Agenda and draft minutes

None

The letters and notes where reviewed and accepted by the Scrutiny Councillor Group.

Gareth Morgans (Lead Director for ERW) attended the meeting and outlined the current position with regard to changes to ERW and future plans.  A presentation was provided outlining the key points, including:

·         ERW will formally come to an end on 31^st August 2021.

·         Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire and Swansea have agreed to develop a school improvement partnership which will start on 1^st Sept 2021.

·         Ceredigion and Powys will work together on some aspects of school improvement.

·         The new partnership will only need to support 264 schools and 80,364 learners. (57% of ERW schools and 65% of learners)

·         Pure school improvement activity will remain with each Local Authority.

·         We will have a regional network of school improvement leads to work collaboratively, to solve problems and share effective practice.

·         In the short term the new regional partnership will predominately focus on the continuous professional development of the education workforce. 

·         Improved value for money in this model is evident: services offered centrally can better support staffing at a local level.

·         The vision will be:  The Partnership will be planned as a regional collaborative arrangement designed to promote excellence in all of our schools by means of an effective self-improving system based on honest self-evaluation and mutual support at all levels.  It should inspire excellence in teaching and learning, and support and nurture leaders to enable them to grow schools that will encourage their staff and pupils to the achieve the best outcomes as they thrive as individuals, learners, citizens and contributors

·         The Partnership will-

­       Provide a secure central service which can encourage excellent people to commit to it, enabling funding to be delegated purposefully and provide higher levels of funding to reach schools as our key partners.

­       Be an acknowledged hub of excellence, led by securely employed, high level specialists, who are able to provide leadership and support for local or other sub-regional groupings. 

­       Be a partnership enabling the best use of intelligence about schools and the resources available to support improvement.

­       Share learning across the region to better support schools using consistent school improvement methodologies.

­       Establish a consistent regional approach to reduce duplication, ensure fairness and equity for all schools and to demonstrate value for money.

­       Have a secure and effective model of governance to underpin a more responsive and innovative regional service which supports accountabilities that are shared regionally and locally.

­       Develop a formulated regionally and agreed School Improvement strategy to be delivered locally to ensure the best possible provision of school improvement to further improve learner outcomes. 

·         The functions, draft governance structured and branding where also covered in the presentation.

Ian Altman/Greg Morgan (Chief Officers ERW) attended the meeting and outlined the key issues using a presentation. This included

·         ERW Summer Term and proposed Autumn Term delivery of services (via Business Plan) including strategy groups

·         The ERW Business Plan Evaluation 2020-21 and monitoring cycle

·         Highlighting National Leadership Focus Week.

a)    Information from Tracey Meredith (Swansea and ERW Monitoring Officer)

b)    Councillor Group to discuss thoughts to put in letter to Chair of JC including: what has gone well and not so well in scrutiny of ERW and what could be improved going into the new model.

Tracey Meredith, ERW’s current Monitoring Officer and Head of Legal in Swansea Council attended to discuss scrutiny.  She provided a presentation outlining the regional scrutiny consortium arrangements.  This included:

·         Present arrangements for ERW

·         Aims of Scrutiny

·         Regulators views of scrutiny

·         National model for regional working

·         ERW inter authority agreement

·         The Councillor Group were also asked to discuss how they would like to see scrutiny carried out in the new structure, what has work well and what could be improved from experience of scrutiny of ERW and what would be considered as local and regional scrutiny.

Following their discussion today the Scrutiny Councillor Group agreed that the following points should be contained in the letter to the Chair of the Joint Committee.

1.    The Councillor Group felt strongly that the terms of the current legal agreement should be honored by all six original members of ERW, especially in so far as winding down and redundancy costs

2.    That there must be a very clear and robust governance and legal structure to support and guide the new partnership.  They could see that work has started on this but there is still a lot of work to be done.  They felt it vital that all three constituent Councils know what the parameters and ground rules are from the outset.

3.    There should be a clear Business Plan in situ ready for the start of the new partnership on 1^st September.

4.    The Councillor Group would like to see a scrutiny model similar to the current one, an informal model form part of the governance structure of the new partnership.  They felt the current scrutiny model is effective, and efficient and cost effective.  They would like to see a form of hybrid with informal regional scrutiny and strong local scrutiny.  For this to work the functions of both will need to be clear.  The Group suggest that local scrutiny bodies monitor the impact of the business plan locally but that the regional scrutiny body should look at: value for money and the financial aspects of running the partnership, strategic oversight, risk management and the business plan across the region.

5.    They like to the Chair of the New Joint Committee to attend some of the regional scrutiny meetings to discuss performance of the body.

6.    We would like to see the Chair of the new scrutiny body invited to attend Joint Committee meetings in at least an observer capacity. This would aid and assist in improving dialogue between the Joint Committee and Scrutiny.

7.    They would like the new regional scrutiny body’s involvement in decision making to be more timely, they would like to see scrutiny involvement at an earlier stage rather than when the decision is done and dusted

8.    Given the short time left before the end of the current partnership and resumption of the new they would welcome a prompt response to our letter before our membership changes.