5. What recent discussions has the Minister had with the Welsh school improvement consortia? OAQ54367

Thank you, Mr Hamilton, for your question. I meet with the regional education consortia annually as part of regular evaluation and improvement sessions. I am due to meet them again this autumn. My director of education meets regularly with each region and provides feedback. I also meet individually with regions to discuss matters of importance when they arise.

I'm grateful to the Minister for that response. She'll recall that a short time ago, the leader of Neath Port Talbot council described the improvement consortium in his area in less than glowing terms. He said that it was set up to improve schools but the opposite had happened: the schools that needed improving haven't, and those schools that were doing well have dipped in improvement. The Association of School and College Leaders said the consortia are duplicating funding and functions provided by the LEAs, and they put a figure of £450 million on the cost of this. When the Minister appeared before the Children, Young People and Education Committee a few months ago, she said that getting money to the school front line is a priority, and if sufficient money isn't getting there, is it not time for this Assembly to do something about it? If we're not getting money to the schools and pupils, isn't it time for this Assembly-created quango of management, consultancy, apparatchiks and buzzwords to be scrapped so that the money can then go directly to local councils who are wholly elected and perhaps in a rather better position to estimate the school community needs in their area?

Presiding Officer, it's disappointing that Mr Hamilton doesn't seem to understand the governance arrangements of regional consortia. The consortia work on behalf of local authorities to lead, orchestrate and co-ordinate the improvements in schools across the region. Local authorities established the regional school improvement service in 2014 under the national model for regional working. Regional consortia, I should stress, are not an additional layer of bureaucracy. Where they follow the national model, they consolidate the school improvement activities of their constituent local authorities and provide them on a regional basis.

I can tell you, Minister, that teachers and headteachers that I meet in Aberconwy continue to regularly question the actual effectiveness and value of the regional consortia. Concerns, indeed, have been raised in the committee during the funding inquiry, and I look forward to a review of the regional consortia. Neath Port Talbot Council voted to leave the educational consortium ERW, and GwE has not yet reached a number of targets in its 2017-20 business plan. These include the need to provide good leadership and management, ensure that schools are well prepared to deliver the new curriculum and guarantee that a value-for-money framework consistently is implemented by all. Those are fundamental basic requirements of any taxpayer-funded body. The latter is impossible for my schools in Aberconwy, as they are actually, as governors in Conwy have stated today, being cut to the bone. Extra money needs to reach our schools and our pupils urgently. So, will you commit to welcoming any potential review of the education consortia in Wales, and will you actually be open and welcome and look at any recommendations that we come up with and work with us, as a committee, to perhaps not have a blinkered view to what the regional consortia are, whether they're good, bad or indifferent? Let's have a look at this once and for all, and let's let them prove themselves to be effective and a good use of taxpayers' money.

Presiding Officer, the Member has clearly missed my written reply to the committee's report, where I have accepted all the recommendations of that report. Rather than welcoming a review, I shall be setting it up.

Question 6 [OAQ54353] is withdrawn. Question 7—Rhianon Passmore.