Education One Strategic Plan 2024 to 2028

1.1 Statutory context

Coventry City Council (CCC) has a legal duty under Section 14 of the Education Act 1996 to ensure the provision of sufficient school places for children of compulsory school age. These places must be sufficient in character, number and equipment to ensure all pupils have the opportunity for appropriate education: appropriate education means instruction and training that is desirable in view of the pupil’s age, ability, aptitude, and the length of time they are expected to remain at school.

It is CCC’s role to plan, commission, and organise school places in a way that raises standards, manages supply and demand, and creates a diverse infrastructure.

CCC can meet its duty by:

• ensuring sufficient schools and places in a locality
• securing sufficient early years & childcare places
• ensuring sufficient post 16 provision
• providing appropriate education provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities
• promoting high education standards
• ensuring fair access to educational opportunity
• promoting the fulfilment of every child’s education potential and
• promoting diversity in the provision of schools and parental choice

In managing the supply and demand of school places; in order to allow for flexibility in the system to meet parental preference, enable in-year transfers and support families moving to an area to find a place for each of their children at the same school where appropriate, the target for CCC is for the supply of places to exceed demand by at least 2% with as even a spread across the city as possible; the Department for Education (DfE) recommends that local authorities maintain no more than 5% surplus of places within a specified area.

1.2 Coventry’s Education One Strategic Plan

The One Strategic Plan for Education will help schools, parents, council staff, local partners and stakeholders understand how CCC plans to work towards these priorities to ensure that all children and young people thrive in Coventry schools and settings throughout their education, wherever they live.

This document sets out the principles underpinning school place planning; the ways in which additional school places will be delivered; the information used to inform this delivery; and the way work is conducted to deliver high quality, accessible school places for all learners.

1.3 Coordinated Strategic approach

A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been established to ensure a strong partnership commitment between CCC and Coventry Secondary Schools in support of the strategic plan for delivering additional school places from 2023 to 2027.

This collaborative approach extends to primary and special schools through a broader partnership strategy to meet growing demand. The partnership represents a clear statement of intent to work collaboratively between CCC, governing bodies, and school leadership teams, to achieve the best possible outcomes for children and young people in Coventry.

It also aims to ensure the sustainability of Coventry schools and enable CCC to fulfil its statutory obligations. The MOU has established a partnership commitment concerning the below principles:

1. CCC and all Coventry schools have a shared interest in ensuring all pupils have access to good quality local provision.
2. School organisation issues rarely affect schools in isolation; therefore, strong Local Authority and school partnerships are important to understanding the impact of school organisation decisions.
3. A partnership approach is therefore required to create the strategic plan based on a set of agreed partnership principles:
   • collective moral purpose & accountability
   • openness & transparency
   • expansion & investment of existing schools where possible and relevant – against agreed criteria – as set out in point 4
   • working with current partners
   • never knowingly undermining another school
4. A basic requirement of this strategy is that it ensures the right number of school places to meet pupil’s needs in the right locations at the time they are needed. Commissioning additional school places at existing schools will therefore be assessed against the following criteria:

• Net Capacity- Education Capital Strategy will wherever possible seek to expand schools in whole forms of entry
• Current performance of school – Local Authority or Ofsted categorisation. Guidance on school organisation is clear that outcomes should lead to school improvement and increased attainment levels
• The location of the school relative to the expected pupil need. It is desirable for schools to be at the heart of the community that they serve to provide easy access to their facilities by children, young people and their families, and the resident community1
• Popularity of the school. The Education Capital Strategy will seek to commission additional places, when needed, at schools with high levels of parental preference in the locality by reviewing first choices and those schools that are over subscribed
• Physical ability of the school to expand including any site or potential planning constraints
• Cost of expansion. It will be important to ensure that any proposals represent good value for money and are within available capital funds. All school buildings and estates in the city should be of the highest quality within the resources available
• Diversity of provision. Coventry has a broad variety of provision, with both voluntary-aided, trust schools, in addition to many academies of various types. CCC seeks to maintain or increase levels of diversity and choice for parents wherever possible. In considering school planning, the aim will be to maintain the balance of denominational provision, unless parental preferences via the admissions process provide evidence that change is required
• Special Education Need & Disability (SEND) and/or Inclusion. Wherever possible any school changes should seek to promote greater inclusion for pupils with SEND by providing specialist provision within or linked to mainstream schools. The benefits of this approach are that it maximises the opportunity for children and young people to be included within their local community, minimises journey times to and from school, and makes optimal use of revenue funding available to support
• Governing Body and/or Trustees support. Proposals will normally require careful negotiation with schools and their governors to align aspirations for development. Where proposals are subject to statutory notice processes the Education Capital Strategy will ensure appropriate consultation before any decisions are taken by CCC

1 Education planning areas are used by the LA to assess the supply and demand of school places for local places for local children. Please see attached appendices 1-4 which detail the planning area boundaries and in which planning areas schools are sited. Whilst Education use these areas to plan, there is recognition that the boundaries are not rigid and there is significant movement across these boundaries as parental preference and flexibility changes each year.