Committee Members to discuss undertaking school visits, and to consider deep dives on particular areas of concern.
Minutes:
Points raised by the Panel:
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Responses received from Officers or Cabinet Members. |
PRU working group or a deep dive given the significant savings within the budget, and to understand the impact on the provision provided. How the potential plan of working closer with schools and on schools sites would work in practice and it was important to have a clear plan before changes were implemented. |
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Visits to schools that have provided Trochi immersion education, either through the Trochi Working Group with invite extended to other Committee Members. |
Officers were happy to support in arranging this as felt would be beneficial for the working group to see first-hand the Trochi provision, and report findings back to the Scrutiny Committee. |
There have been some new build all-thru school across the border in Carmarthenshire, would be beneficial to discuss pro’s and cons of the design, to ensure similar issues or problems were not made and give assurance to the well-being and safety of our learners. The Committee need to have assurance and understand the impact that tight budgets had on the options that were available through the Transformation programme, a separate session or deep dive on this would be appreciated. |
It would possibly be helpful for Members to see conditions of some of our School estate buildings, to compare the learning environments to our new builds. The additional challenge and pressure this presents not only to teaching staff but to those who were managing budgets in the current financial situation, alongside the transformation agenda. The Offer post 14 moving forward could have potential impact on funding whilst also need to ensure that the service and curriculum was meeting demand of the learner. |
Aware Members of the group had in previous meeting expressed concern on Early Years provision, especially with links to the ALNET Act.
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A National agenda item is the Community Schoos agenda, what a Community School looks like and what role does it play. The Schools Services has used grant funding to employ Family Liaison Officers to support our Community Schoos, agenda which forma part of the WH National Review, with Powys being used as a case study. The Committee may wish to contrast and compare our Community and non-Community schools provision. |
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Committee may also like to have a working group on the Multi Site schools, the problems and challenges they had faced over the 4-6years they have been operating, especially if the Council were to be considering establishing more. |
It has been a year since we had a very positive presentation in respect of the Music plan in Powys, to boost the instrumental music played in schools, was there any further update available. |
Lynsey MCCrohan, the Strategic Lead for Music and Expressive Arts would be happy to come back to Scrutiny Committee and inform of the significant progress made through presentations to WG and other LA’s. |
Need to look at the current funding formula in particular across ALN students. There still remain major issues with the funding formula which cannot be left drift and needs to be looked at to ensure it is fair across the board |
The school funding formula has recently been reviewed and brought to Scrutiny and Cabinet, the changes in direct response to the new ALNET Act and included provision for Deprivation, meaning that less funding remained centrally. |
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ALPS data analysis could be shared via a Committee development session. |