Meeting the challenge of education IN response to Peter Lewis: Thank you for your open letter dated March 24. The tone of your letter is unfortunate in seeking to put pressure on myself as an individual, I can assure you that it will cut little sway with myself and is frankly unbecoming.

We have a huge challenge in providing effective secondary education in Haverfordwest for ALL pupils. You acknowledge the current underperformance based on outcomes for children at Key Stage 4, which must be improved. Indeed the improvement is well established in a number of other secondary schools in Pembrokeshire. Our role is to support and challenge but the responsibility for teaching and learning rightly sits with the individual schools’ management with oversight from their respective governing bodies.

I take exception to the suggestion that I have deceived anyone. My own views were initially considerably different to the current proposal and have been shaped by discussions with stakeholders.

Dealing with your questions in order: The Welsh Office would not allow an 11-18 school (now disputed): The Director for Children & Schools wrote to the Deputy Director at WG to seek his views.

This cannot be construed as having “sought and gained … support”. It is now apparent that the views expressed by the Deputy Director were his own and that since then, WG has confirmed its stance.

That if we did not agree to the proposal we would lose the £75 million (patently untrue): Due to the deadline date, there is a risk of losing some of the £75m funding.

The council did not have the £1 million to build an access road to the STP site. Recent balance sheets show this to be untrue: 21C funding can only be used for works within a school’s boundary. An access road to STP would cross other property which would require funding from the council’s capital programme.

That you had the £75 million needed. In fact you have to borrow £50 million: This matter was raised by Cllr D Bryan in full council on December 10, 2015. Full responseswere provided.

This matter is also fully covered in the annual budget reports approved by council.

That many councillors did not have the right to speak or vote, yet all of a sudden that has been reversed.

Is this because the rules have changed or because we have a new Monitoring Officer? There are now very few members who are unable to vote on the secondary school reorganisation in Haverfordwest; ultimately it is for each member to consider whether they have a personal and prejudicial interest under the Code of Conduct for members. If they feel they do have an interest, they have the right to make an application for dispensation to the Standards Committee.

You must admit that you are failing miserably and nowhere is this more so than in the two schools nearest to your office: It can be argued that the schools themselves are certainly not thriving: Tasker Milward in Estyn Special Measures (Red category) and STP in Estyn Monitoring and Amber in terms of national categorisation.

The School Standards and Framework Act 1998 states that ‘the conduct of a maintained school shall be under the direction of the school’s governing body. The governing body shall conduct the school with a view to promoting high standards of educational achievement at the school’.

The local authority does not blame the teachers. However, the governing bodies cannot deny their responsibility It is the governing body and school leaders who are responsible for monitoring and securing improved standards through their arrangements for performance management of teachers and setting targets for improvement. I have recognised for some time your particular interest in Tasker Milward School.

I can appreciate why you would be concerned about the future arrangements in light of your personal connection with the school and its acting headteacher, about which you may have chosen to declare an interest. A Management Board has been established to help the school. The council’s Section 151 Officer could have removed responsibility for the school budget from the school, but chose not to. It cannot be ignored that Tasker Milward has a challenging budget, accountability for which sits fairly and squarely with the school.

We resent this abdication of your responsibility and resent even more the fact that you place the blame for your own neglect on good honest professionals whose future prospects may well be blighted by your indiscriminate attacks: It is essential that we remind ourselves that teachers and senior leaders in schools are responsible for the GCSE outcomes (L2i) that are adrift by 18%-25% less than the highest performing schools in the respective Free School Meals groups across ERW, and this is simply not good enough for the children of Haverfordwest. I am going to reiterate my previous comment to ensure there is no misunderstanding, that our role is to support and challenge but the responsibility for teaching and learning rightly sits with the individual schools’ management with oversight from their respective governing bodies.

We as a council have a decision to make in addressing the future needs of young people. I will listen to the evidence put forward and will base my decision without fear or favour. I have regard to public opinion but this is not a referendum, we have been elected tolead our community, to assess evidence and make decisions that may on occasions be terribly unpopular but that we believe will deliver excellent outcomes for all children. I can understand that change is never popular, but burying our heads in the sand and expecting a simple amalgamation of two underperforming schools to bring about substantial and sustained improvement is questionable in the extreme.

Your previous letters to the Western Telegraph seek to influence the electorate of my ward to withdraw their support for myself at the next election. That will be their prerogative and something I would fully accept should that come to pass. I will not however be influenced in my decision making by such a hypothesis.

CLLR JAMIE ADAMS

Leader

Pembrokeshire County Council