Redbridge Council to Deep Dive into Educational Attainment Gaps

Redbridge Council's Children and Young People Committee has set out its priorities for the upcoming municipal year, with a strong emphasis on educational attainment, safeguarding, and youth engagement. The committee agreed to a work plan for 2026-27 during a meeting on Tuesday, July 14, 2026, identifying three key areas for in-depth review. These priorities were chosen to ensure focused and impactful work, avoiding duplication with other council committees. The full details of the meeting and the committee's work plan can be found in the Public reports pack.

The committee will conduct 'deep dive' reviews into each of these priority areas, with a specific timeline outlined: the second, third, and fourth meetings will focus on individual deep dives, the fifth meeting will examine emerging themes and recommendations from these reviews, and the final meeting will focus on impact review and planning.

Education Outcomes, Standards and Attainment

The primary focus will be on Education Outcomes, Standards and Attainment. This will involve a deep dive into how the council can influence and improve educational results for all learners, with a particular emphasis on supporting vulnerable groups and closing attainment gaps. The committee aims to shape policies that enhance school performance and pupil progress, recognising the crucial role of education in shaping children's future opportunities.

Andrea King, Director of Education and SEND, highlighted a shift from a school improvement system to a school effectiveness system. This involves engaging with the strong head teachers and other systems leaders that we have in Redbridge... to say how together could we improve the effectiveness of all of our schools. This approach changes the way in which we approach school improvement and some of the responsibilities that we have held in isolation in the local authority and starts to say how can we engage the talent, expertise and understanding of school leaders across our system. The expected outcome is to improve the effectiveness of all of our schools, with a particular emphasis on addressing attainment gaps for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Engagement with Children, Young People, Schools and Stakeholders

Secondly, the committee will address Engagement with Children, Young People, Schools and Stakeholders. This priority area will explore effective methods for the council to connect with its young residents, educational institutions, and other key stakeholders. Discussions will include the UNICEF Child Friendly Borough accreditation and ensuring that children's voices are central to policy development and service delivery. The aim is to foster stronger partnerships to improve opportunities for young people.

Redbridge has been accredited with the UNICEF award, a recognition that has taken a lot of robust work for that to be achieved and a lot of robust interrogation really to achieve the result. This accreditation involved a lot of involvement with young people, families, practitioners, just to get a good sense of how we, as a local authority, a borough, a council, really understand that we put children and young people at the forefront of our thinking, in our innovation, and how we make sure that we are child friendly all the time in the concepts of the new work that we do. The accreditation is valid for three years, during which the council will continually be working with young people to say, this is what we have achieved, but what more do you want to do? We want to keep driving with our young people to spearhead the work that goes forward. The commitment is to co-production work. We want to continually see young people really be involved in that work.

Regarding ensuring children's voices are central to policy development, the information notes that children's voice in policy, and this is a challenge, really, that we want to set in terms of how do we make sure and evidence that we really consider children's voices in the work that we do and the policies that we set, because the policies impact their lives and they often say consider us first in terms of before you assign policies. The committee aims to challenge us to ensure that we do that correctly and that really has a forefront in mind for the young people.

Early Help, Safeguarding and Youth Justice

The third key priority is Early Help, Safeguarding and Youth Justice. This will examine the council's approach to early intervention and prevention services, statutory safeguarding, and the youth justice system. The committee will investigate how to support families before they require statutory intervention, strengthen multi-agency working, and address issues within the youth justice system to prevent young people from becoming involved in crime.

Judy Daniels, Interim Director of Children's Services, elaborated on early help and safeguarding, explaining the focus on working with families before statutory intervention is needed and the implementation of the Family First partnership. The 'Family First' partnership focuses on how we do a lot of multi-agency working with families really early on as well, which gives families the options to do some strengths-based work in which they themselves are encouraged to work in their network to offer support to them as a family, rather than the first port of call being them accessing services. The expected outcome is to encourage kinship arrangements and other arrangements which allow the family network to be much more involved in the child's life rather than us. While the partnership does cover child protection cases where necessary, it covers all layers of need in that family first, but the primary part is the first contact as well, the emphasis on strengths-based work and encouraging family networks suggests a challenge in shifting from a service-led to a family-led approach.

Within the youth justice space, the priority area will look at how to support families before they require statutory intervention, strengthen multi-agency working, and address issues within the youth justice system to prevent young people from becoming involved in crime. It also mentions that within the youth justice space, there may be some considerations there to look at how we ensure that we do and respond early to youth justice issues which prevent young people either being criminalised or being in situations which can be diverted. This indicates a focus on early intervention and prevention to address the root causes of youth crime.

Councillor S. Ferdause Pasha, Chair of the committee, noted that while topics like SEND reform and school reorganisation are important, they may be more appropriately handled by the Overview and Scrutiny Committee, though elements could be explored within the agreed priorities if they align. The committee agreed to delegate the detailed planning of the work plan to the Chair in conjunction with officers.