We aim to build sound foundations for lifelong learning for the whole community of Leicestershire. This is encapsulated in the Vision Statement of the LEA.

"We believe that all people of Leicestershire should have lifelong access to high quality education and training for vocation, social and personal needs to improve the quality of their life and contribute to the economic and cultural development of this County and beyond".

Our purposes are as follows:

To provide leadership – in raising levels of expectation and achievement in our schools, in promoting the development of individuals, groups and communities and ensuring that our statutory requirements are met.

Educational Inclusion – promoting equality of access to educational opportunities for those who are in any way disadvantaged.

Quality Services – directly or in partnership with others, to support the continuous improvement of teaching and learning.

Planning Processes – to produce effective educational provision and services so that desired outcomes are achieved within our available resources.

Resource Management – to make the best use of financial and human resources in order to achieve our priorities.

Advocacy – to support the resolution of competing priorities and viewpoints.

The commitment to providing access and opportunity for all is underpinned by a culture of high expectations and a determination to constantly improve the standards of service provided to and by 289 schools and colleges. An essential dimension of this is the making of regular and detailed comparisons with comparable local authorities to ascertain what standards are being achieved elsewhere and how we may equal and surpass them in Leicestershire.

To do this, we:

The specific priorities we will address to make these improvements are:

Priority – Increasing academic achievement in Leicestershire to be in the top quartile for local education authorities in England at all four Key Stages

This shows there was overall improvement in 2002 at both Level 2 and Level 3. The slight drop in Mathematics from 92.8% to 92.4% is statistically insignificant, and in line with national statistics.

Standards were consistently high and showed some improvement in Mathematics. There were also improvements for more able pupils at Level 5. Leicestershire achieved its aim of being in the top quartile for all authorities at this Key Stage in 2001/02, and our performance in comparison with our statistical neighbours was bettered by only one local authority. Performance improved in 2002/03, though falling short of our targets.

Leicestershire’s improvement in Key Stage 3 is significantly above the national average and placed Leicestershire in the top 4 of all 150 local authorities. It out-performed all of its statistical neighbours at this Key Stage. Performance in 2002/03 was close to our target.

In 2001/02 we were just outside the best-performing 25% of authorities. In 2002/03, our performance improved but fell just short of our targets. Overall, there has been year-on-year improvement.

In two out of four Key Stages, Leicestershire has obtained its immediate goal of being one of the 25% top performing English local authorities and is close to achieving that objective at the other two Key Stages.

The key priorities for the Education Department in planning and provision are found in the Education Development Plan (EDP), the Public Service Agreement for Leicestershire, and the relevant sections of the Community Strategy.

All of these documents include plans to ensure that academic achievement in Leicestershire will be in the top quartile for all four Key Stages.

Improving levels of achievement in the nursery and primary phases is a national priority within the EDP. This includes an action plan which provides for the implementation of the Early Years Development and Childcare Plan, the National Literacy and Numeracy

Strategies, the ICT Development Plan, Small Schools Development Plan and a reassertion of the importance of broad and balanced curriculum.

This priority also includes activities focused on Key Stage 2, in order to sustain the high levels of achievement already found in Leicestershire schools. In addition, the PSA bid includes a target to improve achievement at Key Stage 2 level 5 from the anticipated levels in 2005 of 38% for English and 37% for Mathematics to ‘stretch’ targets of 39% and 38%, respectively. The action plan to achieve this provides for additional training for school staff, to improve the quality of teaching and learning and provide greater challenge for more able pupils.

Improvement at Key Stage 3 is planned through Priority 2 of the EDP and through the Key Stage 3 National Strategy, which is already well established in Leicestershire following a pilot phase. There will be a particular focus on Design and Technology, Modern Foreign Languages and Religious Education. Activities are planned to continue to raise the quality of teaching and learning, the quality of middle management and subject management and to improve pupils’ attitudes to learning.

Activities to secure improvements at Key Stage 4 will be found both in the EDP action plan and in a PSA target, to increase the percentage of pupils achieving 5 GCSE grades A* to C from the anticipated level of 62% in 2005 to a ‘stretch’ target of 63%. This will be achieved by extending the Key Stage 4 Strategy for Leicestershire, which was already the subject of local additional funding in 2002. Additional support to schools is being provided by consultants in Design and Technology, Modern Foreign Languages, and ICT. The PSA strategy will benefit all schools but there will particularly be a focus on three Upper Schools, where results are currently below the County average and where there is evidence of under-performance.

In Leicestershire the OFSTED inspection report was published in early May 2003 and was generally favourable, particularly praising the authority’s work in school improvement. OFSTED noted that the LEA fulfils many important functions very well, particularly in relation to school improvement, where substantial improvements have been made.

As with all OFSTED reports, various issues were highlighted as areas for improvement in the authority’s action plan. The report’s key recommendations for improvement are that the LEA:

At the time of writing, these recommendations are subject to consideration by Members and Officers concerning the prioritisation of planning and activities to address them. However we will produce an Action Plan by the end of July 2003 which will cover the revision and development of strategies for inclusion and pupils with special educational needs. It will also address the need to re-allocate resources to priorities identified by the Administration.

Last year, our performance in preparing SEN statements fell short of our targets. This was due to temporary severe staff shortages.

Our improvement actions include the following.

Achievement at Key Stage 4 is already improving as a result of these strategies (see table).

We have also consulted on and adopted an Inclusion Policy and this has now been published. We are still working to contribute to the Government’s declared objectives of improving Social Inclusion. OfSTED information indicates that our permanent exclusions, at 1.5 per thousand (secondary) and 0.7 per thousand (primary), are in line with national statistics. We have established a framework for responding to the Government’s required levels of tuition for excluded pupils of 25 hours per week and an accommodation plan has been agreed to secure improved premises during the Autumn term 2003.

We want to use ICT to transform teaching and learning. Significant steps have already been taken to develop this work, particularly through the priorities within the EDP. This contains specific targets for ICT including connectivity targets.

All parts of the EDP referring to all school Key Stages reflect activities to use ICT to transform teaching and learning in Leicestershire schools. There is an over-arching ICT plan which embraces all aspects of curriculum support and infrastructure needs. The Departmental targets for improvement in ICT are shown in the following table.

We are committed to extending 4+ places to all parts of the County when resources permit us to do so. The effect of this would be to provide school places for children for 3 whole years before they undertake Key Stage 1 assessment at the age of 7.

In 2000, we estimated that almost £9 million was required to provide an additional 3,500 places to make this provision universal across the County. The following table shows the steps taken to date:

Implementation in 2001/04 has been through meeting capital costs in the first instance, followed by the on-going revenue cost.

We will produce a strategy by September 2003 for phased implementation of this provision across the County within available resources.

We have reviewed our Youth and Community Education services in light of the changes necessitated by the recent establishment of both the Learning and Skills Council and the Connexions Service, and also to support the Government’s "Transforming Youthwork" agenda.

The Youth and Community Service in Leicestershire is of high quality and contains many strengths, including high levels of satisfaction by users, and higher numbers of learners and enrolments than in comparable authorities. It is a well-established part of the Leicestershire tradition and the Community College model has been a feature of local education widely studied and emulated elsewhere. In 2001/02 we had above average expenditure on the youth service, we were in the best 25% of comparable authorities for the number of enrolments on adult education courses and we were above average for the number of adult education hours for which students attended.

Throughout 2002/03, there was ongoing consultation with all stakeholders on options suggested by the Best Value Review culminating in a decision by the Cabinet and Council in March 2003. The Best Value Review Panel identified 3 alternative models in its recommendations for the management of the service these were:

During extensive consultation 3 further models were developed. These were:

The Panel then considered how each of these 6 models would perform in relation to the key performance issues it had already identified. It also looked at the financial implications of each model. The Lead Provider Model and the Area Consortium Partnership Model were both considered to have major disadvantages which led them to be discarded.

The four remaining models have been considered in some depth.

The Panel finally recommended that the majority of the future service provision should be on the basis of a centrally managed – locally delivered model, whilst recognising that community colleges have the option of supported progression to contracting directly with the Learning and Skills Council,(LSC). The main features of this are:

The new structure agreed by the County Council in March 2003 will build upon existing good practice, improve on areas of weakness and re-position itself to take account of external changes. Implementation will commence with new arrangements for managing youth work from September 2003.

In addition to the priority issues described above other significant developments we intend to pursue are:

We will also implement the outcomes of two other Best Value reviews.

Work is underway to implement the recommendations of an extensive review of the SEN Transport Service. Earlier investigations had shown that whilst good operational practices were a key feature of the service, the LEA’s policies were relatively generous by comparison to other local authorities. In January 2003 the Cabinet agreed the final report of the review and gave approval to a number of recommendations for changes to entitlement policy and provision arrangements for the service, with a view to their introduction from the Autumn Term 2003.

The outcomes of the review, intended to achieve a better balance between the cost and quality of the service, have been well received by stakeholders. These include:

The review of this service, which commenced during the Summer Term 2001, is now reaching a conclusion. Extensive consultation with stakeholders has been undertaken and potential improvements to service provision have been identified. An Action Plan to implement the recommendations will follow members’ decisions on these proposed improvements.

A large amount of consultation is carried out and used to inform our plans and policies. Some of the significant examples of this are:-

The Education Development Plan Liaison Group continued to meet regularly during 2002 to plan and implement the EDP for 2002/07. This plan was approved by the Secretary of State in April 2002.

Consultation on the Adult Learning Plan for 2003-04 took place in January and February 2003.

The Children’s Information Service co-ordinated a range of consultation processes throughout 2002/03.

Children and young people were consulted during the Autumn Term 2001, to inform plans for 2002-03, the subject of a report to Cabinet in June 2002. Further consultation will take place during 2003, as part of the review and development of Leicestershire’s SEN Strategy.

The annual process of consultation on Schools Admissions Policy continued in

2002/03. The consultation period from October 2002 finished in February 2003. All LEAs are now obliged to have Admission Forums with stipulated membership, and the Leicestershire LEA’s reconstituted Forum met for the first time in March 2003. Any proposed changes to the LEA’s admissions policy will be referred to the Cabinet for approval, to be published in September 2003 and take effect for admissions from September 2004. A major future requirement will be the LEA’s obligation to co-ordinate parents’ requests for all types of school by 2005. The LEA will need to have one or more scheme(s) for co-ordinating admissions approved by all admissions authorities in the area, following consultation in 2003