(a)

as well as working with the Regional Schools Commissioner, Plymouth was taking a local council based approach to attracting outstanding leaders to the city whereby it was adapting internal economic development pieces of work to promote a positive image/ positive stories of Plymouth;

(b)

the report contained detailed figures at the request of Members, an addition to the report focused around key stage 4 data (secondary schools) specifically regarding 15-16 year olds. Key measures for 2018, in comparison with 2017 data, showed little sign of improvement, specifically in terms of progress made by young people in Plymouth in comparison to other young people across the country;

(c)

assessing pupil premium data, as the broadest measure to capture young people who were in disadvantaged areas, highlighted that these young people were not performing as well as those children who were kin more affluent areas in the city;

(d)

the gender gap in attainment levels between boys and girls was recognised to emerge very early in primary school and continued throughout education to secondary school; girls were seen to make more progress in Plymouth;

(e)

attainment was rising in primary schools however attainment levels were shown to be rising faster across the country.

(f)

schools were working hard to address the gender gap between girls and boys; schools had their own programmes to develop skills in reading, writing and maths;

(g)

whilst officers included detailed figures in the report at the request of the Chair, it was recognised that this made the information more challenging to understand; also the removal of percentages removed the ability to compare data from previous years. Officers advised that they were in the process of finalising a ‘data book’ which contained the Council’s performance data in comparison with that of regional statistical neighbours; this data, on the whole, was set out in bar charts and tables and it was considered that this would make it easier to read;

(h)

the Employment and Skills Board was doing a specific piece of work focused upon readiness for work;

(i)

the report also included data of service children who were in receipt of the pupil premium; officers advised that this information was also available as split per school;

(j)

attainment figures of children home schooled across the city were not included in the report as this was outside of the Council’s system;

(k)

it was difficult for officers to ascertain if attainment levels had dropped since the creation of academies and free schools as the measures set by the government to judge attainment had changed;

(l)

overall 88% of maintained schools were judged as good or outstanding; all  special schools were judged as good and outstanding;

(m)

the panel may wish to add a visit to some of the city’s schools to their work programme in 2019/2020 in order to get a feel for what was happening in the city in terms of education;

(n)

the report took into account the change of GCSE grading markers from A-E to 1-9 for Maths and English only;

(o)

the report contained average scores for the city and whilst Plymouth was lower than national figures and statistical neighbours, there were also schools in the city which were in the top 10% in the country. It was considered that schools were now aware that they needed to understand what outstanding practice consisted of therefore a number of teachers went to Bristol in March 2019 to visit an outstanding school as part of developmental opportunity.

1.

the update was noted;

2.

an item would be included on the Education and Children’s Social Care Overview and Scrutiny Committee regarding school visits.