Consistent inconsistency

I knew that Jonathan Morgan, the Tory MP for Cardiff North, was unhappy with the decision to reorganize schools in the Whitchurch area of Cardiff from Twitter:

I am shocked that Labour ministers have deserted the people of Whitchurch with their support of schools reorganisation plan.

WAG decision to back school changes in Whitchurch no benefit to English or Welsh medium schools. Labour don't deserve to govern after May.

Wondering if WAG open to judicial review on Whitchurch schools - inconsistent with Canton decision. One rule for them another for Whitchurch.

Following on from that, there is a rather garbled story in today's South Wales Echo, which somehow manages to claim that four primary schools will be closed by the decision.

But Jonathan Morgan is just going off on one without giving much thought to what he's saying. He claims that:

The issues there reflect the issues facing Whitchurch yet the minister has taken a decision which is inconsistent with his decision in the west of Cardiff.

In fact education minister Leighton Andrews refused to make the decision not to allow Treganna to move to the Lansdowne building: he transferred the decision to Carwyn Jones. Yet that detail aside, the problem is not that the Whitchurch decision is inconsistent with the Canton decision, but that the Canton decision was inconsistent with the Welsh Government's stated policies. Mr Morgan simply wants one wrong decision to become a precedent for another wrong decision.

As for his idea that the Whitchurch decision had:

completely deserted local families

He is rather ignoring the fact that there simply isn't enough demand from local families to support both Eglwys Wen and Eglwys Newydd at their current size. A large number of children going to these schools are not from local families, but from families outside their catchment areas. As we can see from the figures here, only 205 out of 326 at Eglwys Newydd and 158 out of 280 at Eglwys Wen were from the two catchment areas combined. This means that 237 children going to these schools were not from local families at all.
 

 
Update, 5 February 2011

I can't find a direct link to the decision letter, but I've embedded the Guardian's version from this page.

 

France invests heavily in offshore wind

In response to a post I wrote a couple of weeks ago on the Prenergy wood-burning power station proposed for Port Talbot, the discussion moved on to renewable electricity generation, and offshore wind power in particular.

Although some newspapers, notably the Telegraph, have reported that countries like Denmark are pulling out of windpower, exactly the reverse is true. Denmark is still pressing ahead with new and even larger offshore windfarms, for example at Dan Tysk and Anholt. Germany is also continuing to expand its offshore wind capacity, aiming to get generate a quarter of its electricity from wind by in the next ten years. There are articles here, here and here.

But I was surprised to read that France—a country hardly renowned for its commitment to renewable energy over the past few decades—is now planning to embark on a large offshore wind programme of its own.

Offshore wind farm plants with 600 wind turbines are to be built on five sites between Saint-Nazaire and Dieppe/Le Tréport in a €10 billion project to be announced by President Sarkozy.

The 3,000 MW total wind power capacity of the new project is the equivalent of two nuclear power stations. France has set itself the goal of producing 23 per cent of its power needs from renewable resources by 2020, with 6,000 MW from [offshore] wind power. The new offshore wind farms should start generating power in 2015.

OffshoreWIND, 24 January 2011

Those who are most opposed to renewable energy—and windpower in particular—often use France as an example of the sort of energy mix they would like to see. They assume that because France relies so heavily on nuclear power, there is no need for it to use renewables. But this isn't true. As we can see from this rather helpful site, France already has over 5,500 MW of installed onshore wind capacity, but this is the first big expansion into offshore wind. I think it's a very welcome development ... though I would raise an eyebrow about whether they can get these five windfarms up and running by 2015.

The big concern is whether the wind industry has the capacity to cope with all these new projects, something which highlights the golden opportunity we have in Wales to develop our own manufacturing and servicing capacity. The Round 3 windfarms in the Irish Sea Zone between Ynys Môn and the Isle of Man will be bigger than these five French windfarms put together, and those in the Bristol Channel Zone will be about half as big.

Swansea and Cardiff

It looks like Leighton Andrews makes decisions in batches, for hot on the heels of yesterday's announcement that a new WM school has been given the go ahead in Swansea comes the decision to allow Cardiff to reorganize schools in Whitchurch.

     Whitchurch schools shake-up gets go-ahead

The basic issue was that Whitchurch did not have enough children in the area to support both Eglwys Wen and Eglwys Newydd as two-form entry English-medium schools, and that these were only the size they were because of children coming from outside the area. Coupled with that, Melin Gruffydd—the WM school that currently shares a site with Eglwys Wen—was continually expanding resulting in an intolerable situation for both schools. Something had to be done, it was a question of what.

As I've said before in much more detail, I thought the ideal solution would have been to keep Eglwys Newydd as it is, but to build a brand new one form entry school at Heol Don for Eglwys Wen to move into, leaving Melin Gruffydd to use the whole site they currently share. As I read the situation, the main objection to that is that Cardiff prefer fewer, larger schools. The cost of building a new school would probably not have been that much greater than the extensive rebuilding work that will be necessary to convert the Eglwys Newydd building into a two-form entry WM school.

But we don't always get what we want, and even though the plan now approved by the Welsh Government is not as good as it might have been, it will do. It doesn't do anything to increase WM provision, for Melin Gruffydd's intake is already over 60, but it achieves the main goal of reducing the overcrowding on the shared site, allowing a each school a stable, sustainable future that doesn't rely on inadequate temporary accommodation.

     

As we can see from the aerial photo above, the Eglwys Newydd building is on a long, narrow site. The plan, as shown below, is to take down the temporary accommodation and build a new junior block which will take up all the hard play area to the south. It's all a lot tighter than I would like, but perhaps the detailed plan will not be so bad. I hope to be pleasantly surprised.

     

As these two decisions have come at the same time, it provides an opportunity to look at the difference in attitude between Cardiff and Swansea Councils towards the expansion of WM education.

Swansea started by doing the right thing. They were one of the first local authorities to commission a proper survey of parental wishes, and if they had got their way Llwynderw would have been built as a 2 FE rather than 1.5 FE school. It was the Welsh Government that refused to allow a larger school to be built. But since then Swansea have sat on their hands and done nothing to increase the provision of WM places to meet the parental demand for it. The new WM school at Graig is their first new initiative for years, even though their own survey showed that 36% of parents would choose a WM school if there was one near them.

My greatest criticism of Cardiff is that they have never bothered to commission a survey of parental preferences. Yet they know that the demand must be there, and have taken steps to continually increase WM provision anyway. Although they've had problems with their proposals for Canton and Whitchurch in particular, their proposals for other parts of the city have been implemented without any real problems. Because of that, the number of WM places in Cardiff is continually growing. However, when they eventually do commission the survey, I'm sure they'll find they need to increase WM provision much more than they have to date.

In short, Cardiff's attitude has been to push forward proposals and to keep coming up with more if any of them fall though. It's sometimes messy, but it gets a result. Swansea's attitude for the past few years has been to ignore the wishes of parents, and do as little as they can get away with.

Swansea's small step forward

It was in March last year that Swansea put forward plans to close the half-empty Graig Infants school in Morriston and convert it into a new Welsh-medium school, while at the same time amalgamating the nearby Pentrepoeth Infants and Junior schools into a new English-medium primary. The news today is that these plans have been approved and that the new schools will open in September.

As highlighted by RhAG in this paper in 2009, Morriston has long been the area of Swansea with the biggest demand for WM education but with no provision for it. So this is definitely a step forward ... but I have to say that it is not such a big step.

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Graig Infants is a small school with a capacity of 113. As an infants school it would be one-form entry, but as a WM primary with seven year groups and a nursery it will be a less than half-form entry school with a maximum intake of only 14 children a year.

     

     

As we can see from the pictures, it already has two temporary classroom blocks which have probably been there for so long that they might as well be thought of a permanent accommodation. And what looks as if it should be a hard play area is in fact used to park about ten cars. Nor does the site have any room for expansion, for the wooded area in the bottom right of the aerial photo has now been developed as housing. So it's far from ideal, though obviously it's a lot better than no WM school in Morriston at all.

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Perhaps this wouldn't be so bad if Swansea were planning to expand WM education elsewhere. But they're not. They are currently going through a paperwork exercise to increase the capacities of three WM primaries at Gellionen, Pontybrenin and Tirdeunaw ... but are not planning to increase the physically space available in these schools. To put it bluntly, they want to squeeze more children into less space than the regulations allow. A local authority is allowed to overcrowd a school by 25% without needing permission to do so, but Swansea have already done that, and now want to go even further.

This is a tragedy because for the past few months Swansea has had three empty school buildings which could easily become new WM schools. I put the case for opening new starter schools in the old Cwm and Arfryn buildings here. And RhAG presented a proposal for a WM school in the old Llanmorlais building, which I mentioned here.

It's still not too late for Swansea to put together proposals to set up starter schools in these buildings in time for them to open in September this year. There cannot be any reasonable objections, because they are currently sitting empty and unused.

Forbrydelsen

I watched the first two episodes of the Danish drama Forbrydelsen – called The Killing in English, though perhaps it would be more accurate to call it The Crime – on BBC Four last night. It was very impressive, and anybody who missed it can catch it on iPlayer.

     

Now this isn't exactly going to be mainstream viewing, nothing on BBC Four is. But it provides a perfect example of the sort of programme that I think could and should be shown on S4C, but with subtitles available in Welsh as well as English. The cost would be minimal, but the principle of international material not invariably being offered through the medium of English is vitally important.

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Strangely enough David TC Davies, the chair of the Welsh Affairs Select Committee, made exactly the same point when the committee questioned Ed Vaizey on 18 January:

Q477 Chair: Have you looked at encouraging S4C to buy in films from non English speaking countries – some very good films are produced in places like Germany and France – and putting in Welsh subtitles? I personally don't see that as being such a bad idea. It is standard practice in many European countries, including Germany and France.

Mr Vaizey: I know that you had an extensive discussion on this subject when you took evidence. I would expect the Committee's report to reflect your views.

Evidence to WASC, 18 January 2011

As someone who doesn't agree with Mr Davies on many things, it is a very pleasant surprise to find myself agreeing with him on this. Though I should make it clear that I don't think this is a substitute for commissioned drama in Welsh, but as a supplement to it.

We'll have to see whether this proposal is reflected In the WASC's report. But if I might make one suggestion to Committee members, it would be to widen the scope of that proposal beyond S4C. In this instance the BBC has bought the rights to show the series in the UK. But what is to stop the BBC from subtitling this and similar programmes ... not only in Welsh but also in Gaelic? It would be a significant step in making much more material available in Welsh and Gaelic (at least to read, if not to hear). The same would be true for the Italian or German opera that sometimes even makes it onto BBC2.

So yes, I think it would be a good idea for S4C to show foreign language programmes subtitled in Welsh. But if we are to see a much closer relationship between S4C and the BBC, similar to the way that BBC Alba works in Scotland, then there can be no excuse for the BBC not to do its share for each of the languages of Britain.

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The more sharped-eyed will have noticed that the picture I've shown is actually for the second series of Forbrydelsen. It's quite likely that the BBC will acquire, or has acquired, the rights to show that as well. It might now be too late to subtitle the first series in Welsh and Gaelic, but with the right pressure from the right people, they could easily do it for the second. In fact, we could make it a requirement that our public service broadcasters should make all their subtitled foreign language programmes available in each language of Britain via the red button.

A One-legged Duck

I couldn't help but notice that the portrait of Rhodri Morgan unveiled today shows him holding a wooden duck with one very long leg.

     

True Wales go off the rails

It's wonderful to see Rachel Banner's latest offering on Wales Home. Under a picture of massed ranks of Communist Party delegates we are told:

Altogether now: The Cardiff Bay political class resembles some totalitarian caucus

She goes on to tell us that:

This faction then closes down debate by insisting that the only thing that can be discussed is the technical matter of whether it has new direct law-making powers: anything outside this buttoned down and whipped up consensus is irrelevant to the agenda they have manufactured.

Wales Home, 25 January 2011

But here in the real world, this referendum is about one thing and one thing only: whether the Assembly gets primary lawmaking powers in the areas which are already devolved to Welsh ministers.

Yes, it may be a "technical matter", but that doesn't make it any less important.

Now of course anybody in Wales is free to talk about anything they like; but no matter how desperate True Wales are to make out that this referendum is about something else, it won't change the question on the ballot paper.