Cardiff Council Wrong on Whitchurch Schools

Cardiff Council’s proposals to reorganise schools in Whitchurch in my constituency are based on inaccurate information and demonstrate a worrying lack of understanding about our local education system.

At a public meeting at the high school last night the council officers’ performance (in the absence of any of the Executive members of the council) was lamentable. They struggled to explain the impact of reducing the high school from a 12 to a 9 form entry school and the potential ability to deliver all that they do now.

The document setting out their case, and which is the basis of the statutory consultation process, relies on pupil projection figures which the council has since corrected.

In 2008 the council told the Assembly Government that the pupil projection figure for 2014 for Eglwys Newydd was 320 and for Eglwys Wen 282. However figures given this year are 343 and 295 respectively. In fact all the council’s figures for these two schools have had to be revised since 2006, demonstrating the upward birthrate trend. On a matter of law I am not sure what the legal requirements are for the accuracy of data used in a statutory consultation process, but I intend finding out.

Figures aside, I see this process as an attack on good schools, a way of manipulating figures to support other less popular schools. I fail to see how schools which lack strong local parental support can be improved just by forcing their children to attend them.

We have an on-line petition to support our Whitchurch schools at: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/supportwhitchurchschools/

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 11:54 am and is filed under Constituency matters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Cardiff Council Wrong on Whitchurch Schools”

  1. David Griffin Says:
    November 4th, 2009 at 12:16 pm

    They say the “problem” this school reorganisation is supposedly fixing is the mismatch between capacity and catchment area. But this is not actually a problem. Who is actually complaining about that ?
    Who is asking their elected representatives to spend £9M solving that ?

    On a practical matter, option 1 will result in a split site primary school with some kids in portakabins on the old Eglwys Newydd site. How on earth can that be as good or better than what they have now at the excellent schools ?