Invitees:

Deborah McMillan - Corporate Director - Education and Transformation

Susan Cooper - Corporate Director - Social Services and Wellbeing

Councillor Huw David - Cabinet Member Children & Young People

Nicola Echanis - Head of Strategy Commissioning and Partnerships

Sue Roberts - Group Manager School Improvement

The Corporate Director – Education and Transformation submitted a report in order to inform the Committee of the Children’s Directorate’s revised Principles Document to inform the planning for school improvement.

She confirmed that the rationale for the revision was to ensure that plans for further school improvement take into account the current context of falling rolls, a number of surplus primary and secondary school places, a number of Head Teachers reaching retirement age in the next 5 years and financial constraints, all of which means that a Strategy for sustainable provision is required

The Corporate Director – Education and Transformation added that a set of Principles and criteria (Appendix 1 of the report referred), to underpin the future of education and learning provision which could then be applied to establish a Strategic Development Plan for the next 10 years has been developed. These criteria would provide a framework upon which decisions would be made.

A Member queried the graphs on page 13 of the report, in that data in 2015 reflected that there were 13,000 pupils currently in primary schools throughout the County Borough yet the projected number in secondary schools for 2020 was estimated to be only 9,500. She questioned the validity of this latest figure on the basis that most if not all young people would naturally proceed from primary schools into secondary schools.

The Corporate Director – Education and Transformation advised that the way this data was calculated was fairly complicated, and rather than explain this at the meeting, she felt there would be more merit to provide this information to Members outside of the meeting. The data shown however she added was accurate as there were robust methods in place on how this was calculated.

A Registered Representative stated that throughout the report and supporting information, there was reference to outdated legislation. These papers quoted the School Organisation Proposals 2002, where in actual fact, these had been superseded by the School Organisation Act 2009 and the School Organisation Code 2013.

The Group Manager School Improvement advised those present that she took these comments on board.

The Registered Representative accepted this, but confirmed however that the bodies to be consulted over the reports proposals as shown in Section 5 of the Appendix to the report, were few in number as they were wrongly taken from the School Organisation Proposals 2002.

This list of bodies was far longer under the 2013 Act, and therefore he was concerned that not all the views of interested parties would be sought. These were far more expansive and wider ranging he added.

The Head of Strategy Commissioning and Partnerships advised that the document before Members, was basically setting out the Directorates vision and principles for Bridgend, rather than reflecting different pieces of legislation.

A Member noted from the report that there were 5 primary schools and 1 secondary school that had significant surplus capacity at present, and he asked if he could have details of which schools these were.

The Corporate Director – Education and Transformation advised that she would share these details with the Member outside of the meeting and also provide clarification on surplus places for each secondary school.

The Corporate Director – Education and Transformation further stated that

The LA were exploring options option to look at combining primary and secondary schools within the County Borough on the same site, such as they did in the school in Llanharry, creating an all through campus.  This may help alleviate surplus places. She emphasised that the Authority were not looking to close secondary schools as the 9 secondary schools fulfilled adequately the needs of the communities they served.

One proposal to reduce surplus places would be to consider  making better use of space at schools, as this would allow for space at schools to be used and hired by other organisations to generate income, and for community use. He advised Members that the aim of the Authority was to reduce surplus places in schools to 17% by 2017.

The Cabinet Member – Children and Young People reiterated the comments made by the Corporate Director – Children and confirmed that whilst there was an aim to reduce the number of surplus places, the overriding factor was to provide and maintain the best quality education opportunities for our pupils through the provision of state of the art schools.

 Conclusions:

Following detailed discussion the Committee agreed to make the following comments and conclusions:

Principles Document

Members expressed concerns over references in the principles document to ‘School Organisation Proposals’ from 2002, which has now been superseded by the 2009 version and the School Organisation Code from 2013.  Members were particularly concerned over the references made in the Principles Document to ‘Interested parties’ whose views would be sought, in that the information is directly taken from the 2002 document and omits numerous other parties as well as a strict consultation process, which are stated in the School Organisation Code 2013.

Federations

Members expressed concern over the lack of a policy as yet for the federating of schools.  The Committee discussed the need for a strategic approach to federating schools, rather than an opportunistic one that seemed to be occurring when Headteachers were due to retire.

Further to this the Committee agreed the need for the Task Group to either make the decision to deter schools from looking at federating until the workstreams and options have been completed or, if there is an agreement that schools are encouraged to already consider federations, the Task Group make themselves available to support this.  Members agreed that from their own experience as school governors, schools that are already exploring federations would benefit greatly from more involvement from the Task Group such as attending governor meetings to provide advice and guidance such as the feasibility and suitability of possible federations. 

A general request was also made for training and briefing sessions for Governors on the federating of schools.

Additional Information

Members requested that they receive figures on the surplus places for each Secondary School in the County Borough.

The Committee requested that they receive further clarification over the surplus data for Primary Schools and Secondary Schools as the graphs did not appear to correlate.

Members requested that they receive clarification as to the definitions for the term ‘small’ schools both in relation to Primary and Secondary.