Education in the Vale; what does the council do for you?

Councils across the UK have a statutory responsibility to  ensure that every child has a school place but in England local authorities are warning that this might soon be undeliverable. So what does the Council do for you in the Vale of Glamorgan?

The Vale of Glamorgan council has delivered five new schools in under four years, including the £49million Penarth Learning Community. Schools in the Vale have recently been rated as some of the best in Wales

In England all new schools must be “free schools”, outside local authority control, and now they want all existing schools to be Academies, outside Local Authority Control. One effect of this is that if more places are needed there’s nobody to say how it’s going to happen.

The Local Government Association wants councils to be able to open schools themselves and to require academies to expand as needed. Academies make up 60% of secondary schools in England already and decide their own admissions policies, – See more at the Local Government Association and the BBC.

The population bulge which has put primary schools under pressure will start hitting secondary schools this year, according to official figures. Last year councils had to provide 2,740,000 secondary school places, but this will rise to 3,287,000 by 2024, the figures predict, and analysis from the House of Commons library, for the Labour Party, shows one in six mainstream secondary schools are already at or overcapacity.

Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, accused the government of letting children down. “The increase in pupil numbers is not a surprise,” she said, and “The free school experiment has failed in its most important purpose; ensuring every child has a school place.”

Because Education is devolved to the Assembly in Wales the Vale of Glamorgan is able to ensure that there are school places for our children.