Council fails in more than half of children's targets

3:27pm Monday 18th August 2008

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CHILDREN’S services in Barnet failed to hit more than half its attainment targets last year.

Despite glowing Ofsted reports and record exam results, the borough achieved only 41 per cent of its self-set targets, with a third of services showing a decline in performance over last year.

Areas falling short of the targets included the distance children in care were placed from their home, the number of children in care who achieved five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C and the attainment of black children at GCSE.

But Cllr Fiona Bulmer, cabinet member for children’s services, said the targets were often misleading because they were “highly aspirational”.

“These results largely relate to exam results from last year, and we have always performed very well in these, so we set very high targets for ourselves,” she said.

“They are not unachievable, and of course we are disappointed when we don’t meet them, but it does not mean we are not a very high achieving borough.”

The cabinet member was also confident of improving statistics relating to children in care. Last year only 58.8 per cent of “looked-after” 17-year-olds in the borough were participating in education, training or employment by the age of 19 - significantly below its target of 70 per cent.

“We have lots of good initiatives in place to try to improve in this area,” she said. “One pioneering project is the council taking on six care leavers as apprentices, which seems to be very successful.”

But Cllr Anne Hutton, Labour spokesman for education, children and youth, questioned the efficacy of having unattainable targets.

She said: “What is the point of setting targets that are impossible to meet? And if they are not, why are we not doing more to meet them?”