LIVERPOOL GOVERNANCE FORUM

Minutes of Committee Meeting held at 10:00 on Tuesday 15th October 2019 at:
Archbishop Blanch CE High School, 80 Earle Road, Liverpool L7 6HQ

Guest speaker: 
Elaine Rees, CEO, Liverpool Learning Partnership who provided an update on the priorities for the 2019/20 academic year (Refer to Appendix A)

1.0 STANDARD ITEMS:

1.1	Welcome and Apologies

Present: Kathy Desmond (Chair), Frank McFarlane (Vice Chair), David Blythe (Honorary Secretary), Dave Cadwallader, Dave Owens, Cliff Barton, Pauline Warrington, Cynthia Carmichael, Marlene Taylor, Howard Harris, Amanda Patmore, Avril O’Brian, Michael Morris, Maureen McDaid and Barbara Murray 

Apologies: Mary Donohue, Andy Chadwick and John Thornhill 
                                    
1.2	 Declaration of Pecuniary Interest
No change. 

        1.3 Minutes of the September Meeting       
        The minutes of the meeting held on 24th September 2019 had already been agreed by email and posted on the LGF    
        website. 

1.4	 Matter Arising

There were 4 items arising and all had been actioned as follows: 

Topic	
(1) Summary of various schedule of meetings which LGF have representatives – Action DB
Emailed out to members on 25th September 2019 	
(2) Arrange meeting for the November Conference sub-committee - KD, DC, DO & DB
Meeting held on 27th September 2019 and further feedback under Item 2.3  Future events	
(3) Notify the SEND Joint Commissioning Board (JCB) that Marlene Taylor will be the LGF Representative – Action DC
Gail Porter (LA) notified on 28th September 	
(4) Circulate the Schools Admissions Forum papers for comment – Action AO’B & DB
Two documents emailed out to members on 25th September2019	

2.0 LGF Matters and Events

     2.1 Finance
At the end of September, the account remained the same as the previous month with a balance of £4059:42. As mentioned earlier at the AGM meeting we have now received the £800 from the secondary heads association. 
      
    2.2 Feedback from Events 
There have not been any events to report. 

     2.3 Future Events
Full details of the November conference have been circulated and support was requested to promote the event with our governor colleagues.

Thanks were expressed to DC for promoting the event through GovernorHub and to AO’B who had been promoting it through the ‘twitter’ account. This activity appears to be having the desired impact, but we still need more governors and trustees to attend. 

 2.4 Website
There have been 74 hits since our last meeting making a total of 1645 hits for this year to date.

      2.5 Twitter Account
 AO’B advised the account remains very active and we have increased our followers to over 500. 

      2.6 Others  
There were no other matters arising for discussion.

3.0 Feedback from Representatives
			
3.1 Liverpool Schools Forum
CB, MMcD, DO, MT & DB attended the AGM followed by the first committee meeting of the new academic year. James McDonald, Headteacher at New Heights was re- elected Chair.  

Heather Duggan advised the meeting she was partway through a consultation process with schools which had excessive reserves - above the guidance norm. She advised some LAs automatically claw the money back into central funds. On completion of the exercise, HD would report back with any proposals. 

The other key topics included an overview of the LSF programme of work for the academic year. Key item to this meeting was the DfE consultation document on financial transparency in LA maintained schools. Schools have been consulted and the comprehensive response to the DfE was shared with the committee.

It was also confirmed that statutory finance support services for schools would be transferring from SIL Schools Finance team to Liverpool City Council Finance team. The Council is in the process of recruiting a permanent Schools Finance Manager who will have overall responsibility for coordinating the statutory financial support services to Liverpool schools and providing advice and guidance on changes in DfE finance and funding arrangements. This post will report directly to the Head of Finance in the City Council and will also support the Liverpool School Forum and Childrens Services Senior Leadership Team.

3.2 LLP Executive Board
Elaine Rees provided committee with the current situation and future aims during her presentation as our guest speaker. 

3.3 LLP All Learners 
The termly meeting had taken place on 18th September and was reported and minuted at our last meeting. 

3.4 LLP LWNM
Unfortunately, the two representatives were unable to attend the scheduled meeting on 25th September at the last minute and hence it was not possible to get substitute governors to stand in. However, the main items on the agenda were (1) an overview of the LLP 2019 key plans (which Elaine Rees had covered in her presentation) and (2) Reading Festival Report which was held last July. However, both these documents had previously been reported and circulated to committee last month following KDs attendance at the LLP All learners meeting held on the 18th September. 

3.5 LLP Maths Group
No meeting had taken place during the reporting period. 
 
3.6 Liverpool Safeguarding Partnership Forum
FMcF advised he had not been able to attend the meeting on 25th September. However, the next meeting was scheduled for early December when the focus would be on ‘vulnerable children’. 

3.7 SEND Joint Commissioning Board (JCB):
MT attended the first meeting of this new board which was held on 11th October at Cunard Building. 
The purpose of the meeting was for (a) members to introduce themselves, (b) request a named deputy member  - (LGF felt it was not necessarily the best idea to have a named deputy as they too may not be able to attend) 
and (c) provide an overview of the board’s aims which are primarily to support the delivery of the Liverpool SEND Strategy for 2019-22 and the Children and Young People’s Plan for 2018-22

3.8 School Admissions Forum
AO’B advised she had received some feedback from committee members on the admissions consultation document previously circulated to members and would feedback this information back SAF and its  next meeting due in November. 

     3.9 Other
DB reminded committee that he did circulate the recently released handbook: “The Careers Strategy - a guide for secondary school governors”, which Sally Beevers (Liverpool City Region, Careers Hub Lead) had sent following her visit as our guest speaker last July. DB urged members to circulate the booklet to their Governing Board colleagues.  

4.0 Other Items for Mention

      4.1 NGA 
The annual invoice for £585 had been received for payment. After some discussion, it was agreed to continue membership for a further year. However, it was noted some members had not been receiving the bi-monthly magazine Governing Matters. DB agreed to follow up with the NGA.                        

         4.2 Other
BM mentioned a 3 year city wide project being planned and developed which aims to improve the skills of people of all ages: 2020 Year of Reading, 2021 Year of Writing and 2022 Year of Oracy. Further information would be advised as the programme developed. 

MMcD and AO’B provided very positive feedback on the ‘New Ofsted Inspection’ course delivered by SIL which they had both recently attended and strongly recommended to other governors. 
 
The Chair closed the meeting at 11:50am.

SUMMARY OF ACTIONS FROM TODAY’S MEETING	
No	TOPIC	ACTION BY	
1	Review the time for holding of the AGM (NB: Transferred from AGM meeting)	All	
2	Highlight to NGA issues of non-receipt of the Governing Matters magazine by some committee members	DFB	

Next meeting: 

(1) The next LGF event is the November conference scheduled for Saturday 16th November at Partnership for Learning when the topic will be ‘Headteacher and staff wellbeing; how can GBs ease the pressure’ which will be delivered by Ruth Town, consultant in school leadership and former Headteacher of St Michael-in-the-Hamlet. 

(2) The next committee meeting will be at 10am on Tuesday 10th December 2019 at Belle Vale Community Primary School when Avril O’Brian will provide some feedback on her schools recent inspection: “The new Ofsted inspection; a governor’s experience”.  

APPENDIX A

Guest Speaker:  Elaine Rees, CEO, Liverpool Learning Partnership

KD extended a warm welcome to Elaine Rees who has been our guest speaker at previous committee meetings and conference events on a number of occasions. 

ER provided members with the ‘daisy doughnut’ document showing an overview of LLP’s proposed 3 year key priorities for 2019/21. These included: 

Numeracy, Reading, Transition, Attendance, Mental Health, Culture and Strategic Partnerships 

Some of the headings have been ongoing areas for a number of years now and ES was anxious to single out a couple of aims in the limited time available.

First of all, ES highlighted ‘Transition’ where the prime aim has been to simplify the administration process when children are transferred from primary to secondary schools and identify vulnerable children who could potentially struggle when transferred. 

Initially 20 forms were used and this has successfully been reduced to one form which has helped to considerably improve and simplify the process.

18 out of 30 secondary schools ran summer schools for vulnerable children. Feedback from the schools participating has been very positive with children settling in well and generally feeling more confident in their new school environment. A second feedback form will be sent out after the half term holiday to continue to monitor the children and assess the benefits and identify any areas which could be improved in running future summer schools. 

The other key area ER was keen to identify was Mental Health. All secondary schools now have at least one trained member of staff trained as a ‘Mental health first aider’. Due to legal reasons, it was not possible to fully implement into Primary schools and a lower level ROAR programme has been introduced. The next stage is to develop appropriate arrangements for Special Schools.

Following excellent partnership work (Education, Local Authority, CCG and CAMHS) and successful bids, Liverpool has become a trailblazer for mental health support in schools. The mental health teams should be fully operational by Christmas when they have finished their training which currently involves two days study in Manchester per week. This would strengthen the working relationship and understanding of roles between the Liverpool partners which would ultimately benefit our children and young people through early intervention. ES said further information on trailblazers was available on the LLP website. 

Moving on, ER mentioned the Liverpool cultural partnership work and again made reference to the LLP website – culturepool.org - for further information. 

Finally, ER took the opportunity to thank governors / trustees for their support with the work of the LLP and for serving on the various LLP strategic committees.