live in poverty. At least one quarter of the borough’s 0-19 year olds live in workless households: the same as the Inner London average. As shown in Appendix 2, the proportion of low income households is reflected in the number of children in receipt of free school meals (FSM) but here the figures are more positive than for Inner London. So, although the challenges of poverty are great in Lewisham, they are no harder than for most other Inner London boroughs. Poverty therefore cannot be offered as a reason for Lewisham’s poor average performance in the secondary sector. As shown an Appendix 2, it is clear that children of all backgrounds generally perform far below both the Inner London and the national average for their groups. The significantly below- average performance of black and mixed heritage pupils reflects a long-term trend of below-average outcomes amongst these groups. Lewisham’s white pupils have also underperformed in comparison to their national counterparts over a number of years – although the discrepancies in performance are generally less marked for this group than for those pupils of black and mixed heritage. The performance tables also reveal an issue relating to the attainment of pupils with higher prior attainment. The national proportion of these pupils gaining at least 5 A*- C (including English and maths) has been declining slightly over the last three years. In Lewisham, this proportion has also been declining, but at a faster rate than found nationally. The picture is a little brighter in terms of disadvantaged pupils and those pupils with SEND. In terms of achieving 5 A* - C (including English and maths), disadvantaged pupils, using those in 5 receipt of free school meals as a proxy, perform significantly above the national average for these groups.

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