Council leaders refuse to allow work to improve 6th form transport

'Why would the council not look to improve the situation if there's no additional cost?'

A lively Executive Board meeting saw councillors clash over proposals to improve school transport for sixth formers in Wrexham, with councillors accusing the Executive Board of blocking scrutiny and refusing to work with schools to find solutions.

Wrexham pupils are currently at a disadvantage as both Flintshire and Denbighshire do fund post-16 transport, whereas Wrexham made a decision in 2015 to cut funding. Coleg Cambria do fund free transport, leaving 6th forms at Ysgol Morgan Llwyd and The Maelor school in Penley with challenges retaining students. It has particular implications for Welsh-medium education locally.

Cllr Carrie Harper, who chairs the Lifelong Learning scrutiny committee, said: “Wrexham council's Executive Board asked me to bring a report looking at how we can address the challenges pupils are facing in relation to school transport."

"My scrutiny committee has done a lot of work on this. We've had pupils from Ysgol Morgan Llwyd come in to share their experiences as well as the head teachers of both local 6th forms, who have shared details about the current challenges."

"We wanted to further explore what the cost of transport to our 6th forms would be ahead of possible upcoming legislation changes. We also wanted council leaders to allow officers to look at alternative improvements related to current paid transport arrangements. A previous decision of theirs oddly prevented us doing that work, so we made new recommendations to the Executive in a bid to remove the blocks to progress.

"Aside from the cost element, there is an additional problem in that students aren’t even guaranteed a seat on a bus to 6th form even if they pay for it, that is something that could potentially be addressed through re-looking at the current transport structure, which is what scrutiny wanted to explore further."

The Executive Board had already made a decision at a previous meeting that they were not minded to revisit the 2015 funding cut decision and wanted to wait to see the outcome of a Welsh Government review into the legislation.

Cllr Harper added: "When making that decision, they also instructed officers not to do any further work on this issue at all. That's frustrating because it prevents officers looking at solutions that aren’t necessarily about additional funding, it's about a willingness to talk to our headteachers and looking to rejig transport arrangements to ensure pupils can at least be guaranteed a bus seat and can therefore commit to going to our 6th forms."

During the meeting, lead member for Education, Cllr Phil Wynn announced he would be making new recommendations which essentially reiterated the Executive Board's position of not allowing any further work. He proceeded to circulate those recommendations to councillors' emails as the debate was in progress, those recommendations were then passed later in the meeting.

Cllr Harper said: "The response from the council leadership yesterday was incredibly disappointing, especially the complete aboutturn by the lead member forEducation who we'd understood was in support of scrutiny recommendations when they were discussed at committee. 

"On the one hand the Executive tell us repeatedly to ‘do more scrutiny’ and then directly block us from doing precisely that. They tell schools we’re prioritising transition but then refuse to work with them on challenges in that area, even when that doesn’t involve additional funding. Why would the council not look to improve the situation if there's no additional cost?

"I'm not sure what message they think this sends to our local schools or to members who put time and effort into scrutiny but I'd suggest it's not a good one".