Minutes:
General Question 1 from Councillor Carpenter:
“Education Maintenance Allowances (EMAs) are being withdrawn by the Conservative-led Government from September 2011. In Barking and Dagenham College of Further Education, 41% (1,234) of 16-18 year olds currently in learning are in receipt of an EMA. I am very worried about the negative impact this will have on our younger learners being able to remain in learning and training from September 2011 when EMAs are withdrawn. The College has successfully used the payment of EMAs to motivate youngsters to stay in learning and to improve their attendance. This helps our young people to develop positive attitudes to learning and to achieve good results. Many of their families also depend upon this money in order to keep these youngsters in learning. We also know that unemployment amongst young people is growing. What work is the Barking and Dagenham Partnership doing to assess the implications of this change on the number of potential NEETS in Barking and Dagenham (those young people not in education, employment or training)? Will our NEETS numbers spike even higher? What can the Partnership do to help our young people in these difficult circumstances? What plans are the Partnership putting in place from September 2011 to mitigate the impacts of this?”
Response from Councillor R Gill, Cabinet Member for Children and Education:
The Cabinet Member thanked Councillor Carpenter for a very detailed question on a very important issue.
He stated that in the last financial year £580m had been allocated to EMAs but that the revised scheme, announced by the Secretary of State for Education, had an allocation of £180m, of which £156m would be made available to schools and colleges to support low income families.
Students who received EMAs in 2009/10 would continue to receive the same payments until the end of the 2011/12 academic year.
Students who started courses in September 2010 and qualified for the £30 per week payments would continue to receive support of at least £20 per week until the end of the academic year.
Referring to the impact of the loss of EMAs, the Cabinet Member stated that through the 14-19 Partnership, the borough's secondary schools and the Barking and Dagenham College were currently undertaking a detailed review of all courses and qualifications to ensure that they are appropriate, robust and provided good opportunities for progression.
There also continued to be a good supply of local part-time work, which provided young people with valuable work experience.
Referring to NEETs and youth unemployment, at February 2011 data showed a further reduction in unemployment of young people from 7.9% to 6.9%, which was in line with other east London boroughs.
There was concern about unemployment rates for 18-24 year olds, which stands at 17.3% against the national average of 20.1%. A specialist 18-24 Job Broker was currently being recruited in partnership with Elevate.
The Skills Centre, which was due to be completed on 23 July 2012, would provide authentic workplace learning in key local employment sectors such as construction, ICT, business, hospitality and catering, hair and beauty.
The focus on apprenticeships continued to be maintained:
- recruiting 12 with Elevate
- 30 within the Council's workforce
- 16 through procurement of major construction contracts
- a further 50-60 in the pipeline
Officers continued to work closely with other private sector partners and the Council would be pursuing the new funding for apprenticeships that was announced in the Budget.
High quality work experience placements were important and the Council's own work experience placement team had been recognised by the recent Award for Education Business Excellence.
The Council were working to ensure a comprehensive fit for purpose 14-19 curriculum and also to further improve the quality of information available to young people to enable them to make the right choices at the right time. The Council also had an LBBD Prospectus website which could be accessed by young people who own smart phones.
It must still be remembered that £400m has been cut by the Government.
General Question 2 from Councillor Twomey:
“The powers given to teachers in the new education bill around the confiscation of mobile phones in schools, has recently been condemned as disproportionate and reckless by the NASWUT teaching union. This is evidence once again of this Government's inability to engage in proper, meaningful consultation.
I recognise the fact that mobile phone usage can be, and often is, a problem within our schools, in terms of distraction and inappropriate behaviour. I acknowledge that as a council we do not have the power to directly address these issues within our schools, however I would like to ask what steps are we, the Council, taking to guide our local head teachers in terms of developing a consistent and uniform approach to these issues across the borough?"
Response from Councillor R Gill, Cabinet Member for Children and Education:
The Cabinet Member thanked Councillor Twomey for this question, saying that it was something about which there has been much discussion.
He stated that there had been consultation with the secondary school head teachers, and that all of the secondary schools had policies, the general principle of which is the same, that mobile telephones should not be visible during lessons.
Referring to the Council's strong partnership with the police and head teachers, the Cabinet Member said that he was confident that the head teachers would take a fair approach.
He also gave his personal undertaking to raise this issue with the secondary head teachers.
General Question 3 from Councillor Channer:
“Could the Cabinet Member for Children and Education please outline the capital investment programme earmarked for our schools over 2011/2012? And what plans are in place to continue investing in our schools over the coming years in light of the drastic and unnecessary cuts being forced upon us by the Tory led coalition government?”
Response from Councillor R Gill, Cabinet Member for Children and Education:
The Cabinet Member thanked Councillor Channer for raising such an important question.
Whilst noting that the £270m programme for Building Schools for the Future had been scrapped by the Government, it was important to remember that thanks to this Council lobbying the Secretary of State for Education, we have received funding for works on Sydney Russell and Dagenham Park Schools,
which will be completed in 2012.
Through the Department for Education, the Council had been allocated £14m for 2011/12 to invest in providing new school places and to respond to basic need. This is the highest allocation of all London boroughs and recognises the particular demands we have in this borough. A programme is currently being drawn up to ensure the delivery of sufficient school places by September 2012 and this is due to be considered by Cabinet next month.
A further allocation of £3.8m has been received to invest in existing Children's Services properties. Priorities for this investment are to ensure that the £51m backlog of condition items that are mainly in schools are addressed.
Lobbying will continue for additional funding to support the building work that is needed at secondary school level.
Representation had been made to Government to seek a review of the allocation made to this borough and we had had a visit from Department for Education officials to enable them to make an assessment of our needs and impacts. Only five other councils nationwide received such a visit.
The Cabinet Member advised that head teachers were predicting a continued rise in outcomes for our young people and that he will provide an update on this in future meetings.
General Question 4 from Councillor Tarry:
A child’s life chances are significantly bound to education and the socio-economic position of their parents. The Evening Standard this year printed its child poverty findings, which highlighted that Barking and Dagenham is at 39%, the 9th worst in the UK. We obviously have a desperate need for greater funding to ensure our young people have the life chances they deserve, especially in the first five years which ultimately shape their future.
Despite this we have seen the London Mayor under-fund us in job creation and transport, and the Government cut much of the means to provide top class education for young people at every stage right through to University.
In light of this could the Cabinet Member for Education please outline the steps being taken to lobby both the London Mayor and the Government for extra direct funding to help our young people fulfil their aspirations?
And what we are doing as a borough to ensure no child is left behind?"
Response from Councillor R Gill, Cabinet Member for Children and Education:
The Cabinet Member thanked Councillor Tarry for raising this question.
He said that Children's Services were acutely aware of the impact on children and young people of living in poverty and that the central theme of the Children and Young People's Plan is to tackle this issue.
With regard to funding, the Cabinet Member advised that:
- The Young People's Learning Agency and the Skills Funding Agency had been actively lobbied for increased funding; and
- three bids had been lodged to secure European Social Funds to work with our NEET young people.
Over the last seven years,many of our young people, having been supported by the AimHigher programme, have progressed to university or moved into high education through vocational routes.
The Olympics and its legacy would provide many residents with a route into work.
The Cabinet Member noted that the scale of need in the borough was great but stated that we should be proud of the initiatives that we had launched such as the cash cards for students, the breakfast and after school clubs, and emphasised the importance of the Multi-Agency Locality Teams.
General Question 5 from Councillor Butt:
"The NHS is undergoing the most radical shake-up since its inception in 1947. Despite the pre-election promise that it was in a safe pair of hands, and that all funding would be ring-fenced, the Conservatives have slashed £20billion from its budget. This has gone cap-in-hand with plans to privatise many of the services that individuals have received on the NHS for free for the last sixty years.
We are seeing the effects of this first hand with the uncertain future surrounding the Accident and Emergency Unit at King George’s Hospital, which in February of this year London Mayor, Boris Johnson, refused to oppose the planned closure.
Can the Cabinet Member for Health and Adult Services please outline:
(a) the impact that the changes to the NHS will have on the people of Barking and Dagenham; and
(b) the likely effect of the closure at King George’s Hospital?"
Response from Councillor Reason, Cabinet Member for Health and Adult Services:
The Cabinet Member thanked Councillor Butt for raising such an important question at this time.
Referring to the Coalition Government having promised that the NHS was safe in their hands, the Cabinet Member then spoke of the Secretary of State for Health's vision for a better health service in that we could expect:
- local communities to get the power to stop forced and unwanted closures of A&E and maternity services;
- Some real democratic legitimacy into the NHS, through Health and Wellbeing Boards; and
- ‘nothing about me without me’ – a chance for us all to be involved in the decisions made about our care.
The Cabinet Member went on to say that in this borough the management and Board of our local Primary Care Trust (PCT) were both changing and that the Board would then meet jointly with Waltham Forest, Redbridge and Havering Councils and be supported by the same single cluster management team (the Outer North East London team)
She said that we were close to agreeing borough-focused jointly commissioned services with the PCT. However, to find savings for the 2011/12 budget, the agreements were being unpicked, though no further information has been provided to the Council.
Referring to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the Cabinet Member said that for the first time since records began, NHS England spending would fall in real terms for the next two consecutive years and that the Outer North East London team was looking for budget savings of £12m, which was more than in other areas of the country.
She said it had been expected that people would be cared for and treated closer to their homes and there would be focus on their health and wellbeing in order to prevent them from becoming ill. However, the cluster management team was now proposing that:
- the Broad Street Walk-in Centre will be closed
- GP surgery hours will be reduced
- integrated care funding will be reduced
- funding will be withdrawn for the development of a new community hospital in east Dagenham
She said that these proposals would increase the pressure on the already overstretched A&E services at Queen's and King George's Hospitals, and referred to data from Dr Foster Health that showed both hospitals as being two of the ten worst hospitals for death rates. This had been confirmed by the regulator, the Care Quality Commission, who had further raised serious issues regarding the maternity services at Queen's Hospital.
The District Auditor had issued a Public Interest Report to draw attention to his concerns as to the financial problems at our local hospitals.
The Cabinet Member stated that the Council had made it clear that there should be no closure of any services at King George's Hospital until Queen's Hospital was able to provide good quality service.
She also referred to the campaign for babies to be born in Barking again and to the state of the art birthing unit at Barking Hospital that was not being used due to lack of staff.
Concerns had been raised with the Secretary of State for Health and an independent review was expected in the next few months into the Health4NEL proposals.
The Cabinet Member concluded by saying that the two issues raised in this question were some of the most critical issues facing the borough at the moment, and that the Council would do all that it could to ensure that the NHS changes will be good for the people of Barking and Dagenham.
Councillor Worby, at the Chair's discretion, endorsed the Cabinet Member's response. She confirmed that she would cease to be Chair of the NHS Trust with effect from 31 March and stated that it had been a privilege to have been able to provide local health services for local people. She was concerned that the new Board would not be working in the interests of local people and concluded by saying that she was pleased to be in this Council Chamber to work with the Cabinet Member for Health and Adult Services to ensure that local people had local health care.