Concerns raised over class sizes at comprehensive school

Twm Owen, local democracy reporter

A former senior councillor has claimed school governors are “begging” for help and hit out over mathematics classes with 60 pupils.

Councillor Rachel Garrick, who had been a member of the ruling Labour cabinet at Monmouthshire County Council until the beginning of this year, accused it of failing to support its schools.

She raised the size of maths classes at Caldicot Comprehensive where the headteacher has said it is teaching pupils in the first three years of secondary education in classes of 60 in response to a national shortage of specialist teachers.

The comments came after the council’s Conservative opposition group brought a motion asking the council to express “concern” at the Westminster Labour government’s plan to charge 20 per cent VAT on private school fees.

The motion, that also called for the council “to publish plans to mitigate the impact of this policy on Monmouthshire children including providing local school places and supporting children whose education has been disrupted,” was rejected by the Labour led council. The meeting was told the cabinet “fully supports” Labour’s VAT plan.

Angered

But Cllr Garrick was angered the cabinet member for education painted a positive picture of state education in the county.

Cllr Martyn Groucutt said the council has received nine applications for pupils to move from private to its maintained schools which he said was “0.01 per cent” of the child population and Monmouthshire has some 13,000 school places with a surplus capacity of around 2,000 places.

He said children transferring would “benefit from a fantastic national curriculum, a shire county that’s pledged to raise standards and provide every child the ability to reach their full potential.

“We would benefit tremendously from children joining the maintained schools from the private sector and a council that gives them just as good, in my opinion, or often better (education) than they get currently.”

A number of Tory and Labour councillors spoke along party lines, before Cllr Garrick told members: “I’m wholesale disappointed with standard of this debate.”

The Caldicot Castle councillor, who until October last year was responsible for the council’s budget and how it allocates funding, suggested the council has failed to honour commitments to schools.

Disappointed 

She said: “I’m disappointed in some of the responses, in terms of how many thousands of excess places and everything is wonderful. The reality is I’m receiving emails from chairs of governors begging this council to spend money it has allocated to them to improve their schools and to expand, and sending my children to attend a school now teaching mathematics in classes of 60. I don’t think either side of this debate has any legs to stand on.”

Conservative group leader Cllr Richard John said 12 per cent of Monmouthshire children are educated in the private sector, which is double the national average, meaning the policy could have “far more impact” in the county.

The Trellech councillor also questioned if the council’s representative on the governing body of Monmouth Haberdashers had “stood up” for the private school, which he described as one of the county’s largest employers with 400 staff.

Cllr John said: “Education policy should be what’s best for children not what is best for the Labour Party and keeping hard core Corbynistas in the Labour tent.