Agenda item

Purpose: School Severe Weather Plans update report – to receive a verbal update report and discuss and agree any recommendations as necessary.

In introducing Item 8 Councillor Brian Bedwell reminded the Members of the Commission that in previous years, schools in the District had closed due to episodes of severe winter weather. These closures had had a consequent effect on parents, who had to make alternative arrangements for the care and supervision of their children. Although lessons had been learnt from past experiences, the Commission had not to date been satisfied that these had been sufficiently well communicated to or acted upon by schools in advance of any severe weather that might reasonably be expected in the coming winter.

The Children and Young People Assets Manager, Mark Lewis, advised that although in January 2010 there were a number of school closures, last year only 1 school had actually had to close (for a heating failure).

Since he had last updated the Commission in August of 2011, the Local Education Authority (LEA) had completed its review of the severe weather plans received from schools (circa 30 plans from the 80 schools in the District). The review had highlighted examples of good practice that the LEA had collated and then shared with all maintained schools, along with a revision to the Severe Winter Weather Guidance for Schools, which was formatted in the form of a template that could be used for those schools that did not already have a plan in place. The template was based on the Council’s Severe Weather Plan and was structured under logical headings.

(Note: 6.40pm: Councillor Jeff Brooks joined the meeting).

Although progress had been made in highlighting to schools the benefit of having a plan in place, due to limited resources and conflicting priorities, it  was not as much as might have been hoped. Mr Lewis was however able to report that he had noticed a definite shift in the approach that schools were taking to avoiding severe weather closures and there was considerable engagement with the LEA on the matter. Mr Lewis expected that even if the coming winter was as severe as the previous two, fewer schools would be forced to close. This was welcomed by the Commission.

It was recognised by Members that, as responsibility for doing so rested with Head Teachers, the LEA could not compel schools to have a plan in place. The Commission was however collectively of the view that robust encouragement should be given, including through governors. It was consequently considered desirable that the LEA should be able to know how many schools had plans in place so that effort could be targeted appropriately. Support might also be offered to those schools, especially those with small numbers of staff and therefore limited capacity for the development of plans that might not otherwise be able to do the work on their own.

As separate entities, the LEA had no responsibility to provide advice and guidance to the new school academies, although Councillor Tony Vickers wondered whether the Council had a wider responsibility to the parents of children at the schools to ensure that they were not disproportionately affected. Other Members also queried whether there could be commercial opportunities to provide expertise to academies.

The Chairman thanked Mark Lewis for his update and for the work that he and his team were doing.

RESOLVED that:

Mark Lewis should:

1. Continue to identify which schools had severe weather plans in place and which did not;
2. Give schools robust encouragement to adopt plans;
3. Circulate to all Elected Members the plan template in order that they promote with their local school governors its adoption, regardless of whether the Member was a governor;
4. Examine the commercial opportunities available to the LEA to provide advice, guidance and expertise to school academies.