Modernising Education in Denbighshire

Ensuring there are sufficient school places remains a core duty of a Local Authority. The road to school improvement starts, perhaps oddly, with the prediction of numbers on roll and the provision of places. The  Local Authority not only needs to provide enough places for all the young people it is required to educate, but also to ensure a good match between the number of young people and school places to secure good value for money. Getting the stock of schools and access to them ‘right’ creates the conditions for successful teaching and learning.

The prediction of numbers on roll is both a science and an art.  It is a science in as much as there must be good models on which to collect and project pupil numbers and there must be good systems in place with schools, planners and health authorities to gather data.  But considerable judgement needs to be applied to the raw data to provide meaningful forecasts.  Those judgements need to be applied to the migration of pupils, the effect of new housing  and, crucially, the impact of parental preference. Other factors include changes in participation in post-16 education resulting from developments in the 14 to 19 curriculum in both further education colleges and schools, changes in the balance between pupils in mainstream and special settings and flows between maintained and independent sectors. We can show this diagrammatically:

Cambridge Education worked with Denbighshire County Council to help it develop and implement its ‘Modernising Education’ strategy. This involved a holistic review of education provision within the county, and extensive consultation with the school community and those with an interest in education in the county. The remit was wider than demographic analysis and the supply of school places, though school organisation was an intrinsic part of the overall picture.

Cambridge Education provided a report,  a series of recommendations and an action plan for the authority that covered:

• New  policies to be  implemented on:
  • admissions (nursery, primary and secondary)
  • criteria for successful school organisation    
  • criteria for review
• Proposals for change that involved
  • a reorganisation of post 16 education that involved schools and colleges
    creation of all through primary schools, which combine infant and junior schools to minimise disruption
  • establishing federations and area schools as a means of dealing with surplus capacity and curriculum offer within small primary schools
  • a bilingual education strategy (Welsh and English) for the county