Issue - meetings

The Cabinet Member for Educational Attainment and School Improvement presented a report on the annual education performance review 2020/21 and opened by thanking the education providers for their tireless efforts throughout the last year.

The Cabinet Member commented that it had been a further year of disruption for pupils due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with little test and examination data for a second year running.  There were also no comparison tables available as different methodology had been used across the country for teacher assessed results.

The Cabinet Member referred to the many achievements of schools, pupils and the support services, which included:

-  Partnerships had strengthened and blossomed during the pandemic;

-  The proportion of schools rated good or outstanding remained at 91.5%, unchanged from the previous year.  That meant the borough’s schools were well above latest published national benchmark and just under the London benchmark; and

-  Health and wellbeing, creative and culture opportunities had been developed by teachers over the past year which significantly benefitted the borough’s young people and supported them through the pandemic.

The Cabinet Member and Member Champion for Disabled People referred again to the review of Additional Resourced Provision undertaken during the year which had highlighted the wealth of strong practice and opportunities for new provision to meet the complex needs of young people with SEND.

Cabinet Members welcomed the report and were impressed with the continued hard work of everyone concerned throughout the ongoing pandemic. 

Cabinet resolved to:

(i)  Renew the Council’s commitment to continuing to strengthen and develop partnerships with Barking and Dagenham’s family of schools, BDSIP,Barking & Dagenham College, CU London and other key partners to achieve the best possible outcomes and opportunities for the borough’s children and young people;and

(ii)  Note performance against the priorities of the Education and Participation Strategy 2018-22 as set out in section 3 of the report and in the dataset at Appendix A to the report, acknowledging that most benchmarking data in Appendix A was for 2019 and 2020/21 provisional updates were made to lines 23-28 of the dataset only.