Another of Pembrokeshire's shortcomings

Two reports on Pembrokeshire Council's education services were published yesterday and were the lead item on the news last night.

The main cause of concern—and rightly so—has been the county's failure to adequately respond to the child safeguarding issues that had been raised previously. However the Estyn report found that there were more widespread failings and recommended that the education department be put under special measures. The BBC listed the shortcomings as:

• Performance in primary schools does not compare well to that of similar schools in other councils across Wales

• Although attendance has improved, too many primaries are in the lower half in comparison with others on free school meals benchmarks

• Arrangements for supporting and challenging schools are not robust enough and have not had enough impact on improving outcomes

• It has not made enough progress in the management and governance of safeguarding children "by embedding the changes" made to practices

• It is responding too slowly to the increasing level of surplus places in the secondary sector

BBC, 17 December 2012

But reading through the report itself, I noticed that one other important shortcoming had not been reported by the BBC:

The authority continues to forecast pupil numbers accurately for both primary and secondary schools. However, as it does not measure demand for Welsh-medium education or have alternative methods to gather that information, the authority does not know the true level of need. Without that knowledge, it cannot plan effectively to ensure sufficient capacity. This is an important shortcoming.

Estyn Report, pp 9 & 10

It wasn't mentioned in the BBC's Welsh version of the story either. I certainly wouldn't claim that this is the most important of the local authority's shortcomings, but it is surely important enough to have been included in the BBC's list.

A new Welsh-medium school in Tenby?

For some time now—since the 1980s, to be precise—there has been a Welsh-medium stream at Tenby Infants and Tenby Junior Schools, which are on the opposite sides of Heywood Lane in Tenby, just over 100 metres apart. The junior school is above and to the top left of the satellite image, the infants school to the bottom right and below it.

     

     

     

Pembrokeshire Council has been under pressure to establish a new Welsh-medium school in Tenby for the last few years, and in February they announced that meetings had been held with education chiefs, governors and staff to consider three possible options:

Option 1 – Tenby Infants and Junior Schools to remain unchanged on two sites.

Option 2 – Amalgamation of both schools to a primary school on the Tenby Juniors site.

Option 3 – Amalgamate to a Welsh-medium primary school on Tenby Infants site and English-medium primary school on Tenby Junior site.

Option 3 was described as the "likely preferred option". Since then a series of preliminary public consultations has been held, resulting in this report by the Director of Education and Children's Services to Pembrokeshire's Cabinet last week.

In essence, the report says that there are considerable educational advantages to be gained by combining separate infants and junior schools into all-through primary schools on one site. In addition to that, the number of parents choosing the Welsh-medium stream has risen considerably in the past few years (there are currently 5 children in Year 6, but 13 in the Reception Year) and the numbers are projected to grow by 85% in the next four years.

So all in all, it does seem like a fairly obvious choice to create an all-through English-medium primary in the larger junior school building and a new Welsh-medium primary in the smaller infants school building; and this is what the report recommended. As we can read here, Cabinet agreed, and a formal consultation will now be launched.

If everything goes smoothly, the two new schools will open in September 2013.