Agenda item

The Director of Community and Children’s Services to be heard.

The Director of Community and Children’s Services invited representatives from the City Family of Schools to present to the Board their recent progress in relation to tackling racism.

The Co-Headteacher of Redriff Primary School provided a brief presentation outlining the school’s approach to identifying and providing interventions for underachieving groups, which consisted of three waves of intervention. Members noted the success of the school’s focus on improving reading in the school and that behaviour policies were being developed to aid their longer-term strategy.

A Member sought further clarification of one of the charts used in the presentation slides and it was confirmed that it represented percentages of those that were in groups of higher risk of underachieving.

Another commended the school on the steps taken to recover the previous reading standards following a temporary decrease one year but enquired what lessons could be learned from the year before this which would allow the school, as well as others, to pre-empt any future declines. It was confirmed that staff had identified previous changes in school staffing and reading routines that may have led to this and that it had been addressed in their longer-term strategy.

The Principal of the City of London Academy, Highgate Hill then offered a presentation to the Board highlighting concerns regarding the English Literature curriculum offered across Key Stages 3 and 4 (KS3 and KS4) and how the school was working to address this. Students within the schools had identified a lack of diversity in the pieces studied which led to the school inviting the student body to suggest alternative books for inclusion in the KS3 curriculum. Members noted that KS4 curriculum pieces were currently restricted by the AQA Board.

One Member raised the question of how the Board could offer support to the City Family of Schools in helping influence the literature choices made by examining bodies. It was added that this issue had received a significant amount of media coverage recently as many people felt the amount of diverse content in exams had been reduced over recent years. Officers welcomed any support the Board were able to provide in this area.

While Members were supportive of the school’s approach of engaging the student voice in diversifying curriculum, some raised concerns of relying on this method too much. They felt that curriculum should be decided by those with a wealth of experience in the subject matter, which in this case would be the relevant examining bodies. It was further highlighted that curriculum pieces should be selected due to their high quality and the opportunity they create for young people to learn and be challenged on a variety of topics, and not purely because of the diversity of the author. There was however a recognition that there was a lack of BAME authors featured in KS4 curriculum. Concerns were also raised around localised curriculums as this could lead to children from disadvantaged areas not having access to the same English literature as those from privileged areas, furthering any inequalities.

The Principal thanked Members for their feedback on this matter and assured the Board that this would be taken into consideration in future planning.

The Chair thanked both guests, on behalf of the Board, for their presentations.

RESOLVED, that the presentations be received.