To approve as a correct record the minutes of the meeting held on 27 July 2022.

The Chair reported that Members had visited King David High School and that it had been a very useful visit.  The Committee Support Officer reported that she was following up the request for a visit to St Mary’s RC Primary School and that the Executive Headteacher of Lily Lane Primary School had requested that the visit to her school be arranged for January 2023, as she had only recently started in post. 

Decision

To approve as a correct record the minutes of the meeting held on 27 July 2022.

To receive a summary of Ofsted inspection information for daycare providers. 

To consider inspection reports and performance information for a selection of daycare providers.

The Subgroup received a list of all Manchester daycare providers which had been inspected since the last meeting and the judgements awarded along with copies of the inspection reports.

In response to a Member’s question, the Senior Quality Assurance Officer (Early Years) explained that out of schools clubs previously received outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate grades from Ofsted and that Manchester had had many outstanding out of schools clubs.  Inspections of these clubs now resulted in a judgement of “met” or “not met”. However, she highlighted that the reports for these clubs read well and that there were not any actions or recommendations. that improvements were required.  Therefore, she advised, that these recent inspections could be viewed as being at least “good” in terms of the previous grading system.  

The Senior Quality Assurance Officer (Early Years) provided an overview of the current situation and key themes from the reports.  She reported that 95% of Early Years settings in the city were judged to be “good” or “outstanding”, which compared well against other Greater Manchester authority areas.  She informed Members that 12 inspections of daycare providers had taken place since September but that 6 had not been published yet.  She informed Members that one Early Years setting had received an “inadequate” judgement and had subsequently closed.  She outlined that recruitment and retention of staff and, in particular, qualified staff was a challenge for the sector.  She highlighted the positive impact of out of school settings having good links with their feeder schools, which impacted positively on teaching and learning and outcomes for children.  For the Early Years settings, she reported that key positive areas within the reports were the focus on communication and speech and language development

The Senior Quality Assurance Officer (Early Years) informed Members about the actions being taken by her team in response to the published reports and feedback from the inspectors for settings whose report had not yet been published, including more targeted prioritisation of visits.  She informed the Subgroup about two Department for Education (DfE) programmes that Manchester was involved in.  The Experts and Mentors programme enabled seven settings to receive bespoke support from an expert or mentor, funded by the DfE.  PDP3 provided 20 weeks of online training and development for practitioners, which was free to undertake with backfill funding available for practitioner’s time.  She advised that, in the previous year, eight childminders and a number of schools had completed the PDP3 course but that none of the practitioners in Early Years settings had completed the course, due to recruitment and retention issues.  She advised that it was a high-quality course which had provided good outcomes and received good feedback.  Her team wanted to ensure that more settings and childminders took up this offer at this time.  A Member asked to be sent a link to information about the PDP3 course.

The Senior Quality Assurance Officer (Early Years) informed Members that her team was delivering “ready for inspection” training to settings which were due  ...  view the full minutes text for item 12.

Report of the Governance and Scrutiny Support Unit

To review the Terms of Reference and Work Programme of the Subgroup.

Members agreed that at the next meeting the Subgroup should consider all the reports for schools and daycare providers which had been published since today’s meeting but focus on the main themes that had emerged from the reports rather than going through each report individually.  

Decision

To note the Terms of Reference and Work Programme, subject to the above comment.