Secondary school standards risk

A risk that the standard of education in Powys secondary schools is plummeting has been escalated to a council wide strategic register.

Promoting the risk from the education department own register to a council wide one, was agreed at a meeting of the Liberal Democrat/Labour cabinet on Tuesday, March 25.

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It is a response to a number of mediocre Estyn inspection outcomes for secondary schools in the county during the last year or so.

Finance portfolio holder Labour’s Cllr David Thomas (Tawe Uchaf) said: “There is one risk where there is a request for escalation.

“Education services would like to escalate the following risk.

Cllr Thomas read out the risk: “If standards in school leadership and teaching and learning decline in Powys schools, and learners underperform compared to learners in similar schools in Wales, then educational outcomes in Powys will be below local and national expected standards, leading to reduced opportunities for our learners, decreased parent/carer and stakeholder satisfaction, and potential reputational damage.”

Cllr Thomas continued:  “The reasoning behind the escalation is, there has been an increase in the number of secondary and all age schools in Powys falling into an Estyn category.

“This trend indicates that these schools are not meeting the required standards and Powys’s educational vision. ”

“The implications of this increase are significant, as it could lead to a decline in the quality of education provided to pupils, affecting their academic performance and future opportunities.”

Escalating the risk to the council wide register is supposed to “ensure” that the whole cabinet and senior staff have “oversight” of how the risk is managed.

This in in the hope that its impact will reduce over time due to the work being done to lessen its severity.

The cabinet also agreed to drop two risks from the register, as they can now be managed at departmental level.

The first one was around “the failure” of a social care provider.

Adult Social Services now believe they have warning systems in place that will provide an “early alert” to identify social care providers that could fail and allow the department to “respond quickly.”

The second risk being stepped down is risk of being harmed by “higher level of fraud” as people struggle with the cost of living crisis,

The rationale behind this is that fraud awareness training has been taking place and “ongoing monitoring,” will continue.