Education Challenge Board Update from Peter Kent

In my view our Challenge Board on 11 March was a particularly effective meeting. As I continue to emphasise, the meetings are not a discussion of individual schools, but rather an overview of the strategies being put in place to provide support for schools across the county. Far from being a forum for criticism, the most common phrase I heard during Monday’s meeting was ‘What can we do to help?’

Paul Senior gave us an excellent presentation on the impact of the education strategy across Warwickshire. There was a lot to celebrate - exclusions halved, gaps being closed and real progress being made with a series of long-standing issues. It was very impressive to hear about the Warwickshire schools that had been singled out for praise by Amanda Spielman in her recent annual report. I think we should all be grateful to Paul for the way in which he has maintained the positive momentum of the strategy during his time in Warwickshire.

However, Paul also gave us some very direct challenges, focusing particularly upon the need to work together to provide solutions within Warwickshire that removed the need for students to have to travel outside the county.

Paul left us with three questions that seemed strong measures to apply to our continuing work on the education system across Warwickshire:

• How are we doing?
• How do we know?
• How do we compare with similar areas?

As part of all this, the board looked in detail at the emerging strategy for Nuneaton that seeks to bring together education and a whole range of other agencies to produce a joined up solution for the area. It was very helpful to have Paul with us and to be able to pick his brains about approaches that had succeeded in other authorities with similar challenges. I was particularly struck by the willingness of schools across the county to work together in order to make the strategy work and the number of colleagues who volunteered to be part of the task group.

Peter Kent

Chair of the Education Challenge Board and Lawrence Sheriff School, headteacher