Education and schools plan due before Cabinet
Birmingham City Council’s education and schools strategy and improvement plan is to go before cabinet on March 16.
The document, approved by the Department for Education, sets out how the council will work with the Birmingham Education Partnership to deliver school improvement.
Councillor Brigid Jones, cabinet member for children and family services, said: “This is an incredibly exciting time for education in this city. Birmingham Education Partnership has come a long way in the last two years and we are taking our partnership to the next level by commissioning them to take on school improvement in the city.
“Our schools are diverse and led by many great and talented people, and by harnessing their collective power we can achieve more together than they can alone. We hope that as BEP evolves we can expand this approach to other key areas, to our fragmented system a strong, collective voice in safeguarding, development, and other key areas.
“In our plan we have set out a vision where we want to see every child in the city achieve their potential and believe in themselves. To do this we must work collaboratively to drive through innovation and improvement so every child can go to a good or outstanding school and access the best teaching, a broad curriculum and be allowed to prosper in a safe environment.”
Ambitions set out in the plan are:
• Ensure all maintained schools will either be outstanding or good by 2018
• Improve performance at key stages 1 and 2 (L2 and L4) to the national average by 2016
• Maintain our performance at above national average performance at key stage 4 and key stage 5
• Improve performance of children with special educational needs and disabilities at KS1 and KS2 to national average performance for children with SEND
• Close the attainment gap of children on free school meals to within 5 % of Birmingham average by 2017
• Close the attainment gap of looked after children to within 10 % points of the Birmingham average by 2020
• Close the attainment gap of underperforming Districts of the City to within 3% of the Birmingham average at key stage 4 by 2018
• Achieve national level attendance at primary phase and maintain performance above secondary phase average
• Close gap national average to within 5% of national average at L5+, improving the attainment of most able children
• Achieve national average for ‘good level of development’ for Early Years Foundation Stage
• Reduce numbers of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET).
The strategy to achieve this is based on three key strands: Getting the Basics Right: Ensuring that robust systems to underpin effective safeguarding and governance of schools are in place; Positioning the Council: Focusing the work of the council on delivering its core statutory duties. This includes strengthening oversight and strategic leadership; Improvement through Partnership: Promoting innovation, improvement, attainment and overall resilience through new models of collaboration and system leadership with all partners working with children and young people.
ENDS
For more media information please call 0121 303 3287
RELATED DOCUMENTS
