Budgets and an education strategy: the Children, Families and Communities committee

I was delighted to join the new Children, Families and Communities committee this month at County Hall.

The way we scrutinise the work of the Council has changed with new committees set up that cover particular areas of its work. The Children, Families and Communities committee had its first meeting recently with two important reports on the agenda.

One was the early stages of putting together next year’s budget. I made two points in my contribution to the discussion: that we don’t seem very good at hitting the money-saving targets we set ourselves (so perhaps we should change our assumptions about how much we can save); and it is hard to judge how we perform if we only get figures looking forward rather than telling us how we have done in the past when it comes to meeting savings targets.

The second paper was a new education strategy for the County. This is especially welcome because Norfolk County Council has retreated from the work of supporting attainment among our children over recent years. I made the point that it is five years since a ‘peer review’ of the council said we should do more in this area. And I also noted the criticisms made by Lord Agnew about the performance of Norwich schools.

In the debate, I said an important thing was to measure what we achieve through the clear performance measures. It’s important, too, that we avoid measuring changes to processes and, instead, measure actual changes for children and families.

You can watch the debate online here: Children, Families & Community Select Committee.

The papers for the meeting, including the Education Strategy, can be read here.