Agenda item

Thames Valley Berkshire City Deal - Performance Monitoring

To seek approval to the performance monitoring arrangements to apply to the City Deal.

Minutes:

The Joint Committee considered a report seeking endorsement of the proposed performance monitoring arrangements for the City Deal.  The Joint Committee noted that it was proposed to produce quarterly performance reports in the form of a grid showing overall progress to date against the Berkshire-wide targets.  Detailed progress was to be monitored monthly at the City Deal Officer Steering group via highlight reports for each project and a spreadsheet detailing spend against outputs.  Monthly progress updates and a quarterly monitoring and evaluation tracker were also to be submitted to the Cabinet Office.

 

The Committee noted that the officer steering group would be monitoring progress on at least a monthly basis.

 

A key concern of the Joint Committee was the work on apprenticeships.  It was suggested that, as the economy grew, there were less apprenticeships available as businesses opted to recruit on a permanent basis.  Such jobs were more attractive to potential apprentices as they involved payment of the national minimum wage rather than the lower rates payable to apprentices.  West Berkshire Council was already paying its apprentices the national minimum wage to make the jobs more appealing.  In addition, it was suggested that the amount of paperwork associated with apprenticeships made offering them less attractive, particularly for small businesses without large HR teams with the capacity to deal with the paperwork.  Concerns were also expressed about a change in culture which meant that many businesses managers had grown up in an environment in which apprenticeships were not as common as in the past and therefore were not as likely to offer them as companies in the past.  It would therefore be necessary to market the apprentice concept effectively to maximise the number of opportunities, and to encourage schools and parents to recognise their value.

 

The Joint Committee noted that the LEP’s Strategic Economic Plan contained a whole programme aimed at promoting apprenticeships which would link into the City Deal.  There were, however, concerns that schools were much more interested in directing young people to degree courses rather than promoting apprenticeships.  With this in mind, the LEP was sponsoring an event to which 25 secondary headteachers and further education principals were to be invited to discuss the importance of engaging with business to achieve OFSTED’s outstanding category in relation to leadership.  The Joint Committee believed that all secondary heads in Berkshire should be invited to this event.  In addition, it was suggested that OFSTED should be encouraged to treat engagement with business as being indicative of “good” rather than “outstanding” as many schools were content to achieve “good” and did not aspire to being “outstanding”.  Such schools would not therefore be so concerned about the importance of engagement with businesses.

 

RESOLVED that:

 

1          The proposed performance monitoring arrangements for the Thames Valley Berkshire City Deal be endorsed.

 

2          Quarterly progress monitoring reports be provided to the Joint Committee from July 2014.

 

3          That the Thames Valley Berkshire LEP be asked to invite all Berkshire secondary heads to the event in June 2014 with OFSTED to promote the importance of schools engaging with the business community.

 

4          That OFSTED should be encouraged to review whether engagement with business should be regarded as “outstanding” in terms of leadership or only “good” as to treat it as “outstanding” would be a disincentive to engage with business for those schools which were only aspiring to be “good”.

Supporting documents:

 

Contact Information

Democratic services

Email: committee@bracknell-forest.gov.uk