Agenda item

To consider the report of the Cabinet Member for Education  (attached).

*10.10am – 10.55am

The report of the Cabinet Member for Education was submitted, noting the outcomes of the report commissioned into the Foundation Phase. 

During the discussion, the following main points were highlighted:

·         Despite the finding that social skills were lower among children than in the past, the performance in Gwynedd in terms of the personal and social indicator was high and suggested that it was not as great a problem as the linguistic factor.

·         The fact that the performance among children in Gwynedd in terms of output was third throughout Wales, including in the language field, suggested that the primary system as a whole was functioning as it should and that children were leaving the primary system with the necessary skills to enable them to reach their full potential.

·         Pressure should be put on governors to make every effort to employ Welsh speakers for every post at a school, although admittedly this could be challenging in some areas.

·         the report jumped from one thing to another rather than concentrating solely on the foundation phase.

·         several references were made in the report to the weakening of the Welsh language, e.g. the comment that not every staff member adhered to the school's language policy at all times and that they turned to speak English with non-Welsh speaking pupils.  There was also a suggestion here that children were allowed to answer tests in English when the situation arose, contrary to the policy of responding to tests in Welsh.  It was also necessary to bear in mind, when referring to pupils with 'English as an additional language', that English was also an additional language for the 64% of the children of Gwynedd who came from Welsh speaking households.

·         there was no reason why all children, with the exception of newcomers, could not pursue their schooling in Welsh.

·         the fall in the number of Welsh speakers at our primary schools was a cause for concern and this needed to be addressed at once or there was a danger that the numbers would fall to such a degree that it would not be possible to justify the policy at all.

·         It was acknowledged that immersion education in the foundation phase was critically important and that the language centres played a very important role in immersing KS2 pupils.

·         Although it was understood that there had been no empty spaces at these language centres to date, should such a situation arise in future, consideration could be given to extending the provision beyond year 2 only, but bearing in mind that the younger the child, the less pertinent the course was to them.

·         there was room to strengthen the bridging element between the foundation phase and meithrin groups in the field of oracy.  There were some excellent people in the meithrin groups who promoted language acquisition skills and who also had clear expertise in the foundation phase who could also assist meithrin groups so that the children's baseline would improve when they started attending school.

·         It was not believed that there was any value in setting up specific language centres to teach children English since learning English posed no difficulty for anyone due to the language's influence on children of all backgrounds.  In contrast, Welsh lacked the opportunities to speak it outside school.

·         there were roles for members, as councillors and primary school governors, to exert influence to ensure the language policy was strongly implemented within the schools.

·         the technological revolution that had taken place over recent years meant that a balance had to be struck between ensuring that children developed to be natural communicators with people and, considering the demands that would eventually be placed on them in the field of employment, simultaneously ensuring that they were not deprived of future experiences in the field of technology.

·         Cuts to the education improvement grant would be a great cause for concern, bearing in mind that 64% of the grant paid the salaries of foundation phase assistants.  Since some assistants had recently received pay rises, and since the Council was unable to fund salary increases to those funded by grant, there was less money available to employ assistants generally.

·         Cutting the pay of the assistants would increase teacher workload and there was a need to persist in challenging the governments in Westminster and Cardiff about the situation.

The Cabinet Member thanked the schools for their efforts in the foundation phase field, and specifically in the Welsh language field, and stated that there was evidence that shows that children, by the age of 11, were achieving appropriately and beyond their age in every field, including Welsh.

The Head of Education referred to the series of main recommendations at the end of the report, explaining that some of them were recommendations for the authority and others were recommendations for GwE.  He would ensure that the recommendations for the authority formed part of the service's business plan for the foundation phase and that the recommendations for GwE had been incorporated in the requested schedule.

The Cabinet Member warned that it would be difficult to achieve a number of the recommendations on account of the cut to the education improvement grant. 

It was agreed that a further report would be submitted to this committee on the effect of implementing the recommendations at the end of the report.