Education Vision and Strategy Consultation Response Overview and Next Steps Appendix 1
Argyll and Bute Council · 6 June 2024
Back to Community Services Committee — 6 June 2024 and its agenda
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Our Children, Their Future Education Vision and Strategy Consultation Response Overview March 2024 Overview The Education Service strives to ensure the best possible outcomes for all of our children and young people, the Education Vision and Strategy provides a framework for this. The current Vision and Strategy document, Our Children, Their Future, was developed in 2016 and remains a robust and meaningful document, but with the impacts of a global pandemic and a changing national landscape in regards to Education, it is now the right time for a refresh. During the period of 1st December 2023 to 23rd February 2024, the Education Service organised a stakeholder consultation on the Education Vision and Strategy. The original consultation period was extended by three weeks, as requested by stakeholders, to ensure the fullest opportunity for all stakeholder groups to provide responses. The aim was to gather views from stakeholder groups on their thoughts on the current Education Vision and Strategy, Our Children, Their Future as well as what was important to them for education in Argyll and Bute. The participants were asked for their views to refresh the Education Vision and Strategy. In order to capture the voices and views of as many of our stakeholder groups as possible the consultation included opportunities for in-person and online group sessions along with an online individual questionnaire and was supported by parent and pupil groups as well as school staff. We aimed to make the consultation as accessible as possible and also offered the questionnaire in Ukrainian and Gaelic. Our establishments and central team staff worked with parent councils, pupil councils as well as staff and pupils to complete the consultation. Consultation responses The consultation had 661 individual on-line questionnaire respondents from pupils (44.3%), staff (24.8%), parents (26.5%) and wider stakeholders (4.4%). And 64 responses from group sessions representing staff (44.4%), parents (15.9%) and pupils (39.7%). The individual respondents represented all areas of Argyll and Bute including rural, island and urban areas. With 53% of individual respondents reporting that they were aware of the Education Vision and Strategy, Our Children, Their Future. Questionnaire Responses Pupils Staff Parents Other Stakeholders Group Responses Pupils Staff Parents Appendix 1
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Data Illustrations Overview The quantitative data available from the individual questionnaires is attached in Appendix 1. The initial question asks respondents if they are aware of the Education Vision and Strategy, Our Children, Their Future. Overall 53% of respondents were aware of Our Children, Their Future with other stakeholders (93%) and staff (81%) having the highest ‘yes’ return and pupils (37%) having the lowest ‘yes’ return. The next set of questions asks respondents about their view on the importance of the values in Our Children, Their Future of ambition, excellence and equality. Respondents could rate each value 1 to 5 with 1 being not important and 5 being very important. Equality received the highest rating of all three values with 84.5% of the overall respondents rating this important or very important. Ambition received 79.46% of the overall respondents rating this as important or very important. The value of excellence was rated lowest of all three values with only 60.24% of respondents rating this as important or very important. The pupil response showed a rating of 14%-20% lower for excellence than equality and ambition. Pupils Parents Staff Other Stakeholders Overall Ambition 73.28% 84% 84.96% 82.76% 79.46% Excellence 59.11% 66.85% 63.97% 79.31% 60.24% Equality 79.76% 88% 88.72% 89.66% 84.5% *Highest aggregated score per stakeholder group noted in yellow. 0.00% 20.00% 40.00% 60.00% 80.00% 100.00% Rating of important and very important for current values Ambition Excellence Equality
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The last set of quantitative questions asked respondents to rate each of the six current outcomes of Our Children, Their Future on a scale of 1 (not important) to 5 (very important). The six outcomes are: 1. Raise educational attainment and achievement for all 2. Use performance information to secure improvement for children and young people 3. Ensure children have the best start in life and are ready to succeed 4. Equip young people to secure and sustain positive destinations and achieve success in life 5. Ensure high quality partnership working and community engagement 6. Strengthen leadership at all levels Aggregating the responses of important (4) and very important (5) it was almost unanimous across all stakeholder groups that they felt the most important outcomes were number three ‘Ensure children have the best start in life and are ready to succeed’ (87.21% overall) and number four ‘Equip young people to secure positive destinations and achieve success in life’ (87.39% overall). *highest two aggregated scores per stakeholder group noted in yellow. Combined responses for important (4) and very important (5) per stakeholder group Pupils Parents Staff Other Stakeholders Overall Outcome 1 78.14% 88% 93.23% 93.1% 85.58% Outcome 2 62.35% 65.72% 67.67% 62.07% 63.42% Outcome 3 79.76% 89.71% 95.49% 93.1% 87.21% Outcome 4 80.97% 92% 90.98% 96.55% 87.39% Outcome 5 71.66% 84.57% 90.22% 89.66% 80.36% Outcome 6 65.99% 80% 84.96% 79.31% 79.96% 0.00% 20.00% 40.00% 60.00% 80.00% 100.00% 120.00% 1 2 3 4 5 6 Rating of important or very important for the key objectives Pupils Parents Staff Other Stakeholders Overall
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Stakeholder views Included in the questionnaire and the group responses were open text boxes to gather wider data on stakeholder views to help shape a refresh of the Education vision and strategy. One of these questions was ‘What words and/or short phrases are important to you when you think of education in Argyll and Bute?’ The responses from all respondents were catalogued and are presented below visually with the words in larger font representing those words which were used more often. We can see a number of similar themes across stakeholder groups including; inclusive, nurturing, respectful, equity and achievement. Pupils Parents Staff Other Stakeholders
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The final section of the consultation asked for respondents to consider ‘Is there something important to you that you think should be clearer or included in the strategy?’ The information from this was collated by individual stakeholder group and themed under headings. For pupils the themes that had the most comments centred on Learning and Curriculum, Skills, Developing the Young Workforce, Children’s Rights and Sustainability. Comments under these themes included: o ‘I think learning should be fun and the words fun should be included.’ o ‘Learning your worth, learning to respect, being encouraged to better yourself, have opportunities and encouragement to learn new things.’ o ‘If you come empty, you learn along the way.’ o ‘More life skills to help with moving on.’ o ‘Generating a love and respect for the outdoors. Creating a love for our planet.’ For parents; learning/curriculum/assessment, skills, sustainability and children’s rights featured as important themes. o ‘More opportunities/subjects for the kids in Argyll and Bute.’ o ‘Allowing children to be ready, learn at their pace and not rely so heavily in expecting children to pass exams, tests but encourage them to really reach their potential and look at apprenticeship, and skilled work as just as important as academics.’ o ‘Ensuring all avenues are available for children to develop and grow fulfil their full potential in the learning style that suits them best.’ o ‘Life skills, dealing with finances, cookery.’ o ‘Learning about the environment. Sustainability. Developing the learning environment to an amazing and creative space.’ For staff; learning, children’s rights, health and wellbeing and partnership/collaboration were important themes. o ‘I think the focus should be on helping children to love their learning. Everything else that they need will come from that, in my opinion. I also think the focus on 'success' should be with the knowledge of what children and young people love to do and part of the adults' role is to expand the knowledge of what's out there for them. It is important to be careful to acknowledge that 'success' isn't just the sum of your qualifications particularly for those children whose skills and interests may not lie in academic subjects necessarily. Learning should be fascinating where/when and as much as possible.’ o ‘UNCRC Rights of the Child embedded into practice.’ o ‘Health and Wellbeing, especially promoting good mental health.’ o ‘Building relationships and having good relationships with all stakeholders is vital.’ For other stakeholders; developing the young workforce, UNCRC, health and wellbeing and sustainability were important themes. o ‘Matching workplace skills to local businesses.’ o ‘The Rights of the Child should be considered as it is coming into law.’ o ‘Nurturing schools and communities.’ o ‘Sustainability, and the climate crisis, are and will become stronger and stronger forces within our societies, so these need to be a core issue.’
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Next Steps The open text boxes on the questionnaire and the group feedback sheets allowed for some wider views on the next iteration of the Education Vision and Strategy. A high proportion of the comments noted that the wording and format were not accessible for all stakeholder groups. Pupils were acutely aware of this and their feedback included: o ‘I think that it could be presented in a more user friendly way for younger kids like a video.’ o ‘The statements are not family friendly.’ o ‘Explain what certain words mean.’ Parents agreed and their feedback included comments around the accessibility of the document: o ‘Wording that is accessible to all and not fancy wording that needs explaining.’ Staff echoed the same view of the need for a user friendly document: o ‘Needs to be more user friendly for children.’ o ‘We think this is not in child friendly language and also question whether parents would be able to access it, if not working in education.’ o ‘Perhaps, QR links could be added to the document, taking you to relevant documents.’ It is important that the refreshed Vision and Strategy document continues to drive improvement across our system, in partnership with all of our stakeholders. Next we will feedback to our stakeholder groups on the findings of the consultation via our simple, interactive and accessible reporting format. We will also engage with a number of stakeholder groups to help shape the format, content and accessibility of the refreshed document to ensure the new Vision and Strategy remains a dynamic and relevant document for the future of education in Argyll and Bute. S.McAdam March 2024
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Appendix 1 Our Children, Their Future Consultation Response Data March 2024 The information below is an illustration of the aggregated response data from each stakeholder group, as defined within the survey. The illustration also includes the data as a whole under ‘overall’. There is a small margin of error allowed within the data tables due to respondent error, this is not statistically significant. Are you aware of Argyll and Bute’s Education Vision and Strategy, Our Children, Their Future? Parents Pupils Staff Other Stakeholders
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Overall To what extent do you think ambition is still important for the vision of education for our children and young people from ELC to secondary? (1= not important, 5= very important) Pupils Parents Staff Other Stakeholders
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Overall To what extent do you think excellence is important for the vision of education for our children and young people from ELC to secondary? (1=not important and 5=very important) Pupils Parents Staff Other Stakeholders
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Overall To what extent do you think equality is important for the vision of education for our children and young people from ELC to secondary? 1=not important and 5=very important (NB there was an error in this question where equality and equity were used interchangeably, this has been picked up in comments within open text boxes.) Pupils Parents
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Staff Other Stakeholders Overall
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1. Raise educational attainment and achievement for all. To what extent do you think this is important for the vision of education for our children and young people from ELC to secondary? 1=not important and 5=very important Pupils Parents Staff Other Stakeholders Overall
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2. Use performance information to secure improvement for children and young people. To what extent do you think this is important for the vision of education for our children and young people from ELC to secondary? 1=not important and 5=very important Pupils Parents Staff Other Stakeholders Overall
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3. Ensure children have the best start in life and are ready to succeed. To what extent do you think this is important for the vision of education for our children and young people from ELC to secondary? 1=not important and 5=very important Pupils Parents Staff Other Stakeholders Overall
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4. Equip young people to secure and sustain positive destinations and achieve success in life. To what extent do you think this is important for the vision of education for our children and young people from ELC to secondary? 1=not important and 5=very important Pupils Parents Staff Other Stakeholders Overall
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5. Ensure high quality partnership working and community engagement. To what extent do you think this is important for the vision of education for our children and young people from ELC to secondary? 1=not important and 5=very important Pupils Parents Staff Other Stakeholders Overall
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6. Strengthen leadership at all levels. To what extent do you think this is important for the vision of education for our children and young people from ELC to secondary? (1=not important and 5=very important) Pupils Parents Staff Other Stakeholders Overall