Surrey Children's Services fail in 2008 Annual Performance Assessment

QUESTION: What does Surrey have in common with Haringey, Milton Keynes and Doncaster? (and nowhere else?). ANSWER: Surrey's Children's Services have been rated 'inadequate' by Ofsted, with a rating for 2008 of just 1 out of 4.

This judgement in Ofsted's Annual Performance Assessment is NOT based solely on the services for children in need that were the subject of Ofsted's Joint Area Review earlier in the year.

For the Annual Performance Assessment, Surrey's overall services for Children and Young People were graded using the 'Every Child Matters' outcomes as follows:

• Being Healthy - Grade 2 - Adequate
• Staying safe - Grade 1 - Inadequate
• Enjoying and achieving - Grade 3 - Good
• Making a positive contribution - Grade 2 - Adequate
• Achieving economic well-being -Grade 2 - Adequate
• Capacity to improve, including the management of children's services - Grade 1 - Inadequate

This has given the overall rating of '1', Inadequate.

The Conservative Executive Member responsible is 'very disappointed' at this overall scoring of Surrey's Services for Children.

Surrey's schools make it one of the top-performing authorities for exam results; Ofsted rates most of Surrey's state schools good or excellent; fostering and adoption services have had ratings of good or excellent.

The good work that is done is reflected in the 'Good' (though not 'excellent') rating for 'enjoy and achieve'.

But Surrey's overall score should be at least good. In stark contrast to failing authorities such as Doncaster and Haringey, at the last census 67% of Surrey's workers had middle-class professional or administrative jobs. The credit crunch may be changing the figures, but the parents of something like a quarter of children of secondary school age choose to send their children to private schools. If Surrey can't do better, where can?