Agenda item

Consideration was given to the report of the Corporate Director of Education which was presented to seek the views of Education and Learning Scrutiny Committee in relation to the review of the School Organisation Policy (2021-24), prior to presenting the policy to the Council’s Executive Committee. It is proposed that the revised policy is adopted and implemented from the start of new academic year 2021/22.

The Service Manager - Education Transformation and Business Change spoke to the report and highlighted the main points contained therein.

A Member enquired if an aspect of well-being could be included in the policy.  The Service Manager said that the policy focused on school organisation priorities such as the management and vision for the school estate going forward, the well-being aspect would form a key part of the recovery plan and could look to potentially include that in the policy in line with education recovery plans.

In response to a Member’s question regarding federation models, the Service Manager said they would consider this as one of the options associated with the Welsh-medium school.  The Director of Education said that several years ago Blaenau Gwent was one of the first Local Authority’s to have a federation school i.e. Briery Hill School, in line with the Ebbw Fawr Learning Community.  He felt that across the school estate there were highly effective Headteachers and Leaders which well placed the Authority to consider federation models going forward to have quality leadership spread across the school estate.  He pointed out that Federation models could be taken forward in two approaches; a Local Authority led federation model or by Governing Bodies, and felt there were opportunities going forward, particularly in supporting schools with low pupil population numbers.  In relation to 6th Form collaborations the Director said there had been a number of federated models across Wales for post 16 provision because of the relatively small number of pupils that schools catered for.  Within the context of Blaenau Gwent, however, a tertiary model had been established with Coleg Gwent in the County Borough. With regard to the Welsh-medium school the preferred option would be to have collaboration between Ysgol Bro Helyg and the new school once it was developed but this would form part of the consultation exercise.

A Member referred to secondary schools being no smaller than 600 places.  The Service Manager - Education Transformation and Business Change said that they were in the process of establishing pupil projections and had undertaken an annual review of capacities.  There were a few schools who were relatively close to this number but none that fell into this category at the moment.  With the annual review of capacities and the annual review of projections they would work closely with Secondary Headteachers to monitor this going forward.

The Director commented that from a strategic perspective in line with the school organisation policy, they had undertaken significant secondary school reorganisation over the last 10 years and Blaenau Gwent was very much a four secondary school setting, and unless there was a dramatic change none of the secondary school settings were under significant review at this time, and he felt that was an appropriate level of provision moving forward that they anticipated the school estate requiring.  He pointed out that part of the policy was having the right school, the right size in the right place.

The Chair enquired regarding how to ensure best practice was passed on to other schools, the Head of School Improvement and Inclusion said that there was a lot of good information sharing across schools, particularly across clusters and the EAS had been instrumental in setting up those arrangements and partnerships.   She was keen to ensure that message gets across to all schools in relation to the recovery and renewal plan, and part of this work was to develop school to school partnership working and sharing of best practice and that was factored into these plans moving forward.  Further relationships across secondary schools and Coleg Gwent would be established and discussions held on how to develop partnership working and how to get provision from them into primary schools especially year 6 and transition year 7.

The Committee AGREED to recommend that the report be accepted and endorse Option 1; namely that the proposed changes to the Blaenau Gwent School Organisation Policy 2021 be agreed.

As this was the last meeting in the Committee cycle the Chair thanked the Vice-Chair, Members and Officers for their support and contribution over a very challenging year. He felt this Committee had gone from strength to strength and hoped this would continue in the next Committee cycle.

The Corporate Director of Education thanked the Chair for his positive comments and said that Estyn had made constructive comments on the effectiveness of Scrutiny in Blaenau Gwent.