CALLS have been made for Blaenau Gwent secondary schools to work together to help make improvements.

At a meeting of Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council’s People scrutiny committee on Tuesday, October 18, councillors looked at a number of schools in the county borough that are causing concern.

One of these is Brynmawr Foundation School, which was inspected by Estyn in 2019 and put into special measures.

Since then, the school has been working to address the recommendations it was given by  Estyn – but it remains in monitoring.

The last Estyn report on Brynmawr follows a monitoring visit in July.

Estyn said: “Brynmawr Foundation School is judged to have made insufficient progress in relation to the recommendations following the most recent core inspection.

“As a result, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education and Training in Wales is maintaining the level of follow-up activity and will re-visit the school in around four-six months’ time to monitor progress against the recommendations.”

But councillors were told that Abertillery Learning Community – which was put into Estyn’s category of “school requiring significant improvement” back in 2018, had been taken off that list earlier this year,

Director of education Lynn Phillips updated councillors and told them that a “multi-agency” support meeting was taking place in Brynmawr which included Estyn inspectors.

On Brynmawr, Mr Phillips said: “From the evidence seen, there is still work to be done at the school but it’s making progress against recommendations.

“We want to make sure that the pace of improvement does progress.”

He added that Cardiff High School is helping Brynmawr on its”improvement journey.”

Cllr Keith Chaplin said: “As a former governor I understand the extent of the problems it’s pleasing to see the turnaround at Abertillery.

“With regards to Brynmawr is there anything that can be learnt from Abertillery?

“I see they are pairing up with Cardiff High School but given we have a school on the doorstep that’s done that turnaround, I’m just wondering about collaboration.

“It was four years for Abertillery from the Estyn inspection.

“What is a realistic time scale for turning things around?”

Mr Phillips said: “To get to a situation where the regulators and inspectors are confident does take time.

“In particular some of the work being done (at Brynmawr) from a governance perspective is really encouraging.

“The chair of governors at Brynmawr was a previous chair of governors at Abertillery and was part of their learning journey.

“I’m hoping that some of those experiences can be disseminated across the school.”

It is expected the report will be discussed at a meeting of the Blaenau Gwent Cabinet later this month.