Agenda and minutes

Venue: Tolson Museum, Ravensknowle Park, Wakefield Road, Moldgreen, Huddersfield HD5 8DJ

Contact: David Gearing  Email: david.gearing@kirklees.gov.uk

Items
No. Item

1.

Apologies for absence

Minutes:

Apologies had been received from Paul Davies (Kirklees Governors), Catherine Jubbs (Academy Heads), Marcus Newby (Primary Heads), Jenny Shore (Primary Heads) and Jo-Anne Sanders (Service Director – Learning and Early Support).

2.

Minutes of the Forum meeting held on 19th October 2018 pdf icon PDF 125 KB

Minutes:

The minutes were agreed to be a true record of the meeting.

3.

Matters arising from the 19th October 2018

         Forum membership update

Minutes:

3.1 Forum membership update [minute 3.1 of the 19th October meeting]

 

Maintained Primary – Louise Brown, head teacher at Headfield CE Junior School, the new representative from the maintained primary school sector, was attending her first Forum meeting today.

 

Maintained Secondary – this week’s Kirklees High School Heads (KHSH) meeting had confirmed that the two new representatives from the maintained secondary school sector will be Karen Colligan (All Saints Catholic College) and Jennifer Templar (Whitcliffe Mount School).

 

Post-16 – Carmen Gonzalez-Eslava, vice-Principal of Kirklees College, has agreed to be the post-16 sector representative to Forum. She will only be invited to attend meetings when there is a post-16 / high needs agenda item to be considered.

 

Early Years (Private, Voluntary & Independent (PVI) settings) – Kath Duffy from the Pre-School Learning Alliance has agreed to become the Early Years PVI representative to the Forum. Taking a similar approach to that of the post-16 representative, the PVI rep will only be invited to attend when an Early Years item is scheduled. Samantha Richmond from the National Day Nurseries Association has agreed to substitute for Kath if she is unable to attend when called upon.

4.

Kirklees Education & Learning Partnership Board (standing item)

Minutes:

Alasdair Brown, Chief Executive of Kirklees Active Leisure attended to talk about the Kirklees Active Schools (KAS) Partnership. The partnership is looking to secure representation from the secondary and special schools sectors (Anne Lawton has volunteered to be the special sector rep). Alasdair will be attending the next Kirklees High School Heads meeting.

 

Lory Hunter, Commercial & Technical Development Manager for the Waste and Recycling Service attended to discuss recycling in schools and frustrations with the current arrangements. Refuse collection services are covered by a PFI contract through to 2023 but the service is looking at how arrangements could be improved going forward. Improved communications with schools would be a start. It was pointed out that the service already offers free advice to schools about waste and recycling. There was some talk about trialling new approaches across a number of pilot schools.

 

Carl Mackie, Public Health Manager and Suzanne Lindsay from Streetscene attended for an item about the Sustainable Travel policy. A survey will shortly be sent to schools via Heads Up to gather data to inform the plan. (This prompted a complaint at the Forum meeting about the number of surveys doing the rounds at the moment!)

 

Among the topics considered by the Improvement Committee were reading and writing at Key Stage 3, the ‘50 things to do before you’re 5’ approach (to be launched this very afternoon) and relationships and sex education. The Services Committee saw input from the Governors Clerking Service and the Free School Meals Eligibility Checking service. The new Place Planning and Inclusion Committee is in the process of being established – membership composition and terms of reference are being worked upon. All members of the outgoing Place Planning & Admissions Group are being asked if they wish to transition to serve on the new committee.

 

An update was given to the Forum about an earlier agenda item – the Healthy Pupils Capital Fund. Forum has previously seen a paper which proposed a pupil number basis for the distribution of Fund monies amongst schools. When the proposal was considered by the Council’s Executive Team there was challenge back that the distribution should have a more outcomes-focussed basis. The issue will now be referred back to E & LPB to try to determine a different basis as soon as possible. It was confirmed that there is no time limit to spend the Capital Fund monies by.

5.

Consultation with schools on School Funding arrangements for 2019-20: pdf icon PDF 36 KB

         De-delegation and central schools budgets

         Changes to school funding for 2019-20

Minutes:

Officers have now attended the recent KPH (Kirklees Primary Heads) and KHSH (Kirklees High School Heads) meetings to set the scene for consultation on 2019-20 schools funding arrangements. This included a concise summary (attached today) of the relatively few changes required to next year’s funding formula (in comparison to the wide-ranging consultation that took place last year about how/whether to move to the National Funding Formula), the draft 2019-20 proposals for de-delegation from maintained mainstream schools and the shape of central budget retention via the Central School Services Block (CSSB) and the Schools Block.

 

Once the ESFA has supplied details of the National Copyright Licence charge and the CSSB allocation for 2019-20 an e-mail will be circulated round all mainstream maintained schools and academies to gather views about the proposed de-delegation picture and CSSB spending.

6.

Cabinet report on School Funding 2019-20

Minutes:

Forum was reminded of the need to evidence political sign-off for the shape of school funding allocations for the coming funding year. This is achieved via an annual Cabinet report which sets out the context for any changes that need to be made to existing arrangements and explains what consultation processes have underpinned the eventual decisions reached. A draft copy of this year’s report will be provided to Forum members as soon as possible.

7.

Any other business

Minutes:

No other business was raised.

8.

Confirm minutes

9.

Date and time of next meeting

Friday 8th March 2019, 10:00am

 

Venue: tbc

Minutes:

Friday 8th March 2019                           

Venue: to be confirmed    

Start: 10:00am