Staff ‘determined’ to improve school

THE head teacher of a Maesteg school placed in special measures has spoken of the difficulty of balancing staff wellbeing in the past 18 months as ongoing inspections fail to observe the necessary progress.

Plasnewydd Primary School has yet to come out of special measures with inspectors concerned about standards in reading, writing and mathematics and the quality of teaching and assessment at Key Stage 2, among other issues.

In May, the school was issued with a “schools causing concern” warning notice by the local authority while in June, Estyn said the school still required special measures.

During a Bridgend County Borough Council scrutiny committee meeting, head teacher Eleanor Williams told councillors: “I don’t know if you can imagine how tricky it’s been balancing staff wellbeing with the battering that we have had.

“To the credit of the staff, they all keep coming in. There have been many schools in this position and staff have left – my staff are determined we will come out of this.”

She said progress was being made with literacy standards improving for many, adding the most important thing was to embed new ways of working at the school.

Chairman of governors Andy Harding, who joined just over a year ago, said there had been a lot of changes taking place on the governing body.

He said: “When I joined it was quite small and had quite a few vacancies.

“Quite a few governors had been on the body for some time but over the last year a lot of new people have come in and a lot of the older ones have left.”

He told councillors he was doing a skills audit with governors having undergone training and more being planned in areas such as speaking with confidence and assertiveness, to ensure the governing body was fit for purpose.

The acting managing director of the school improvement organisation Central South Consortium Andrew Williams said the package put in place at the school was one of the largest it had ever created in the region, with a range of senior leads in the school, two challenge advisers and a strategy of monitoring usually rolled out in secondary schools.

However, councillors raised concerns over the lack of progress being made for the school to still require special measures.

Councillor Amanda Williams said rather than high-level management programmes, children just needed to learn the basics, such as how to read.

Councillors also raised wider issues relating to school governing bodies in the county where “ineffectual” governors were able to sit on more than one body.

Bridgend council’s education director Lindsay Harvey said the local authority was looking at policies and procedures to do with school governors and would discuss issues raised at the Bridgend Governors Association.

Estyn is due to inspect Plasnewydd again on October 21.