Ysgol Calon Cymru report findings discussed

THE mistakes in forming Ysgol Calon Cymru should not set the council against future high school mergers, a councillor believes.

At a meeting of the Governance and Audit Committee on Friday, January 21 councillors discussed a report by Powys County Council’s internal auditors SWAP which evaluated the Ysgol Calon Cymru merger options.

In February 2017 Powys County Council’s cabinet announced that the high schools in Builth Wells and Llandrindod Wells would be merged.

Rebranded as Ysgol Calon Cymru, the new school opened its doors on September 1, 2018, with a single headteacher.

But since then, the school has been plagued with financial problems.

Ysgol Calon Cymru posted a deficit of  £173,451 at the end of 2020/21 and this is projected to go up just under £1.3 million by March 2024

Councillors had called for a probe into the circumstances of setting up Ysgol Calon Cymru so that understanding what went wrong there , can help future school reorganisation projects.

Cllr David Jones pointed out that the merger between Presteigne and Newtown high schools from 2014 had been successful when compared to Calon Cymru,

Cllr Jones said: “My big fear is that the mistakes made here mean that the council has turned its face absolutely against looking at the possible merger of high schools.

“We have got high schools that are very close together and we to need to see mergers between some of these.

“Size matters, the number of pupils in a school is a big issue.

“We are trying to run with too many small high schools.”

Head of transformation and communication, Emma Palmer pointed out that merging high schools is not part of the current school’s transformation strategy.

Ms Palmer said: “In the strategy agreed by cabinet, it refers to 13 all age schools in the localities where there are secondary schools.”

“If you looked at education purely on pupil numbers in Powys, you would only have eight high schools and 21 primary schools.

“The challenge from the communities of Powys is that would be unacceptable.”

“The shift to all age schools is a way of keeping provision in every locality.”

She added that approach was being done in other Welsh counties.

Cllr Roger Williams said: “It’s always a danger to think that everything that went before was bad and everything that’s happening now is good.”

Cllr William Powell said:  “I do remember Cllr Jones as a board member and as leader, did preside over two or more successful catchment-based area reviews of provision.

“In the end despite the pain, they were well received and judged to be educationally successful.”

“We are picking off individual schools in the current model that was not the case in previous councils.

“It’s important that the positive lessons learned in both the Ystradgynlais and Gwernyfed catchments should not be re-written.”

Education portfolio holder, Cllr Phyl Davies said: “I commend the Gwernyfed and Ystradgynlais reviews, I would like to have done more catchment area reviews, they take a significant amount of time and cost.”

“We have to make some decisions on smaller schools to close, they’re not nice decisions to make, but it’s for the benefit of the learner.

“I accept it does look like we’re picking off some smaller schools but sometimes that’s what we have to do to move forward.”

The committee noted that the report gave them a partial assurance and the report will also go on to be discussed at a Learning and Skills scrutiny committee.

Key findings from the report that the council accepts include:

• That the options appraisal was simplistic.
• Its financial analysis of the Ysgol Calon Cymru proposal was too simplistic.