Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Cllr Richard Roberts, Hertfordshire County Council

The impact evidence that Richard was referring to relates to Hertfordshire County Council’s achievements in trial of Payment by Results for Children’s Centres.

Hertfordshire County Council took part in the trial of Payment by Results for Children’s Centres carried out by the Department for Education during 2012–13.

Hertfordshire selected two nationally defined measures to attract payment:

Breastfeeding Prevalence at six to eight weeks.

Early Years Foundation Stage Profile—narrowing the gap between children eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) and Non-FSM children.

During 2012–13, breastfeeding prevalence at six to eight weeks in Hertfordshire increased by 0.1% from 51.6% to 51.7%

We narrowed the gap by 1% (from 24% to 23%) between the proportion of pupils achieving a good level of development in the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP) that are eligible for free school meals and those that are not and received a reward payment of £35,840.

Although this does not seem like a vast improvement we note that:

15 LAs (of the 27 in the PbR trial) selected this EYFSP measure.

Only six achieved a reduction in the gap (including Hertfordshire) and of the nine who did not achieve a reduction some showed some very large increases or just kept the gap the same.

Of the six LAs who achieved a reduction, one local authority achieved a reduction of 2% but all the others (including Hertfordshire)achieved a reduction of 1 percentage point.

Although success in these two measures cannot be attributed solely to the work of our Children’s Centres, I believe that the direct contribution of centres, plus the improved partnership working in the early years sector facilitated by children’s centres, played a large part in these improvements.

July 2013