January 9th - Ken Jones

On the 9th January 2012, Professor Ken Jones spoke about local authorities in Education and their size.
He started of the lecture by speaking about the population in Wales and how 50% of the population live in the South and the South East of Wales.

Before 1999 there were 8 local authorities in Wales. However,due to the re-organisation in 1999, there are now 22 Unitary authorities. Democratic Elections are held every four years to choose who will be in the local authorities. All local authorities are democratically accountable through elections held every four years.The Welsh government provide the majority of the funding for the Unitary authorities and all members of the Unitary authorities are members are part of the  Welsh Local Government Association. (Welsh Government, 2011)

Reynolds (2010) explains that the number of pupils in La maintained schools decrease year after year, which can lead to redundancies and closure of schools. However, there are 10 or more schools in Wales that have under 90 pupils, and the smaller the school the more expensive the costs per pupil, which makes the school more expensive to run. The Local authorities do not have enough money to keep the small schools open. (Cost of small primary schools in Wales)

Ken Jones said that in 2006, the PISA (International tests) 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 Efectiveness Framework. The Welsh Assembly Government (2008) say that "The School Efectiveness 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."

I thought this lecture was quite interesting, but dont feel like their was enough information. However, it was quite easy to research my own information. It was quite an interesting lecture.
References -
Welsh Assembly Government (2008), School effectiveness framework, building effective learning communities together. Cardiff: Welsh Assembly Government

Reynolds (2010) retrived 10th April 2012 from Questioning the closure of small schools http://www.clickonwales.org/2010/07/questioning-the-closure-of-small-schools/
Welsh Assembly Government (2011) retrived 10th April 2012 from Unitary Authorities
http://wales.gov.uk/topics/localgovernment/localauthorities/?lang=en - 10/04/12