Issue - meetings

(a)       That the committee supported the levels of progress and had confidence in the achievement of priorities within 2021/22 Council Plan.

(b)       That the committee supported the overall performance against 2021/22 Council Plan performance indicators.

(c)       That the committee was assured by explanations given for those areas of underperformance.

            The report was presented by the Chief Officer (Education & Youth) and included a summary of the outturn progress of the Council Plan priorities, which were relevant to the Education & Youth portfolio for 2021/22.  This was a very positive report and demonstrated progress made against those priorities.  She referred members to page 69 which included the range of targets which were mostly green with a small number which were amber.

In response to a question on targets from Councillor Dave Mackie, the Chief Officer (Education & Youth) clarified that these were for areas around attendance and exclusions and explained that targets were not collected as Welsh Government (WG) had suspended performance measures because of the pandemic.  She confirmed that the authority’s localised data on attendance and exclusions was recorded as unverified data and included in the report and agreed to take Councillor Mackie’s comments back to the team.   WG did not require the authority to produce targets, but she said these were being set for the current year and that the summary report would provide that context. 

Carolyn Preece thanked the team for a very thorough and excellent report and commended the team, schools and staff for the work undertaken throughout and coming out of the pandemic.  The Chief Officer (Education & Youth) agreed to pass on her thanks to team and schools.

Councillor Paul Cunningham commented that having this information enabled good scrutiny and he looked forward to the reports providing better information as we recover from the pandemic.   The Chief Officer (Education & Youth) welcomed scrutiny by committee members as it was a very important process.  She reiterated if any member had any concerns that they could contact her at any time to discuss them.

Councillor Gladys Healey agreed with the comments made by Councillor Mackie and had real concerns regarding housing and poverty.  In the current climate with bills increasing this would exacerbate issues of poverty although she understood that budgets were tight.  She asked if the Leader could lobby Welsh Government (WG) for more money to provide support for people in poverty.

 In response the Chief Officer (Education & Youth) and referred to the new Council Plan on the committee’s Forward Work Programme saying that every portfolio of the Council was contributing to Poverty.  She reported on the Child Poverty initiative, Well Fed initiative and additional discretionary payments endorsed recently by Cabinet.  This was a corporate responsibility to address the impacts on children and families but some of the issues were out of the Council’s control.

The Leader and Cabinet Member for Education, Welsh Language, Culture and Leisure, re-assured members that he was constantly lobbying WG on this.  He agreed with the comments made by the Chief Officer on the corporate response and praised the schools for the significant work they were doing with initiatives such as for school uniforms and breakfast clubs enabling children to get a good breakfast which had increased attendance levels.   He outlined the corporate initiatives across the council and commented on the excellent schemes provided by  ...  view the full minutes text for item 12