Services for children and young people move up the scale

In last year's annual assessment, Ofsted rated the service as "performing poorly" and the Government gave the service a "notice to improve". Since then a range of improvements have been made which have resulted in the new rating.

The rating covers all aspects of education, social care and other support services for young people in Rotherham and grades the whole service as "performing adequately".

The assessment brings together all Ofsted's review of services, schools and other educational settings and shows:

• Acknowledgment of the improvements to services made over the past eighteen months and the "strong corporate action", including additional investment
• Performance  in the  'very large majority of outcomes' in line with the national averages and those for similar areas
• Good multi-agency partnership working
• Successful work to recruit and retain staff
• Five of the borough's special schools are rated "outstanding"
• A "good" rated adoption agency
• Good work by Schools and the Fostering Service to encourage children and young people to live healthy lives
• Improvements to services for children with emotional or mental health difficulties
• Children are "generally safe within the community."
• Good arrangements for involving children and young people in planning and reviewing local services
• Most services and settings help children and young people do well in education and enjoy their learning
• Reductions in the number of young people committing crimes for the first time or re-offending

The assessment also highlights four specific areas for improvements:

• Improve secondary schools so that more are good or better
• Improve the outcomes for children at the end of primary school
• Increase the number of good childminders
• Maintain the momentum of improvement in social care services

Councillor Paul Lakin, said: "This is a positive step along the way to improving services and it is pleasing to see that Ofsted recognises the large amount of work we have carried out. We hope this assessment will take us closer to removing the notice to improve and we will be discussing that with the Department for Education in the near future.

"As the assessment rounds up the various inspections that have taken place around the borough it contains no surprises to us and in some/all of the areas highlighted we have already started to take action to improve.

"We will continue to work with our partners to ensure that the improvements we have already seen are maintained and we aim to pick up the pace of development so we continue to see an upward movement in inspection grades."