AN ACTION plan for a secondary school which needs to pay "urgent attention" to its leadership team will be presented to a council committee today.

The Argus reported last month how Fairwater High School, Cwmbran, came under scrutiny after a profile of the school was presented at a learning communities overview and scrutiny committee meeting.

According to the report there was "an urgent need for action" within Fairwater High School’s leadership team to evaluate the quality of teaching and to work intensively with departments where pupils’ achievement is below expectation.

There was also concern over too many Year 11 students leaving to go onto unemployment.

At the time, headteacher at Fairwater High, David Marshall said: "The detail of this profile will allow us to make improvements within the school much quicker."

Following the profile, the school and Education Service has developed a draft action plan to try and tackle the issues.

Included in this are plans to hold more meetings with parents to outline how they can help support pupils better, plans to provide staff with opportunities to self-evaluate themselves and also proposals to create a middle management staff group to work together to raise the standards of pupils’ learning.

It is also planned to hold a meeting with all parents of Year 11 pupils to explain the importance of their year and their attendance.

The action plan will be discussed at the meeting today before it is considered by school governors.

A refined plan will then be implemented before a progress report of its implementation will be presented to the committee next year.

This is part of a programme, which is a first in Wales, in which profiles of all Torfaen secondary schools will be brought before the committee in a bid to improve learning.