A town council has publicly announced its opposition to plans being considered by their counterparts at county level to close a sixth form college as part of an education review.

Powys County Council is currently reviewing options for post-16 education across the county, with one of the options including bringing all provision in South Powys to Brecon.

This would result in the closure of the Sixth Form at Crickhowell High School if the idea was to be accepted, and the local council has taken to social media to announce its opposition.

“Crickhowell Town Council strongly opposes this and believes the closure of our Sixth Form at Crickhowell High School would be devastating for our town,” a spokesperson said.

“[It] would not solve the problems facing education in South Powys. We believe there are far better ways to raise educational standards than dismantling the most successful Sixth Form on Powys.”

The Town Council will be hosting a community engagement event on the evening of Monday 30th June in the town’s Clarence Hall, starting at 5.30pm.

The announcement comes after Powys County Council heard that many of its brightest students were leaving the area to study inside neighbouring authorities, including those over the border in England.

The preferred option already backed by council officers could see all English medium school sixth forms vanish – in favour of two specialist sixth form schools to be based in Brecon and Newtown, while Welsh medium secondary schools would also join forces and have one separate sixth form operation across potentially three campuses.

This preferred option has already come in for heavy criticism with many believing it would accelerate the exodus of pupils our of Powys.

At that time, it was estimated that up to 500 youngsters from Powys were leaving the county daily to continue their education in Shrewsbury, Hereford, Cheshire, Denbighshire, Neath Port Talbot, and elsewhere.

At a meeting of Powys County Council’s Learning and Skills scrutiny committee on Monday, June 16th, councillors and lay members received a report on school standards and improvement.

Cllr Gareth E Jones (Powys Independents) said: “Have you done any work around the significant number of learners that are going out of county for their post-16 education to Hereford, Shrewsbury and Merthyr.

“What impact do those learners going out of county have on the overall performance of post-16?

“My guess would be that better quality learners go out of county and if they had stayed our overall performance may be better.”

Head of school improvement and learning Anwen Orrells said: “You would be correct in assuming that the more able are the ones that are leaving.”

She said that the council knew “how many” post-16 pupils were out of county but didn’t have details of their results from last summer.

When it comes to A-Level results, Powys come in below the all Wales average in five of six results categories.

Cllr James Gibson-Watt (Liberal Democrat) stood down as council leader last month but has stayed on in the cabinet to start off the post-16 education review.