Context and background to the effective or innovative practice

Embedding a strong ethos for cross-directorate working has underpinned the Local Authority’s work in driving improvement across education services and securing positive outcomes for its learners. 

The Wellbeing of Future Generations Act, provided a helpful platform for the local authority to put a strong focus on the need to ensure that all directorates in the local authority work effectively together to achieve its wellbeing objectives and contribute to the seven national wellbeing goals. As a result, leaders worked well to develop a collaborative approach to deliver its improvement priorities across directorates rather than through service silos. 

To facilitate successful cross-directorate working the local authority focused on: 

• Raising the profile of education services and priorities across the local authority to prioritise effective use of resources. 
• Ensuring staff work collaboratively to support the local authorities’ communities. 
• Strengthening its corporate vision and the articulation of education improvement priorities through all aspects of work. 
• Placing wellbeing front and centre of what it does, with focus on vulnerable groups. 
• Developing its professional learning offering to develop skill sets of staff, so they are equipped to tackle challenges both now and in the future. 
• Enhancing ‘critical friend’ challenge across all directorates to promote shared learning and drive discussions around improvement.

Description of nature of strategy or activity

Cross directorate working became a key strength of the LA in driving improvement across education services by: 

• Developing an integrated improvement planning system that enabled the LA to develop shared improvement priorities that reflect the needs and priorities of its communities and citizens and develop a culture of collaboration across the LA’s directorates. 
• Articulating a shared vision for the LA of ‘Strong Communities with a Bright Future’ binds together its collective efforts to achieve a common goal. This vision runs through to the LA’s shared objectives and improvement priorities that are reflected in a single Annual Delivery Plan (ADP) where the emphasis is on cross-directorate working. The ADP is co-constructed annually by senior leaders (across the LA), Elected Members, and with extensive engagement from staff, citizens, partners and schools. 
• Embedding opportunities for collective challenge as part of the LA’s annual self assessment process. Peer directors and elected members (Cabinet and Scrutiny) attend peer challenge sessions to act as a ‘critical friend’ to challenge each directorate’s self-assessment findings and judgements to ensure honesty, fairness and consistency. 
• Developing effective mechanisms for allocating resources linked to ADP priorities through the annual budget setting process with the collective involvement of elected members, officers from across the Council and headteachers. Consequently, there has been a strong focus on education as a key priority, which is evident as 39% of the Council’s budget is allocated to schools (~£115m). 
• Fostering joint working across the LA through regular and effective Senior Leadership Team meetings and Insight Board Chief Officer Briefings. These provide mechanisms through which officers from across the directorates come together to make collective decisions, can develop new perspectives and it provides opportunities to leverage support across the LA for problem solving and developing services leading to positive benefits for our learners, staff and communities. 
• Embedding a ‘strong learning community’ with a culture of collaboration in learning has been driven by the LA’s Culture Book. The LA has made effective use of its iDev learning platform and Learning Café (internal professional development network) to promote and engage learning and development. The Learning Café has been a key mechanism for staff engagement and enhancing professional development for colleagues to learn from each other, shared good practice, and expressing ideas for addressing key challenges facing the LA. 
• Prioritising wellbeing as an area of core focus to enable effective joint working in our communities. The Learning & Skills directorate has led the way on developing a Whole School Approach (WSA) to wellbeing so that this is embedded across the LA’s schools and centralised services. 
• Creating purposeful participation and collaboration opportunities across directorates, with lead officers both internal and external to education services, to draw on the skills, expertise and perspectives across the Council to support delivery of key initiatives such as the Community Focused Schools, SHEP/Food and Fun programme, poverty/cost of living initiatives such as Pay as you Feel Pantries/Big Bocs Bwyd, Strive/NEET prevention, development of the Transgender Inclusion Toolkit and delivery of Sustainable Communities for Learning Programme. 
• Focusing on the development of community focused schools and using a cluster-based approach to collaboration with colleagues from health, Social Services, Corporate Services, Neighbourhood Services to reduce the impact of poverty on children and young people as evidenced by work undertake in the Pencoedtre Learning Community (PLC). 
• The LA’s overarching transformation programme brought together the skills/expertise of officers from across directorates to reshape service delivery models, The Big Fresh Catering Company is an innovative and sustainable catering model that emerged from this transformation programme with input and contribution from across the council, and was the key enabler in the accelerated roll out of the Universal Free School Meal provision across all primary schools in the Vale, it has also utilised its surpluses to reinvest back into schools that has had noticeable impact. 
• Maximised use of grant funding to support disadvantaged learners. For example, delegation of grants to support the work of Community Focus School Managers and Family Engagement Officers in the Pencoedtre Learning Community, the dissemination of Big Fresh Catering Company profit share to schools and collaboration with the Healthy Living Team to deliver targeted sport/physical activities in the LA’s most deprived and least active communities.

What impact has this work had on provision and learners’ standards?

• Adopting a holistic Annual Delivery Plan has ensured shared responsibility for the LA’s education priorities and promoted a culture of collaboration to tackle the LA’s critical challenges. This means that senior leaders from all directorates understand the importance of prioritising education. 
• Annual peer challenge mechanism has positively impacted on cross-directorate relationships and opportunities to forge further collaborative working for effective integration of services. This has also helped improve the quality of improvement planning and developed a shared ownership of actions to improve the lives of young people in The Vale. 
• The LA’s collaborative approach to professional learning has improved individual skill sets, driven innovation and fostered a culture of continuous improvement. 
• Excellent engagement from schools in the Whole School Approach to Mental Health and Wellbeing show that nearly all are engaged in improvement planning to inform school development plans. 
• There are clear and shared priorities for disadvantaged and vulnerable learners with corresponding funding allocated for education improvement priorities. This has been evident through investment in several new ALN provisions to meet growth in demand. 
• The Big Fresh Catering Company saves the council an annual budget in circa of £400k pa and it has delivered a positive impact on the health and wellbeing of learners. All generated surpluses are reinvested in schools, which most recently has yielded an additional £200k, helping to reduce budget deficits across schools and/or helped to purchase school equipment. 
• Targeted work in the Pencoedtre Learning community using Family Engagement Officers has had a positive impact on attendance in primary schools in the cluster (Cadoxton, Colcot, Holton, Jenner and Oakfield). 
• The focus on family engagement to support literacy skills development, has impacted positively on teaching and learning across these schools and contributed to improving the quality of primary pupils’ writing. 
• The impact of collaborative efforts through the Welsh Education Strategic Plan and more widely, the Council’s Welsh Language Promotion Strategy, has contributed positively to the retention of Year 1 learners in Welsh medium education and high levels of transition between year groups in Welsh medium schools. For in 2023/24, 95% of learners transitioned from Welsh medium primary to Welsh medium secondary at the end of Year 6. 
• Targeted work by the Healthy Living team in 2023/24 in the LA’s most deprived and least active communities delivered 134 no cost sport/physical activity sessions impacted on 699 children. Eighty seven percent of participants felt more motivated and confident to take part in activities and 60% indicated that they wanted to join local clubs and continue their activities. 
• The LA’s NEET figures continue to be comparatively low compared to other LAs in Wales. During 2022/23 (2022 leaver’s cohort), 2.46% of Year 13, 0.24% (Year 12) and 1.49% of Year 11 learners became NEET both of which performed better than the All-Wales figures. This ranked the LA 9th in Wales (Year 13), 4th in Wales (Year 12) and 5th (Year 11) respectively.

How have you shared your good practice?

The LA has made effective use of a range of mechanisms and networks to share its good practice across its teams, directorates and more widely with other LAs and external partners. It has done this through: 

• sharing directorate messages on regular basis across the Council through a Chief Executive weekly round ups providing a spotlight on notable practice happening across both Education services and other directorates. These key messages are also shared frequently at head teacher meetings. 
• successfully utilising the Insight Board, Chief Officer Briefings, Learning & Skills Directorate days, Learning Café to support shared learning and good practice between directorates to foster innovation and continuous improvement; 
• developing and sharing case studies to highlight areas where effective and innovative practice is in place; and sharing expertise and knowledge and local, regional and national events/networks