The Interim Corporate Director – Education and Family Support submitted a report, the purpose of which was to provide detailed feedback to Cabinet on the feasibility analysis of the concepts described in the report of the Post-16 Operational Board and subsequent submission by the Strategic Review Board (SRB) to Cabinet on 31 October 2017. In addition, the report sought Cabinet approval to go to public consultation on the six concepts set out at paragraph 3.6. Finally, it confirmed of the further work undertaken that has been presented in a report to the Post-16 Education (Phase Two) Board. The key objectives for this phase of work are set out at paragraph 3 of the report.

After briefly giving a resume of the report, the Interim Corporate Director – Education and Family Support then handed over to the Specialist Officer Post-16 Education and Training to expand upon more of the detail of the report.

He advised that after the report had been presented to the above meeting of Cabinet, work was undertaken to define the Phase 2 programme, with the key objectives for the Phase 2 Post-16 work stream defined in paragraph 3.1 of the report.

The Specialist Officer Post-16 Education and Training stated that with the other strategic work streams now concluded, it was agreed to merge the Post-16 Operational Board with the Strategic Review Board (SRB) into a single Post-16 Phase Two Board.  The collective membership was agreed along with a Terms of Reference which was detailed at Appendix 2 to the report.

In setting out to review the provision of post-16 education across Bridgend County Borough Council (BCBC), the Post-16 Operational Board established a set of key ambitions upon which any new system would need to deliver. To this end, a number of these were proposed by learners in our schools, and they were detailed in Appendix 3 (of the report).

Paragraph 3.4 of the report outlined, that in order to make the assessment programme more manageable, the Post-16 Operational Board identified the 16 most critical ambitions, and each of the concepts was assessed against its ability to deliver on these as contained in this part of the report.

The Specialist Officer Post 16 Education and Training, then referred Cabinet to paragraph 3.5 of the report that summarised the original list of concepts under consideration (ie Concepts 1 – 6) and these were explained in turn, in paragraph 3.7 of the report. Appendix 5 of the report outlined the key issues associated with each of these concepts.

In addition, the SRB proposed three other elements to be considered, and these were shown in paragraph 3.9 of the report, while the Specialist Officer Post-16 Education and Training also confirmed, that since the SRB report was presented to Cabinet last October, additional detailed work had been undertaken in order to gain further insights into Post-16 provision, and details of these along with a number of other recent significant updates were shown in paragraphs 3.10 and 3.11 of the report.

The Specialist  ...  view the full minutes text for item 193