21 October 2015 weekly update

Dear Colleagues

The Kent Association of Headteachers' Conference was held last week and attended by nearly 300 Heads. The focus was on leadership for a changing education system where schools are increasingly in partnerships such as trusts, federations and collaboratives and there is more widespread system leadership and shared capacity across groups of schools. A summary of the priorities in the Kent Leadership Strategy (DOCX, 16.4 KB) was launched at the conference. These are to ensure:

• Leaders are valued and supported
• Future leaders are identified and nurtured
• System leaders are developed

There was a very positive response at the conference and a willingness to move forward with new ideas about how we organise ourselves for future leadership and capacity building in the Kent education system. For example, the Lead Cabinet Member for Education, Roger Cough, referred to KCC's plans to develop an educational trust for all our education services in partnership with schools and KAH. At the same time we are at a tipping point in Kent now in developing school collaborations that have a more sustained structure for the future, as formal partnerships, federations, trusts and small multi-academy arrangements.

Steve Munby spoke in an inspirational way at the conference about the importance of system leadership being delivered with challenge and accountability for improving outcomes for all children and young people. At present in Kent it is only by collaboration and system leadership that we will succeed in tackling some of our biggest challenges, such as the sponsorship of new schools, the improvements to our 14-19 education and training and a reduction in NEET numbers, our provision for children and young people with challenging behaviour and mental health problems and our on-going need to make the best use of our SEND resources.

For more information on the next steps with the Leadership Strategy please contact the Chair of your KAH Area Board or Gillian.Cawley@kent.gov.uk

Attendance and Exclusion Data

Two of our key challenges are to improve attendance and to continue to find alternatives to permanent exclusion.

The latest available attendance data, just published, indicates that absence from school in Kent is greater than the national averages.

Overall the percentage of total absences in Kent is 4.8% compared to 4.5% nationally. For Secondary schools the figures are 5.6% compared to 5.2% nationally, and for Primary the percentage is 4.2% compared to 4.0% nationally. In every case there is a higher level of authorised, unauthorised, persistent and total absence in Kent.

The percentage of pupils who have missed 38 or more sessions (persistent absence) is 4.5% in Kent compared to 3.9% nationally. For Secondary schools this figure is 6.5% compared to 5.5% nationally and for Primary schools it is 3.1% compared to 2.7% nationally.

The previous persistent absence figure for Secondary schools was 6.1%, and for Primary schools it was 2.8%. These figures have increased in the past year, and they continue to be worse than the national figures, which is a concern.

The DfE has changed the definition of persistent absence to 10% from the current 15% from September 2015. This will have a significant impact on persistent absence reporting. For example, the combined autumn and spring figures for 2014-15 would increase from 2.8% to 8.5% for Primary schools using the new threshold, and from 6.1% to 14.0% for Secondary schools.

Can I please remind colleagues that where persistent absence is related to more long term family difficulties a notification should be made to Early Help.

Exclusions

In the 2014-15 school year there were 106 permanent exclusions, against a target of reducing this to below 50.

In the Primary phase there were 1693 fixed term and 48 permanent exclusions. This compares to figures for the end of the previous year of 1604 and 26, resulting in a slight increase in fixed term exclusions and a significant increase in permanent exclusions. Further work is taking place to understand and address this increase in the Primary phase, which has not been mirrored in Secondary schools.

In the Secondary phase there were 9030 fixed term and 58 permanent exclusions. This compares to figures for the end of the previous academic year of 8912 and 61, which shows a slight increase in fixed term exclusions and a welcome slight reduction in permanent exclusions. This reduction has occurred in spite of some districts, such as Maidstone, Dartford and Gravesham, significantly increasing the use of permanent exclusion compared to previous years.

Maidstone was the highest excluding district with 17 permanent exclusions, compared to Ashford, Dover, Canterbury, Swale and Thanet where there were no permanent exclusions in Secondary schools.

In the Primary phase there were 13 permanent exclusions in Thanet compared to one permanent exclusion in Gravesham and none in Tunbridge Wells.

The use of permanent exclusion is concentrated in some districts and in some individual schools. For example 32 exclusions were produced by four Secondary schools and two Primary schools. The total number of permanent exclusions in Primary were produced by 36 schools and the total number of Secondary exclusions were produced by 27 schools.

The highest number of fixed term exclusions occurred in Ashford, Thanet and Swale. Overall 22,672 days were lost to education in 2014-15 due to fixed term exclusions.

We are asking schools to please use an Early Help Notification for any pupil that has accumulated 10 or more days fixed term exclusion.

The Factors that Make a Difference

The factors that make a difference to the rate of permanent exclusions include the effectiveness of school practice and in-school support; the cooperation of schools in the local 'In Year Fair Access' arrangements; the alternative curriculum provision and support for schools by the Pupil Referral Units; the availability of support to Primary schools for challenging behaviour; the early identification of special educational needs and the use of the LIFT process; and the use of Early Help notifications.

I hope we can continue to work together to make these mechanisms and sources of additional support more effective in each local area, in order to reduce the number of permanent exclusions this school year.

Patrick Leeson
Corporate Director of Education and Young People's Services