What is ED - Ken Jones

Ken Jones

Our Guest lecturer for the 9^th January was Professor Ken Jones. In this lecture he spoke about the local authorities in education and issues with their size and capacity. Children Act 2004 states ‘A local education authority (LEA) is a local authority in England and Wales that has responsibility for education within its jurisdiction.’ He began the lecture by talking about the population in Wales and how 50% of the population lives in the South and the South East of Wales.

There are currently twenty two local education authorities in Wales. Prior to the re-organisation in 1999 there were only 8 local authorities in Wales. In England, authorities are divided up into district councils which differ from Welsh authorities as they are ‘on a more local level, community and town councils provide services in their immediate areas.’ (Welsh government).

Democratic elections are held every four years to decide who has a place in each local authority. Welsh Government states ‘Local authorities have a cabinet-style executive with the dominant political group or coalition making decisions under the scrutiny of the council as a whole.’ Welsh Unitary authorities spend up to seven million year; the majority of it is paid by the Welsh Government with council tax making up the remainder of the bill.

Number’s of pupils in La maintained schools decrease year after year, which unfortunately can lead to redundancies and closure of schools. There are a number of schools in Wales that have fewer than 90 pupils who attend and the smaller the school is the more expensive it becomes to fund every child , this makes the school more expensive to run. The Local authorities have not got enough money to keep these particular small schools open. (Cost of small primary schools in Wales)

In 2006, the PISA confirmed that Wales had made progress, compared to other countries, but they needed to do even better. Due to this, the Welsh Assembly Government introduced the School Effectiveness Framework. The Welsh Assembly Government say that "The School Effectiveness Programme will coordinate all of the good work that is already being carried out in order to improve learning and wellbeing for all of our school aged children and young people in Wales." They also say that "The Framework describes the key characteristics required to build on existing good practice and improve children’s and young people’s learning and wellbeing throughout Wales, and each partner’s contribution to securing that."

References - http://wales.gov.uk/topics/educationandskills/publications/guidance/schooleffectivenessframework/?lang=en - 16/03/12http://www.sefcymru.org/eng/sef-p2-home/sef-p2-about-sef/sef-p2-about-sef-2/sef-p2-sef-doc.htm - 16/03/12http://wales.gov.uk/topics/localgovernment/localauthorities/?lang=en - 16/03/12