Schools compromise on cards for county

All is not well with Pembrokeshire’s secondary education. The headline problems are these: Pupil attainment at GCSE in Pembrokeshire is ranked at sixteenth among the 22 Welsh counties when it should be eighth, on the basis of the socio-economic background. Meanwhile, there are 1,500 surplus secondary school places across the county, making a reorganisation necessary to save money. If the council does not act to correct these problems the Welsh Government will act for it. In January the council proposed the following changes:

•  Merge Tasker Millward and Sir Thomas Picton secondary schools in Haverfordwest and create a new 11-16 English-medium secondary school on the Sir Thomas Picton site.
•  Create a new Sixth Form Centre at the Pembrokeshire College campus in Haverfordwest.
• Remove the sixth forms from Ysgol Bro Gwaun in Fishguard and Ysgol Dewi Sant in St Davids, re-designate them as 11-16 schools, and transfer their post-16 provision to the new Sixth Form Centre.
•  Create a new Welsh-medium 11-16 secondary school in Haverfordwest at the Tasker Millward site.

 Some of these changes were readily agreed, in particular combining the two English-medium schools and creating a new Welsh-medium school in Haverfordwest. However, there has been uproar at the proposal for removing sixth form provision from the schools and centralising it at the proposed Centre at Pembrokeshire College.

The council has pressed the advantages of the sixth form college concept which, it claims, delivers better results. This has been bitterly contested by the schools, parents and pupils. According to Sir Thomas Picton’s head, Dr N. Poole, the row has led to an atmosphere of anxiety and distrust “borne out by claims and counter claims concerning results, class sizes, university admissions etc without clear transparent data being issued for everyone to view.”

There has been an impressive community-based campaign in St Davids to retain its sixth form. Schools for the Future has come up with an innovative scheme to establish, in effect, a federalised sixth form linking Fishguard, St David’s and Haverfordwest. Some subjects would be taught in all three locations, with video facilities and some travel by staff and students used for connecting the teaching between the three sites.

Pembrokeshire’s Director of Education Kate Evan-Hughes, will be publishing a revised plan on 13 July and a meeting of the full council will decide three days later. What will she propose? Something along the following lines, I suggest. The site for the English-medium school in Haverfordwest will be moved to Tasker Millward. This is closer to Pembrokshire College and will enable some kind of amalgamated Sixth Form Centre to be shared between them. The Schools for the Future proposal for a new 3-16 school in St Davids, embracing the two primary schools in the town, will be accepted. There will also be a proposal for sixth form units to be kept at Fishguard and St Davids, but closely integrated with the new Sixth Form Centre in Haverfordwest.

Will this be a compromise acceptable to the warring factions that have been moblised on this hotly contested issue? Let us hope so. And let us remember, too, that school attainment is more an outcome achieved by good teachers and good leadership in our schools and not by reorganisations, however necessary.