Agenda item

Impact of COVID 19 on Education Services

Minutes:

The Committee received a report of the Corporate Director of Children and Young People’s Services which provided an update on the impact of COVID- 19 on Education Services (for copy see file of minutes).

 

The Strategic Manager: Support and Development advised that Head Teachers had been extraordinary during the pandemic and gone above and beyond and leadership advisors had worked weekends to ensure they were available to answer questions.  Parents who had elected to home educate had been challenged as it was found that school was a safer environment and he thanked staff for their efforts in ensuring that.

 

Councillor Coult confirmed that all staff in educational services had gone above and beyond during the pandemic and not just in schools, and she wanted that to be recognised.

 

Mrs J Norman referred to the outbreak funding that had been allocated and queried whether this was enough to cover the additional costs that had to be met.  The Strategic Manager: Support and Development confirmed that the funding was from government and was received by all Councils.  DCC had bid for additional Outbreak Funding because the funding received by schools directly from the government was limited to specific areas of spend whereas the Outbreak funding was much more flexible.  DCC was distributing the funding on a per capita basis so that every school would benefit from the funding but larger schools would receive more.  He suspected that some would feel that it was not sufficient as there were some with greater expenses, but it would certainly still be welcomed.

 

Members were advised that at the beginning of lockdown in 2020 training moved online and was delivered free of charge.  Whilst some of the training remained free of charge, the service had started to charge for some of the Development and Support training.  The online training had been welcomed by schools and elements of this training method would continue alongside face to face training.  Contracts had continued remotely and evaluations of both contracts and training during this period were tightly monitored and remained positive.  External partnership working had not been interrupted and continued to work with the Education Endowment Foundation, Teacher Development Trust and Durham University and our other local universities.

J Bruton highlighted an issue with staff pregnancy as teachers were unable to be two metres from pupils and following a risk assessment could not attend work, but they could not be signed off on sick pay and a replacement teacher had to be recruited which impacted on the school budget.

 

Resolved:

 

That the report be received.

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