The Performance & Improvement Manager introduced the report of the Director of Children, Families and Education which provided a summary of progress made to date on the development of a new performance reporting framework for Members of the Children, Young People & Education Committee, with the addition of benchmarking data along with the latest performance information and the further development of Power BI to include interactive reports on Special Education Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Education.

Further detail of the performance indicators was provided to the Committee, with demand increasing across social care and early help and prevention and a reduction in the number of children looked after. The timeliness of adoption was raised with the Wirral average taking 912 days against a national target of 426 days where it was outlined that certain scenarios affected the average timescale such as foster carers keeping children for a long time before adopting, and that officers met with OFSTED on a regular basis to monitor this and were happy that it was a suitable explanation.

The schools basket of data was discussed in detail, where it was reported that increase in eligibility of free school meals was due to Department for Education transitional arrangements as part of the roll out of Universal Credit so that any child eligible in March 2018 would continue to be eligible until 2023 regardless of circumstances, but that a further exercise would be undertaken to understand the impact on schools funding when the Universal Credit funding stopped which would be reported to members. Members discussed the SEND indicators and it was reported that five additional staff had been recruited to assist in applications for Educational Health and Care Plans to try and resolve the backlog.

Resolved – That the content of the Performance Report attached in Appendix A be noted.