Agenda item

Cabinet Member – Councillor Beca Brown

 

To consider a report on the above.

 

To accept the report and note the observations.

 

Councillor Beca Brown (Cabinet Member for Education) and Gwern ap Rhisiart (Head of Education) were welcomed to the meeting. ⁠

 

Submitted – the report of the Cabinet Member for Education inviting the committee’s input on the proposed changes to the way that the school improvement service would be delivered in the future.

 

The Cabinet Member set out the context. She thanked GwE staff for all their work and support over the years, noting that their input and expert advice had been greatly appreciated by the schools.

 

The Head of Education expanded on the content of the report and members were then given an opportunity to ask questions and offer observations. ⁠ 

 

It was noted that the Welsh Government's draft guidance 'Collaborative model between schools, LAs and national government' noted that governing bodies should 'Consider their own arrangements for working with other governing bodies to support collective responsibility and collaborative improvement', and a member asked whether there was an intention to re-establish the Gwynedd Governing Body, which was in operation before Covid. In response, it was noted:

·         That they did intend to restore the Forum for governors, in hybrid form, while also looking at opportunities to make the body more collective.

·         That a Children and Young People's Forum was currently being established and that it was also natural to address school governance, to have everyone's voice in moving these aspects forward.

 

Concern was expressed that extending the collaboration between schools could mean that the lessons provided jointly would become increasingly English, given that two secondary schools in the county mostly operated as English schools. It was questioned whether the Council had guidance for joint-working to ensure that there was no slippage in the Welsh-medium provision. In response, it was explained that the new model did not suggest moving children from one school to another to get lessons, instead it referred to school leaders working and supporting each other.

 

It was suggested that the proposed arrangements seemed to be extremely challenging.  It was noted that there were all sorts of individual problems in every school and that it was important to have similar schools helping each other, instead of acting based on geographical clusters. It was also noted that headteachers were already overwhelmed, and that the expectation of taking on an additional role of helping other schools (although already doing so unofficially) would place a lot of extra pressure on them, especially in small schools. In response, it was noted that:-

·         Putting all of this into practice in Gwynedd schools would be very challenging for a number of reasons, including the fact that Gwynedd had so many school units, and many of those school units were small schools, and a very small number of non-contact headteachers.

·         The challenges highlighted what GwE had managed to do over the years, which was to go into the schools and tailor the leadership to individual schools, regardless of size.

·         They repeatedly emphasised in the discussions with the Welsh Government that our context in Gwynedd made all of this very challenging and that the capacity of the schools, rather than their ability to do the work, was the challenge.

·         The geographical point was also important as the clusters in Gwynedd were very different and also schools within the same geographical cluster competed for children from the catchment area.

·         It would require planning a service with people in the centre who had the ability to draw these aspects together and ensure that everyone gets their share in school improvement support as well. It was premature to say what that would look like until the details awaited from the Government were obtained, and inappropriate to mention that at this stage in the context of employment issues etc.

 

It was noted that the scrutineers wished to add their support to the Head of Service's efforts to secure a voice to Gwynedd's unique position.

 

It was questioned whether it would be possible to continue using the expertise of GwE officers during the transitional period. In response, it was noted that:-

·         Care must be taken in terms of the information that could be shared due to HR issues.

·         A number of GwE staff were on permanent contracts and some had been on secondments that were terminating, and the decision had been made through the GwE Joint Committee regarding the staffing structure for this year.

·         As GwE was a regional service, the 6 authorities served by GwE would have to follow the same procedure in terms of responding to restructuring and alternative employment opportunities for staff, and discussions about that were currently taking place.

·         In terms of funding, the grants, which had already been passed on to GwE this year, in line with the Welsh Government's desire, had exceeded the core allocation to GwE.  In the meetings with the Government, assurance was sought in regard to these grants, but as the grants did not come from the settlement, there were employment implications even then in the sense that there could be no permanent employment with a grant because of the possibility that the grant would not be there in 12 months’ time.

·         The HR considerations were being addressed by experts from Gwynedd which alleviated concerns in terms of the process being followed correctly.

 

In light of the explanation regarding the funding, it was suggested that this model had the potential to be significantly cheaper in the long term, and it was asked, since a large proportion of the support was dependent on grant money rather than allocation, whether it would be fair to say that this could be perceived as a way of closing the tap. In response, it was noted that there was truth to that, and although Welsh Government officers stated that they were working hard to try and ensure that the total amount of money provided to this field would remain the same, there was no guarantee on what basis this would be allocated and there was concern regarding the schools’ capacity to be able to release individuals to attend another school to do the work.

 

It was suggested, if the collaboration between schools was a matter of informal arrangement and headteacher discretion, etc., it could be very difficult to make a financial case for it. In response, it was noted although there was currently no assurance about the exact model, it was likely that a general offer would be made to the majority of schools based on the catchment area work, with the Authority elevating the work into more of a commission for targeting particular aspects in schools where there were more specific challenges.

 

A member expressed the desire to see less autonomy and more uniformity within the education system across the UK, except for the language difference and the cultural aspects of the curriculum relating to local history, etc., in the case of areas such as Gwynedd. It was believed that such uniformity would militate against the element of competition that can exist between schools, facilitate the sharing of good practice with the rest of the organisation and make it easier to set standards and measure against those standards.  In response, it was noted that the point was accepted, but we did not have uniformity within the education system, nor were we likely to have it going forward.

 

In response to the observation, the member noted that the observations of GwE officers on item 7 noted that we did not, in effect, know what we were measuring, and that it would be nice to be able to start some sort of uniformity at almost a local level.

 

It was enquired whether the Education Department had the capacity to absorb all these additional responsibilities, given that it was a small department and faced many challenges over the next year and beyond. In response, it was noted that the capacity was not there at present, but that the Department would have to be re-structured to be able to incorporate the jobs and responsibilities that came with this.

 

It was enquired whether they could be confident that the resources released would be sufficient to meet the requirements. In response, it was noted that it was premature to give a definitive answer one way or another, but that it would be challenging due to the school numbers in Gwynedd and the dispersed nature of the county.

 

It was enquired whether the new system was expected to be ready by September. In response, it was noted that:-

·         The Authority was obliged to introduce the new model in September/October.

·         There would then be implications for the transfer of staff. They could not currently confirm whether it was possible to realise these changes by the end of March 2025, and the Authority would receive advice on this.

·         It was believed that it would be best if the situation continued as it was until the end of the summer term anyway, as there was no desire to change things in the middle of a school year.

·         A decision had not finally been made on this yet as so many things were uncertain at the moment.

 

It was enquired whether that meant they could be in a situation where there was nothing in place. In response, it was noted that this would not be allowed to happen, and that there would have to be a service in place, even if that was a continuation of what currently existed, or a different or transitional version of it.

 

RESOLVED to accept the report and to note the observations.