Members of a council committee that scrutinises education have asked for an update on schools causing concern in Powys.

At a meeting of Powys County Council’s Learning and Skills scrutiny committee on Monday, July 15, councillors and independent lay members were looking ahead on what should be discussed at future meetings.

Committee and lay member Sara Davies said: “We have raised schools causing concern a few times, could we have that put onto the programmes?”

Committee chairman, Conservative Cllr Gwynfor Thomas said: “It is something that was brought up in a pre-meeting as we’re not picking up on them really.

“I’m not sure how to approach this.”

Director of education Richard Jones said: “We have put on the forward work programme the Estyn updates and we could probably look for timely slots for schools which are causing us concern and the work by teams, that is being done by the team.”

Dr Jones added that it could be put on the committee’s forward work plan.

Cllr Thomas said: “We seem to be missing the schools that are causing concern and we need more structure to that.

“It’s a change of reporting structure with the demise of ERW.”

The now-defunct education improvement consortium for mid and south-west Wales, ERW, used to provide help for schools causing concern.

Improvement work now has to be done by the council’s own education department staff.

Both Brecon and Gwernyfed High Schools were put into special measures when they were last inspected by Estyn in late 2022.

Since October 2023, a total of 18 inspections have been carried out by Estyn on Powys primary, secondary and all age schools with the reports published on its website.

Of those, 11 are not subject to any follow-up work, while seven are in Estyn review.

This is seen as the lightest touch follow-up work by Estyn and is about the education watchdog wanting more reassurance about aspects of the school’s work.

Schools in this category include Llanidloes High School, and both Ysgol Bro Caereinion and Ysgol Llanfyllin all age schools.

Since 2022, Estyn have changed the way they grade schools in their reports, moving away from gradings such as “excellent, good, adequate and unsatisfactory.”

While the statutory categories of “special measures” and “significant improvement” are still used.

This means that the type of follow-up work that Estyn notes that should take place following an inspection, such as: focussed improvement, progress review, Estyn review or not in review, are now the indicators of school performance.

This change came about because Estyn want to focus on “how well providers are helping a child to learn, rather than grading.”