Previous parts of this series – Part 1, Part 2.
Education is an incredibly important facet of life. Qualifications can give you some of the knowledge that you need to find work and once you find a job you gain experience and more knowledge. You can also earn money to help sustain yourself through life. Also, whenever you are in an educational institution, you have the opportunities to gain friends and develop those vital social and communication skills. You might not learn everything you need in formal education, but it can certainly give you some solid foundations to build upon.
Unfortunately, in Hull, there are some problems in the Education sector. For example, social issues such as bullying reduces confidence and can make school a stressful place for young people. This drives them away and is one of the resons why you can get attendance problems.
In Hull City Council‘s Corporate Plan (2009-2012), the following problems are listed as issues faced by children, which are related to ‘Learning':
- being more likely to become dependent on benefits and grow up in income deprived households
- having life expectancies, deaths from smoking and early deaths from heart disease, stroke and cancer that are all worse than the average for England
- wider differences in health by gender, relative wealth, and ethnicity
- lower than average education attainment levels, higher rates of school absences and high rates of teenage pregnancy and obesity
The first problem can be attributed to (one or more of) a lack of confiendce, lack of discpline or poor educational attainment. I say ‘can’, because there are many other possibilities for benefit dependancy and some of those are not the fault of the benefit claimant. I simply mentioned some of the bigger reasons.
The second point can be because a child may not have been educated properly about health. Of course, this can also be related to attendance and discipline – the child might not have attended when the relevant lessons were done or they might not have paid enough attention in class. Once again, there can be other reasons and what I have just said are simply examples.
Gender was presumably mentioned in the third point because the media frequently covers the difference in attainment between boys and girls at GCSE and the A-Level stage. ‘Relative wealth’ can relate to gaining the appropriate skills and making sure the pedagogy (process of teaching) can get the knowledge across to the children.
The fourth point is obvious as it’s about education and potential reasons for performance levels.
Found on hullstudent.com after using Google Image Search.
Key Improvement Targets
The following targets are designed to address the problems listed above:
- Transform Hull’s schools, to enable all Hull children to access high quality learning and ensure that all local schools are at the heart of their communities
- Improve the educational attainment & attendance of all children and young people, to achieve the same as the national average
- Increase the proportion of the working age population with a good standard of qualifications
- Improve the opportunities & support for young people aged 16 – 19, to engage in education, training or employment
- Increase Children and Young People’s participation in high-quality physical education and sport
- Reduce the numbers of children who experience bullying at school
- Reduce the numbers of teenage pregnancies
- Reduce the numbers of days missed at school through absence by primary and secondary age childre
Most of the problems are covered by these targets, but I have noticed the omission of something related to the gender imbalance when it comes to educational attainment. Of course, achieving true balance in this area would take a long time and go way beyond the timescale of the Corporate Plan, but some sensible targets could help to make some minor improvements at least.
Changing for the better
As was the case for ‘Earning’, we get more detail about achieving the targets in the section under the heading of ‘In order to keep Hull changing for the better, we will…’. The following is the specifics:
- Improve the physical quality of our school, through our Building Schools for the Future Programme, by investing £400M over the next five years, with a further £25M into local Primary Schools
- Create a learning entitlement for every child in Hull that provides both academic and vocational learning experiences, and ensure that no young person leaves education without basic literacy and numeracy skills
- Attract, retain and develop world class headteachers and teachers, through a long-term professional development and leadership programme
- Expand the provision of basic skills training for those in the workforce, jobseekers, people on working age benefits, and other excluded groups
- Increase the availability of English language skills courses for people moving to Hull from outside the UK, to enhance their contribution to the economic and cultural life of the City
- Reduce the number of 16-18 year olds not in education, employment or training, by guaranteeing suitable learning opportunities and apprenticeships/work based learning provision
The first point warrants some investigation. As I have previously mentioned, the Corporate Plan was first issued in 2009 (and presumably developed before that). Since the 2010 general election, there has been substantial changes to the Building Schools for the Future programme. Those changes could have meant that the point was unachievable. However, it was reported that all proposals for new schools and redevelopments will remain, but ‘efficiency savings’ would have to be made. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any clear indication of what savings will be made. If the Council doesn’t make appropriate savings, it could potentially cause problems. Making the wrong savings could negatively affect a child’s education.
Another of the more interesting points in the above list is the last one. It states ‘suitable’ opportunities, without saying anything specific about potential schemes. Having no initial ideas means the objective will take longer to achieve and might not happen within the timescale of the Corporate Plan.
Omissions
There are also a few glaring omissions from the list. There was nothing about bullying, physical education, attendance or teenage pregnancies. All of these things were in the Key Improvement targets. With the reductions in council finances, this makes it less likely that substantial improvements will be made in these areas.
There is a mention of teen conceptions in the LAA targets section of the plan, but no 10/11 target is set. In the Head of Executive Report, point 3.3 shows that as of the second quarter of 10/11, targets have not been met. There is a target for 2010/2011 in the Head of Executive Report Appendix though, but the Council was 15% off at the time of publication – which is worrying.
There is also no 10/11 LAA target set for participation in physical education (however, the 07/08 baseline figure of 83% is listed, which isn’t very low). In the Head of Executive report’s Appendix, we can see a target of 88%. At the time of that report’s publication, participation is at 87% (so very close to achieving the target).
However, there are specific LAA targets for bullying (6% reduction on the baseline figure of 17%). Confusingly, the targets for bullying set out in the HoE report Annex don’t seem to be the same as the ones in the Corporate Plan. However, the Appendix does state that the Council is on target.
There is no LAA target for tackling persistant attendance problems, but there is something in the aforementioned Appendix document. It shows that the Council is 1% off so far. With only two quarters left, there is not much time to meet the target for the year.
Are educational targets being met?
There are a number of educational attainment targets in the LAA section of the Corporate Plan, so I won’t go through them all individually. If you’re interested, I recommend that you look at some of the documents I have mentioned in this post. However, there is one thing worth noting from the HoE report:
“Early indications around GCSE results were reported at Q1 (increase from 36.9% to 41.9% of young people achieving 5 A*-C GCSE’s including English and Maths).”
This BBC article suggests the national average is around 69%. Hull will not get up to the national average by the end of the Corporate Plan period. Not all of the annual targets have been met yet according to the Appendix document, but the objective of reducing the number of schools where 30% or less of the children get five A*-C grades has been met and that is important (for the record, the actual figure in 2009 was five schools and now it’s only 1).
Summary & Conclusion
As is the case with other areas of the Corporate Plan, some of the specifics are made more difficult to find than they need to be and there are some omissions from certain areas. There are many educational targets set though and the Key Improvements Targets address a number of areas. Both of these things are pleasing. However, local and national financial changes will affect the chances of achieving the ‘Learning’ targets.
So, what do you think?