Agenda and minutes
Venue: Committee Room 3A, Guildhall, Swansea. View directions
Contact: Michelle Roberts, Scrutiny Officer
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Disclosure of Personal and Prejudicial Interests Minutes: Cllr Susan Jones declared a personal interest in Item 6. |
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Prohibition of Whipped Votes and Declaration of Party Whips Minutes: None |
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Letters and Minutes PDF 288 KB Additional documents: Minutes: Letter to Cabinet Member arising from 12 September panel meeting. The issue of Free School Meals pupil attainment data was raised. The Cabinet Member and Head of Education Achievement and Partnership wished to elaborate on information given at the last meeting. In particular, that attainment measures in Wales are changing away from data measuring to looking at individual pupil attainment and their improvement journey. Explaining that the figures published for this year do not reflect these changes and in future year’s there will be new accountability measures reflecting this new focus. |
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Preparation with Challenge Adviser Minutes: The Panel met with the Challenge Advisor to discuss Penclawdd Primary Schools improvement journey. |
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Penclawdd Primary School PDF 198 KB Headteacher and Chair of Governors from Penclawdd Primary School to attend to discuss the schools improvement journey Additional documents:
Minutes: The Panel met with the Headteacher and Chair of Governors of Penclawdd Primary
School. They chose to speak to Penclawdd Primary School because it had been categorised as Red on the ERW support matrix. They wanted to discuss the schools
improvement journey, look at what the school is doing to improve its current
performance and how it plans to improve moving forward. They have detailed their thoughts on how the
school is progressing in this Conveners letter to the Cabinet Member. The Panel heard about
the context of the school from the Headteacher
including: currently there are 146 pupils on roll, 15% are identified with
Additional Learning Needs and 3 pupils with
statements. 15.6% of pupils receive free
school meals and 7.5% have English as an additional language. There are currently 7 classroom teachers (2
part-time) and 10 teaching assistants (some part-time). They heard about the
complex leadership issues around the time of the Esyn
inspection and then about the subsequent staff appointments including that of
the current Headteacher in September 2018 and the
recently appointed Deputy Head. The
Chair of Governors wanted to record the Governing Bodies thanks to the Councils
Human Resources and Legal Team for their time and commitment in helping to
resolve those complex staffing issues. The Panel concluded
from our discussion with the Headteacher, Chair of
Governors and the Challenge Adviser that improvements at the school are
progressing well and they felt this was mainly due to ·
The school having a supportive, engaged and challenging governing body
that understands its own skills base making it resilient and in a good position
to help to drive improvement.
Councillors were particularly interested to hear about the work the
governing body has done using a matrix to assess its skills base. The Panel were pleased to hear that governors
are now active, visible, knowledgeable and not afraid to challenge. ·
A stronger leadership team in place with a clearly enthusiastic Headteacher and newly appointed experienced Deputy Head
Teacher. ·
The school has a clear improvement plan and is working with and
receiving support from the Local Authority and the Education Improvement
Service. ·
School leaders using self-improvement processes effectively to identify
what pupils do well and what needs to improve. ·
The school carefully considering which improvement tools are best for
its context including, for example, Building Blocks and Seesaw. ·
The school is enthusiastically learning from and sharing their good
practice with other schools. ·
The school has strong support from parents and the
local community with the school working taking its role in the community
seriously. ·
A maintenance action plan is now in place to address
shortcomings with the building including site security. The Panel are pleased
to hear about the much-improved picture at the school from the time of the Estyn Inspection recognising the
distance that has been travelled in such a short
amount of time. This is due to the
commitment from the Headteacher and staff at the
school, the governors and the Education Improvement Service driving forward the
improvements needed. The Panel wished to congratulate the Headteacher
and the governing body at the school for their hard work and their commitment
to this improvement journey, which is clearly showing to be successful. An invitation to visit the school was extended to the Panel and they plan to visit to see
progress further embedded in the summer of 2020. |
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Work Programme 2019/2020 PDF 208 KB Minutes: The panel reviewed their work programme. |
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Minutes: Recent publications of individual school Estyn inspections were received by the Panel. |
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Letter to Cabinet Member PDF 226 KB Additional documents: |