Council faces legal blizzard on schools

Pembrokeshire county council’s secondary schools reorganisation policy is in a mess. On 13 July it was due to publish its proposals following a wide-ranging public consultation that has lasted most of this year. Three days later the full council was to vote on them. Then, on 9 July with only days to go, the Council put the whole process off until September, pending discussions with the Trustees of the Tasker Milward and Picton charity.

What does all this mean? In brief the Council wants to merge Tasker Millward and Sir Thomas Picton secondary schools in Haverfordwest and create a new English-medium and a new Welsh-medium secondary school in the town. On that there is wide agreement. However, the Council also wants the new English-medium school to be just for 11-16-year-olds and provision for sixth-formers made in a new Centre at Pembrokeshire College in Haverfordwest. This would also serve St David’s and Fishguard whose secondary schools would also lose their sixth forms.

These proposals have run into a storm of opposition. It is safe to say that when an authority manages to mobilise entire communities against its policy it has either failed to communicate effectively, failed to listen, or lost the argument.

As it happens, the same day the Council announced it was putting off a decision I was at Sir Thomas Picton School listening to the case in favour of retaining the sixth forms. The main audience was meant to be Pembrokeshire’s 60 county councillors but only a handful turned up and 37 didn’t even reply to their invitations – a case of a failure to listen?

It was the pupils who made by far the most impressive part of the case. We heard a performance by the school’s jazz band and an excerpt from The Sound of Music that was currently in production. Both were excellent and plainly benefited from participation of the schools’ wide age range, from 11 to 19. 

However, what rapidly became clear was that the if the Council presses ahead with removing the sixth forms it will run into a blizzard of legal challenges that could put off its plans for years. In the first place it has failed to square its proposals with the Tasker Milward and Picton Trust which owns most of the Tasker Milward site and is determined to support the continuance of 11-19 education there.

More generally, there were accusations that the Council came to a conclusion about its policy 18 months before the public consultations began, evidenced by documents uncovered through Freedom of Information requests. These, it is alleged, show Pembrokeshire College keen to take over the sixth forms to secure its funding base. As for the Council it is alleged that it wants to offload responsibility for post-16 education to maintain the lowest council tax in Wales. If these accusations prove to be the case the Council deserves to be in the mess it now finds itself in.

In a combative address to the meeting I attended, Paul Lucas, Chairman of Sir Thomas Picton Governors, declared the Council could face an investigation into possible mal-administration following the loss of thousands of pounds as a result of irregular consultation procedures. And he added, “This could be the final death knell of the Council itself, limiting its influence in any future local government reorganisation.” Unfortunately, it is secondary education in Pembrokeshire that could lose out as well.