Senior Councillor Explains Why Blaenau Gwent’s Cabinet Ignored Scrutiny Committee’s Advice on Education Policy Changes

A SENIOR councillor has explained why Blaenau Gwent’s Cabinet ignored advice from a scrutiny committee to postpone making changes to education policies.
At a Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council Cabinet meeting in October, councillors voted to makwe tweaks to policies on Inclusion and Additional Learning Needs.
This is despite headteachers not feeding into the consultation process due to industrial action.
Earlier this year and is the NAHT (National Association of Headteachers) balloted members on strike action over pay and funding and 95 per cent voted in favour of action short of strike known as ASOS.
This limits the work headteachers and school leaders can do and means they will refuse taking part in surveys, consultations and meetings with the Welsh Government and local authorities.
At a meeting in September the council’s Place scrutiny committee reviewed the changes and highlighted a concern that headteachers had not been part of the discussions.
Place scrutiny committee chairman, Labour’s Cllr Tommy Smith told the Cabinet that his committee wanted the policy changes to be postponed until consultation with headteachers had taken place.
At the Place scrutiny committee meeting on Monday, November 13, Cllr Sue Edmunds the Labour cabinet member for education addressed councillors to explain her reasons for going against their advice.
Cllr Edmunds said:  “I wasn’t trying to undermine the work that you do but there are a number of issues surrounding the level of consultation that had not been properly communicated to the committee.
“This led to a misunderstanding which would impact on the education directorate’s ability to perform its statutory duties.
“Those issues are the ASOS which is still having a detrimental effect on primary (schools) especially.”
“There was an impression that consultation had not been offered.”
Cllr Edmunds told the committee that the way the council had tried to “circumvent” ASOS to get headteachers views on the proposal and this had not been made “clear” to the committee.
She explained that the council had been “very mindful” of new policies coming from the Welsh Government and the need for the council to make sure it is legally “in line” with them.
Cllr Edmunds added that a Microsoft Teams channel was set up and the draft policies were uploaded there for headteachers to read and provide their views in the belief this would not be “against” ASOS.
Cllr Edmunds stressed that the council’s legal responsibility to children with ALN should not be “hindered” by industrial action.
Cllr Edmunds said: “There’s been a series of events that could have been better communicated to scrutiny and had they been the option for recommendation would have been a positive one.”
She added that the line of communication in future need to be “better” and more “robust.”
Committee chairman, Labour’s Cllr Tommy Smith said: “Communication is key and it needed to be better.”
“We want to engage with schools as much as we can.”
A briefing session on ASOS will be held so that councillors understand what this type of industrial action means. ‌​‌​‌​​​‍‌​‌​​‌‌‌‍‌​‌‌​​‌​‍‌​‌‌‌​‌‌‍‌​‌‌‌‌​​