Surrey County Conservatives

Surrey County Council today endorsed the actions of the Executive in challenging OFSTED’s flawed rating of Surrey’s services for children.

The Council emphatically defeated a Lib-Dem motion for Surrey to accept the flawed judgement. Conservative councillors said that to accept an inaccurate view of Surrey County Council would be a betrayal of the hard work of staff and that since it didn’t reflect the true picture in Surrey they urged the Leader to continue with the legal challenge. The Council is seeking leave for a Judicial Review to challenge Ofsted’s Annual Performance Assessment made in December 2008.

Tony Rooth said that OFSTED had failed to follow their own guidelines in assessing Surrey as 1* and said that, in reality, “… Surrey is a 3* authority. There are many good services provided to children in Surrey, and this is down to our staff. To say that we are 1* is a harsh and unbalanced judgement that isn’t borne out by the facts”.

Peter Martin, Executive Member for Schools, Children and Youth Services, agreed with Cllr. Rooth. He added that the Council accepted the specific findings of the Joint Area Review by Ofsted on the Children’s Service conducted in April last year. However, to extend a low rating in the Annual Performance Assessment to the entire Children, Education and Youth Service in December was wholly unjust. “Our staff have worked very hard to address criticisms of the Children’s service made in the JAR conducted in April last year and we as an authority have clearly demonstrated significant improvements to those services which were under performing. They have also maintained the high standards in services such as fostering and adoption, which are rated good or outstanding by Ofsted itself. The Schools and Education service is among the best in the country whether measured by educational attainment or by Ofsted inspection. We cannot allow a judgement that says otherwise to remain unchallenged. To do otherwise would be a travesty of fairness.

Our staff deserve to know that we stand behind them and the public need to know that they can have confidence in Surrey’s services”.

County Leader Nick Skellett also reminded Members that Children’s Services had been allowed to spend £13m more in 2008/09 than had originally been budgeted for. “The Children’s Service is being given more money, and the costs of the judicial review, which are currently less than £9k, are minimal when compared to the sums being spent on the service. It is also worth bearing in mind that if the 1* rating is allowed to stand we will be subjected to an increased amount of government inspections, which will cost far more than a successful legal challenge. We want to free our staff up to get on with the job and we are determined not to allow a flawed and unfair judgement of this County Council to stand unchallenged”.