City Learning Service Consultation

Overview

City Learning Centres were set up to provide information and communication technology based learning opportunities for Children. The aim of this consultation is seek views and opinions on the services future.

The current review on the future of the City Learning Centres may affect schools, pupils, disabled children. 

We invite you to read the accompanying information about the service, (Consultation Support Document) and complete the following  questions in order to help us understand the impact of the options.  Your responses will be used to inform the decision on the future of the service.

Why your views matter

City Learning Centres were set up to provide information and communication technology based learning opportunities for the children from a surrounding network of schools and to the wider community. The aims are to improve attainment and enhance learning across the whole curriculum through use of technology. 

The Centres were asked to support schools in the development of innovative lesson plans and

materials, provide extracurricular activities and to help discover new ways of using technology in the classroom. As well as encouraging schools to work collaboratively it was felt that concentrating specialist technologies in an accessible centre was the most cost effective way of getting schools to use equipment.

The service has been in decline since access and availability of IT has eased.  All schools now have the resources required to replicate the City Learning Centre Offer.

The service now operates from a single site on Thornbury Road in Birmingham.

There are a number of factors prompting the need for change:

In January 2014 a six month ‘Education Services Review’ was launched with the following aims: To agree the role and remit of the Council in education; to specify how services should be reorganised in line with agreed roles and remit; to agree how all partners will hold one another to account for fulfilling these respective responsibilities 

Widespread and iterative engagement with schools led to the co-design of a future model for education a number of the agreed principles shape the options appraisal for the CLC. Firstly, it was agreed that the local authority focus on efficiently and effectively delivering core statutory duties.  These duties focus on specialist support to vulnerable children & young people and schools at risk with universal and targeted support delivered by other parts of the system.  Clearly, the City Learning Centre is non-statutory. 

Non-statutory and non-core services it was agreed should transfer to alternative delivery models outside of the Council where they have the freedom and flexibility to  develop the service offering in line with needs of schools.

What happens next

The consultation is open for 5 weeks. The closing date for consultation is 9th October 2015. The results of the consultation will be published after this date on Birmingham City Council’s Be Heard pages and a decision will be made  if to retain this service.