Local councillor backs more high school mergers

By Elgan Hearn, Local Democracy Reporter

Guilsfield’s county councillor has given his backing to more high school mergers despite a 2018 mid-Powys exercise running into serious financial problems.

Cllr David Jones said that mistakes in forming Ysgol Calon Cymru out of Llandrindod Wells and Builth Wells high schools in 2018 should not set the council against future high school mergers.

At a meeting of the Governance and Audit Committee, councillors discussed a report by Powys County Council’s internal auditors SWAP which evaluated the school’s merger options.

The new school opened its doors on September 1, 2018, with a single headteacher but has been plagued by financial problems.

Ysgol Calon Cymru posted a deficit of  £173,451 at the end of 2020/21 and this is projected to go up just under £1.3 million by March 2024.

Councillors had called for a probe into the circumstances of setting up Ysgol Calon Cymru to understand what went wrong, and to help shape possible future school reorganisation projects.

Cllr Jones said: “My big fear is that the mistakes made here mean that the council has turned its face absolutely against looking at the possible merger of high schools.

“We have got high schools that are very close together and we to need to see mergers between some of these. Size matters, the number of pupils in a school is a big issue.

“We are trying to run with too many small high schools.”

Head of Transformation and Communication, Emma Palmer, pointed out that merging high schools is not part of the current school’s transformation strategy.

Ms Palmer said: “In the strategy agreed by cabinet, it refers to 13 all age schools in the localities where there are secondary schools.

“If you looked at education purely on pupil numbers in Powys, you would only have eight high schools and 21 primary schools.

“The challenge from the communities of Powys is that would be unacceptable. The shift to all age schools is a way of keeping provision in every locality.”

She added that this approach was being done in other Welsh counties.

Cllr Roger Williams said: “It’s always a danger to think that everything that went before was bad and everything that’s happening now is good.”

Cllr William Powell said: “I do remember Cllr Jones as a board member and as leader, did preside over two or more successful catchment-based area reviews of provision.

“In the end despite the pain, they were well received and judged to be educationally successful.

“We are picking off individual schools in the current model that was not the case in previous councils.

“It’s important that the positive lessons learned in both the Ystradgynlais and Gwernyfed catchments should not be re-written.”

Education portfolio holder, Cllr Phyl Davies said: “I commend the Gwernyfed and Ystradgynlais reviews, I would like to have done more catchment area reviews, they take a significant amount of time and cost.

“We have to make some decisions on smaller schools to close, they’re not nice decisions to make, but it’s for the benefit of the learner.

“I accept it does look like we’re picking off some smaller schools but sometimes that’s what we have to do to move forward.”

The committee noted that the report gave them a partial assurance and the report will also go on to be discussed at a Learning and Skills scrutiny committee.

Key findings from the report that the council accepts include:

• That the options appraisal was simplistic
• Its financial analysis of the Ysgol Calon Cymru proposal was too simplistic