Action plan for county schools
A WORKING group will be set up to oversee the action plan for improving the quality of learning and teachers in Pembrokeshire’s schools.
An Estyn report following an inspection of Pembrokeshire County Council’s education service published earlier this year which found they were of “significant concern and require follow-up activity”.
The service needs to raise standards in schools, particularly in literacy, numeracy and Welsh second language, improve outcomes for learners, increase the effectiveness of teaching and school leadership improvement and strengthen the quality of evaluation by officers.
Cabinet member for education Cllr Guy Woodham told members of the schools and learning overview and scrutiny committee the report had been due to be brought to the March meeting which was cancelled due to the Covid-19 lockdown.
A further improvement conference with school inspectorate Estyn should also have taken place with an updated action plan available for scrutiny.
“Then Covid-19 came along and the world changed,” he said, as he and interim director of education Steven RichardsDownes presented the fourth version of the action plan, which is awaiting full support from Estyn.
It includes schools setting ambitious targets and ensuring pupils remain on track and better intervention for free school meal pupils, improving quality of training, termly selfassessments and cluster working.
Meetings with the link improvement officer at Estyn have continued, Mr RichardsDownes told members, and Estyn “have seen the genesis of the plan” which “deals with the recommendations as they were laid out by Estyn”.
It includes “operational detail” that would have been carried out face to face but is now being done digitally to improve outcomes and quality of teaching and leadership.
He added two schools had received good Estyn inspection reports, one had been removed from the significant improvement category and four more removed from Estyn review.
Committee chairman Cllr John Davies suggested an improvement group be set up with some of the committee members to assist in assuring the action plan is being met. This proposal was approved.