OVER-CAPACITY has not so much promoted answers as acted as a stimulus for even more over-capacity.

There are proposals for a new Welsh medium school, a new pupil support centre, discussions on a sixth form centre and now the approval by the Welsh Government of proposals for a new status for Ysgol Dewi Sant.

Arithmetic has suddenly taken on a reverse significance –– you reduce by addition, and hope that funding is made available.

However the fundamental disequilibrium and wider economic restraints remain active, and we are all left to speculate which two secondary schools face closure in the short to medium term, in order to bring the budget into equilibrium, especially as Ysgol Dewi Sant has been guaranteed a reprieve from this process.

Something is going to have to give in what up until now has been a policy of addition rather than subtraction.

Until there is a conclusive statement setting down all secondary education needs and objectives as a a complete entity, and an attempt to reconcile these needs with what is available, we shall have no clear idea of where we are going.

All the county council have achieved so far is to allow itself to be boxed in, with fewer and fewer options available, both to respond to the fiscal challenge of significant over-capacity and to reverse the alarming decline in its schools’ performance.

You do wonder if the Cabinet Secretary for Education would have done better to call in all the proposals rather than continue with the present uneven piecemeal development.

PHILIP CLARKE

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