HALF termly meetings are being held to help turnaround the fortunes of two Torfaen schools placed in special measures. 

Both Cwmbran High School and Welsh medium Ysgol Gwynllyw, in Pontypool, were placed in the category of schools needing the highest level of support, by education inspectors Estyn, in 2018 and 2019 respectively. 

Andrew Powles, who was appointed deputy chief officer for education at Torfaen County Borough Council in August, and tasked with overhauling the authority’s failing education service, outlined steps being taken at an education scrutiny committee. 

Mr Powles, who previously held the same post with Newport City Council before working on secondment with Torfaen over the summer and joining full time in August, said the council holds termly “Team Around the School” meetings for all schools that have asked for extra help or are identified as needing additional support. 

“For the two schools in special measures, Cwmbran High and Ysgol Gwynllyw, those meetings are held half termly and are also attended by Estyn and the Welsh Government,” Mr Powles told councillors. 

“The Cwmbran High meeting was really constructive and we had Welsh Government and Estyn in the room and we could see what support could be brought in from Welsh Government and it also allowed us to get a direct steer from Estyn on what the school need to build on and what Estyn want to see next.” 

Gwynllyw’s meeting was due to be held today, Friday, October 7.

In March Estyn inspected Torfaen’s education authority and found it to be  “causing significant concern”. It made four headline recommendations; that it improve outcomes for learners especially in secondary schools, strengthen performance management, improve self-evaluation and improvement planning and how they link together and improve strategic leadership of learning and Additional Learning Needs (ALN). 

Dermot McChrystal, the council’s chief education officer, said work had begun on responding to those recommendations immediately within its Post Inspection Action Plan without waiting for further guidance from Estyn and said at its recent two and a half day improvement conference “no significant flaws” had been highlighted. 

The council is currently waiting for Estyn’s formal feedback, via letter, following the conference. 

Mr McChrystal also added that Estyn hadn’t found the council lacked a process of monitoring school performance and gathering and feeding back information from and to headteachers but said “that process needed improving”. He said that included ensuring staff are aware of what is required of them. 

Councillor Colette Thomas said Estyn had also highlighted that the scrutiny committee hasn’t always received information it requires and she wanted to know how that would be improved. 

The education chief said there had been a change in what information on school performance could be shared, which he said is an issue across Wales, but the council does have school development plans and he said it needed to be agreed with the committee what information it required. 

The education overview and scrutiny committee recommended that training is provided for councillors who don’t sit as school governors to help them better understand performance management and also said information on how success is recognised should be made clearer while progress reports should be colour coded to make them easier to follow.