Agenda item

The Director of School Improvement and Traded Services presented the report. The Education Strategy discussed at the last meeting outlined the response to the pandemic and how schools and families have been supported.

£650m of the Department for Education (DFE) catch up funding had been allocated to support schools through the catch-up premium. £350m had been allocated to the National Tutoring Programme which would also support young people with regards to lost learning. A further £300m for schools had just been announced.

Options to make up for lost learning proposed by the government include summer schools, weekly tutoring and increased wellbeing support.

Current priorities were centred around minimising lost learning and supporting the well-being of pupils by ensuring that vulnerable children were going in to school regularly and those who were at home received regular welfare checks. A duty had been placed on schools last term to ensure a high-quality remote learning offer for all pupils.

Lateral flow testing had been introduced for school staff (home testing) and for secondary school students, which would be rolled out further once schools fully reopened on the 8^th of March. Testing for secondary students would be done three times within the school environment and then twice a week in the home environment to ensure that a-symptomatic pupils or staff were not going in to school.

Schools have engaged very well and have successfully implemented strategies supported by BELS.   Attendance levels of pupils were in line with national statistics and there has been high attendance levels at staff training sessions. A ‘Covid Personal Education Plan’ for Looked After Children had also been created to reflect the current situation.

The issue of elective home education was raised and how those pupils would be involved in ‘catch up’. It was noted that there was nothing specific in the guidance for elective home education relating to catch up. With increased numbers of children being educated at home last year, an additional resource had been deployed to liaise with those families.

Some challenges faced by schools were keeping children safe, assessing pupil achievement via remote learning and anxiety levels with regards to ‘catch up’.  As children have missed out on social aspects of their lives, it was important that they were given access to enrichment.  Schools had to implement measures to ensure that students were able to catch up with work whilst incorporating social factors so that their mental health was not impacted negatively.

Some schools had planned to focus on pastoral topics rather than the learning programme upon return to school. This was to ensure happiness amongst pupils and to address any anxiety levels, particularly separation issues.

It was noted that for some children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, (SEND) during lockdown, support was not available at the school and therefore the child was better off being at home. Long periods of thriving in their home environment made it more difficult to return to school. The SEND & Inclusion service was working closely with families to put in individual assessments and to provide individual support accordingly. The Open Space Project, for example, had been extended to provide respite for families.

The guidance offered for Special Schools was flexible and not punitive with the use of partnership working and joint assessments. Appropriate advice was needed to be put out to mainstream schools about children with Education, Health and Care Plans. (EHCPs)

For those at university, hardship funds had been put in place by the government. Community Barnet continued to work with young people aged between 16-25 along with Middlesex University, providing a lot of welfare support especially for those in self-isolation.

KOOTH (for pupils) and Qwell (for staff) are available and provides online counselling and well-being support for young people, educational staff and parents or carers of children and young people with SEND.