Issue - meetings

Cabinet Member – Councillor Beca Brown

To submit a report on the above.

To accept the report and to note the observations.

The Assistant Head: Primary was welcomed to the meeting for this item.

Submitted - the report of the Cabinet Member for Education, at the request of the committee members, and members were asked to submit observations on the vision and objectives of the Education Department noted in the draft Education Strategy towards 2032 and beyond, and also submit observations on the Equality and Well-being Impact Assessments.

The Cabinet Member set out the context and the members were then given an opportunity to ask questions and offer observations. 

With regard to the comment in the report that the document was a living one that could be visited regularly over the period of the Strategy, it was asked how easy it would be, and what the timetable would be for introducing any changes, because if it was a matter of years, or even a matter of months, it could not actually be called a living document.  In response, it was noted that:

·         The document would be reviewed internally on a regular basis.

·         As education was an area where policies could change quite quickly in different areas, the Department would respond positively to any change by having the document evolve and change as necessary.

It was noted that the report did not contain much mention of additional learning needs, apart from a reference to the Additional Learning Needs Act, and concern was expressed regarding three specific issues, namely:

·         Gwynedd's education strategy on ALN in the mainstream for the next 10 years.

·         Overcrowding in the two ALN schools in Gwynedd. 

·         The number of children in the mainstream who could not cope with the mainstream education system.

In response, it was noted that:

·         The Education Strategy was a high-level education strategy for all children in the county and that the comment regarding special education children who had additional and inclusion needs was implicit in Objective 3 - learner health and well-being, which referred to all learners.

·         The Strategy also referred to the duty the Authority had to review the school stock in the context of special schools, should it be necessary to do so.

·         Under the high-level strategy, the Authority had a Schools Modernisation Strategy for Band C which would be submitted to the Welsh Government in due course.

·         There were a number of policies and strategies in the layers below the high-level strategy, and that was where the detail would be.

The opinion was expressed that the Strategy, possibly, did not take into account the work of the Gwynedd Category 3 Schools Scrutiny Investigation (item 6 above), as the members of the Investigation emphasised the difficulties that arose as a result of the emphasis on bilingualism.  It was noted that the second objective of the Strategy was to 'Extend and strengthen our Welsh-medium and bilingual provision', but that 'bilingual' could not mean anything other English-medium provision in this context, as Welsh had already been addressed within the objective.  Therefore, it was recommended that the Education Strategy should be re-examined in the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7