Minutes of Previous Meeting - Meetings, agendas and minutes

More documents

Recommendations

Info

McLaughlin asked that the Council looked beyond political parties when appointingto the school governor posts. Councillor Gore added that any suggestions for thevacancies were welcome.AttendanceThe Council and schools continued to work on attendance and the levels hadimproved since the previous Committee meeting. Councillor Craig asked whatmore could be done to improve the attendance levels. Attendance was always achallenge and schools were supported where there were persistent absentees.Families were also supported to help alleviate attendance problems and thewalking bus initiative had been effective in improving levels. Sue Fennimorereferred to learning mentors, who had made a significantly improvement onattendance. One of the headteachers commented that there was no one way tocombat attendance problems and by introducing and changing differentapproaches helped. One initiative was by holding a football club in the morningbefore school which helped attract pupils to attend school early.The Committee discussed families taking time off school during term time and thedifficulties for many who for personal reasons visited relatives abroad during thesetimes. Councillor McLaughlin referred to the costs to families going on holidayduring the school breaks, which was much more expensive and noted the benefitsfor pupils taking holidays abroad. He suggested that there were innovativesolutions to the pupils being absent such as taking work home. One headteacherno longer authorised holidays in term time and had found attendance hadimproved and families had respected this policy. There was a suggestion that theterm times in Hammersmith and Fulham be changed. Andrew Christie noted thatconsultation on the term dates took place before they were approved. There wouldalso be the difficulty for staff whose own children attended schools in otherboroughs which had different term dates. One of the headteachers noted that shefound the persistent absentees were not having holidays during term time and hada regular pattern of absence, which were the main problem for attendance levels.Another headteacher highlighted the importance of trust between the school andfamilies. She commented that the individual cases of families needed to be lookedat, such as in situations where families had to travel abroad due to a sickness inthe family.Other initiatives and suggestions for improving attendance included breakfastclubs, imposing fees for when pupils were absent and providing rewards for goodattendance.Healthy School StatusAll schools had a healthy school status, where the food provided in the canteensand healthy lifestyles were looked at. Obesity of pupils in Year 6 was looked atand was included as one of the Council’s targets to address. The Council andschools worked with the pupils and their families on these issues.Schools IntakeCouncillor McLaughlin asked about the intake of pupils at Sacred Heart HighSchool and the London Oratory School who were from the borough. Thepercentage for Sacred Heart High was 30% and for The London Oratory was 10%.Ian Heggs noted that he would like all the residents to choose the borough’sschools and was pleased that the number of borough residents attending aPage 6
orough school had increased to up to 40%. It was also noted that the admissioncriteria was different in each school. The Headteacher from The London OratorySchool commented that there were 160 places in each intake and there were 900applications this year for these places. The school was founded 150 years agoand the admission criteria was the same as it first opened with the first criteriabeing for catholic parents to send their catholic child to a catholic school.Councillor McLaughlin felt that as The London Oratory was a London school, itshould be considered as such and not as a Hammersmith and Fulham school.Councillor Gore commented that the nature of voluntary aided schools wasdifferent and noted that the London Oratory was rated very highly. She also notedthat other schools had seen fantastic improvements and rated on the schoolleague tables. Andrew Christie reminded the Committee that schools had to applythe admissions code.The School Improvement section encouraged discussions between the schools,and asked headteachers to encourage parents to visit the schools and to apply.Ian Heggs referred to the position at Lady Margaret School where relatively fewparents from the borough had applied for places at the school whereas now nearlyhalf of the Year 6 who received a place were from the borough.The Chairman congratulated the schools and was incredibly proud that they had allreceived excellent results.Burlington Danes AcademyIn response to a question on levels of achievement at the school, the Headteachernoted that a few pupils when joining the school had reached high levels, the intakewas below the national average but when they left they were at the nationalaverage. There was an issue of some higher ability pupils not achieving the goodgrades that they should have which had been picked up by Ofsted but this hadbeen addressed by the school; a lot of the issues related to discipline, and Ofstedrecognised that this picture was changing and the figures compared to were lastyear’s and not this year’s figures.Councillor McLaughlin referred to pupils with African and Caribbean heritage,where there had been concerns raised previously by the Committee aboutachievements, and was told that the improvements made at the school were by allgroups of pupils. There was a firm discipline structure in place at Burlington DanesAcademy and pupils improved. In the past more African and Caribbean pupils hadbeen excluded from the school which had now been worked on and improved.Councillor Phibbs congratulated the Headteacher for turning the school around insuch speed. He commented on the pride in the school and the strong academicachievement.Jack Tizard SchoolCouncillor Scott Russell, who was a governor at the school, referred to the fact thatthe school could only reach a level four in the Ofsted rating, due to it being aspecial school, and asked why it was compared to the standards used for otherschools. Ian Heggs replied that the new Ofsted Framework addressed this issueand looked at progress; the new achievement grade would recognise the overallgrading based on progress made at the school.Page 7
Page 3: (b)(c)the updated and outstanding a
Page 9: RESOLVED THAT:(1) a report on conti

Minutes of Previous Meeting - Meetings, agendas and minutes

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?