Dear All We will shortly have a new county council and as things stand, 16 councillors (21% of total) from the old guard will be relected unopposed. On ward will have no candidates at all and another 20% of wards will only have 2 candidates. This means the council is likely to be shorn of any substantial talent and it is only a matter of time before the same tired, irrelevnt policies are again introduced. Powys cannot survive another 5 years of such incompetence so I as you signed the save Gwernyfed petition and our communities did batter the LA into defeat I am writing to you to ask you if you will join me in trying to bring about radical change in the management of education in the county. Below is an outline proposal which I would be grateful if would take the time to read and let me know what you think using the email address at the end of the piece. Thank you JOHN FITZGERALD Proposal to establish a Powys Education Reform Movement (PERM) Background I am writing to you because you are either a county or community councillor or candidate who has expressed an interest in the state of Powys Education Service or a parent, a staff member in education or a concerned member of the community. I and most of the electorate are in despair over the state of our county council, and unless our communities, together with interested councillors, can bring about major change the new council will go down the same flawed roads that we have lived with for the last ten years. The Education Service has been in complete disarray over the last 5 years. For example, 30 primary schools have been closed and secondary education is a mixture of schools recognised nationally as superb, such as Crickhowell and Gwernyfed, the latter establishing their status whilst being threatened with closure, and others which are running extraordinary unlawful deficits. The current total of unlawful deficits is £3-4 million, (including a projected £1.4 million at Brecon HS). In addition 2 schools have used their delegated education budget unlawfully, but with the full knowledge of the local authority, to run bus services out of area(and county) costing £750,000+. The local authority has also made a prolific use of failed expensive consultants. None of this takes account of the £1 million+ already written off when schools have already closed. Some schools are in special measures, and one (Brecon HS) has had its Welsh Medium education removed and transferred to Builth Wells, 12 miles away costing more than retaining the status quo. This has exacerbated Brecon HS’s budget position and weakening its education service further whilst Builth HS was in special measures. There have been 8 failed judicial reviews in 2 years (more than any other LA in the UK) publication of the costs of which have been withheld but could not possibly be less than £1 million. A conservative estimate of the money lost/wasted over the period would not be less than £10 million whilst the local authority was cutting £12 million from the annual budgets. Imagine what we could do with that wasted £10 million in education None of that takes any account of the severe problems in Social Care, Residential Care, the policy to close our libraries and a complete shambles in the Planning Service. There is a group of incompetent senior officers in education, supported by the chief executive and cabinet, who went out of their way to provide misleading information to cabinet, councillors and the public over why the decisions they were promoting were necessary. Finally, when the Auditor General for Wales wrote a highly critical report about the failure of the local authority to use its legal powers to resolve the problems of Brecon HS, it was successfully buried. All of this is just the tip of the iceberg. The state of the local authority has been in a steep decline for the last ten years and is now disintegrating with the cabinet constantly blaming the Welsh Government or the public, whilst they failed to use their extensive legal powers to deal with the problems being created by the officers and the cabinet themselves. However, responsibility for this state of affairs does not just rest with the officers and cabinet. Where was the full council when this was going on? When it came to education, the full council hid behind the undemocratic clause in the Powys constitution that places responsibility for all decisions on the cabinet without any need to take account of the views of the full council. An attempt to change it failed because of a combination of mismanagement and a failure of those councillors who sympathised with the proposed change, voting instead according to their political group dictat. That one failure summed up why Powys CC is in such a mess. This brings me to the point of this letter. Unless there is a major change in the way the council functions, a further five years of failure will bring the authority to the edge of bankruptcy and will leave the electorate without essential services. Whilst the problems listed above all need attention, I am focusing on education because our children are our future and if we can put this service right then the lessons can be transferred to other departments. Unfortunately, we cannot rely on the majority of county councillors to act together to solve the problems and it is down to communities to act in partnership with those councillors who will cooperate. Many people think we are powerless but as the 12 communities in the Gwernyfed area demonstrated by forcing the LA to back down over the local high school, we ordinary people can change things but we would need communities across Powys to act together, irrespective of political allegiances or geography to drive the county council to meet its legal obligations towards the electorate Finding solutions I am proposing the setting up of a “Powys Education Reform Movement” (PERM) to persuade the local authority to tackle the problems once and for all. There would be eight core aims for the movement in working to bring about radical changes to the way education is organised in Powys by: 1. As soon as the current council election is over, inviting all the councillors to meet with us in a public meeting to discuss education in Powys. 2. Persuading the local authority to remove the clause from the Powys CC Constitution that forbids the county councillors from having any say in decision making relating to the education service. 3. Persuading the local authority to put a moratorium on any more school closures or partial closures until the new Welsh Government Strategy on Rural Schools is implemented. 4. Persuading the local authority to restructure county hall’s senior education management team and to fill it with experienced education managers who are committed to preserving existing schools, and involving schools and communities openly in discussion about all policy and decisions for change (as will be necessary) in the formative stages, in accordance with Principle 3 of the “Statutory Schools Organisation Code”. 5. Persuading the local authority to set up an external scrutiny panel made up of representatives of head teachers and other school staff, parents and communities, with financial and legal professional input and a system for consulting young people. The terms of reference should include that of ensuring no major decision is made about education until the scrutiny group has examined the proposals, checking any information provided by officers or cabinet to justify argument for a course of action and to check the legal ramifications of any proposed decision. It would be expected that the cabinet, officers across education, financial management and law would cooperate fully with the group. In addition, the group would form its own direct link with the Welsh Government to prevent the LA from misleading it. 6. Persuading the local authority to tackle the backlog of unlawful school budget deficits such as that at Brecon. There are clear pathways to achieve this but it requires direct intervention using the council’s full legal powers as a matter of urgency. Schools in this situation can never fulfil their educational potential until their financial difficulties are resolved. 7. Monitoring current developments in education policy and research to ensure that both the group, community and the local authority are up to date 8. Achieving these goals by the end of the new council term. Membership of the movement Any person with an interest in education could be part of the movement, including, parents, young people aged 16+, school staff, members of communities across Powys, county councillors, community and town councillors. Young people under 16 could have a section within which to communicate according to their age and understanding. There could be an initial membership charge so that there is basic funding available, in due course charitable status could be sought so that grant funds could be attracted, and a committee elected to coordinate activities and act as trustees. Finally My role in this is to just try to act as a catalyst for change, not to run a project at my age! Will you join me in attempting to bring about permanent change in the Education Service in Powys so that the problems are finally resolved, ensure the failed school closure plans of the past are consigned to history and the LEA functions as a genuinely open and transparent Statutory Education Authority, by which I mean no more decisions behind closed doors and councillors not speaking up for our schools in public? If you want to help set up and participate in this tough but important project please email me on the email address: perm9508@gmail.com and if enough people express an interest we can arrange one or more public meetings. JOHN FITZGERALD (Known locally as an old codger! That’s one of the more polite descriptions!)