CHAIR OF GOVONORS LETTER

Dear Mrs Jones

In the light of recent events concerning the leader of NPTCBC, Rob Jones, and comments made in the recording released on Friday 8th March, I am writing to you on behalf of the governing board of Godre’rgraig Primary School. I would like to raise the following concerns regarding the closure of Godre’rgraig Primary’s school site in the village in July 2019, and the subsequent actions of the borough council concerning Godre’rgraig School and its inclusion in the new 3-11 school which has recently completed its consultation period.

I am attaching, with the email containing this letter, my letter to the SIPP team, dated 19th November 2020, outlining my considerable concerns about the school reorganisation proposal, not least, the misleading consultation documents supplied by NPTCBC.

Our concerns start from the time of the announcement that a 3-16 school might be an option for the Pontardawe area, approximately a year before the ‘temporary’ closure of Godre’rgraig School in July 2019. As a governing board, our concerns relate to the overlapping issues of a) the process undertaken which resulted in the Godre’rgraig School site being closed and the school being moved to temporary accommodation with no efforts made since, to return the school to its original site; and b) the intention of the council to include Godre’rgraig in plans for a large 3-11 school achieved through the closure of Llangiwg and Alltwen primary schools as well as permanently closing Godre’rgraig. The recently released recording gives me significant concerns that our early suspicions around the motives for temporarly closing Godre’rgraig school site were not honestly presented to us as a governing body. I have listed our concerns below.

1. We would like to know when the report was commissioned from ESP into the land surrounding Godre’rgraig School. We are concerned about the possibility of a predetermined decision in respect to this. Why did the council wait so long after the Panteg landslip before commissioning the survey? Was it because at the point in 2017/18 when the governing body were first informed of the possibility of our school being included in a 3-16 school, there needed to be a suitable reason for Godre’rgraig school being included in the plan. Given the proposed location for the 3-11 school, the inclusion of Godre’rgraig does not make a great deal of sense given its catchment area. We were already concerned about this at the time of the sudden closure and named this concern. We were told by Rob Jones, that there was no link between the decision to close the school site and plans for a 3-11 school and that ‘all efforts’ would be made to return the school to its original site as soon as possible.
   
2. The school site was closed in July 2019 and temporarily relocated to the grounds of Cwmtawe on the basis of the ESP report. As Chair of Governors, I was informed of a risk but not given the report to read until after I was asked to make a decision regarding the closure of the school site. Rob Jones did an interview with the press before parents and teachers at the school were informed. In this interview, he used extremely emotive language and likened the situation to the Aberfan disaster of 1966. As I’m sure anyone who has had time to digest the ESP reports of June 2019 and March 2020 and the subsequent January 2021 ESP report on the surrounding houses, it is absolutely clear that the two situations are very different from each other.
   
3. As a governing body, we were given the impression we might influence the decision about where to locate the temporary school. However, in reality, all other options than the Cwmtawe site were dismissed. We are now concerned that this was because it was in the interest of the council to relocate the school to Cwmtawe, near where the, at the time yet to be announced, new 3-11 school was to be proposed. We now believe this was so that they could argue that parents were managing to get their children to school and that therefore, the returning of Godre’rgraig School to its original site would not be necessary. I can assure you that our parents are not happy, but were left with very little choice. It is a reflection on the dedication of the headteacher and the teachers at the school, that pupils and parents have adapted and that school continues to function well on its temporary site.
   
4. The final report by ESP on the Godre’rgraig school site and the risks associated with the land behind the school, was publically released in March 2020. This proposed options for remedial safety measures which we assumed would be progressed and quotes secured. To date we are not aware of any costing of remedial measures, any quotes for work, or even any visits to site to explore this further. We wonder if this inertia on this was because the school was always destined to be included in the 3-11 school plan – as such a predetermined decision. We believe that had the measures been costed and actioned, we could have been back at the Godre’rgraig School Graig Road site by now, and the portacabin hire costs could be terminated.
   
5. We are very concerned by the inclusion of Godre’rgraig School in the plan for a 3-11 school in Pontardawe. We strongly believe this does not meet the needs of pupils from the north of the valley in any way. Please see the attached letter sent to the SIPP as part of the consultation for further expansion of this concern.
   
6. We have significant and so far unaddressed concerns about the inaccurate and misleading consultation documents relating the 3-11 school proposal. We understand that according to Welsh Government school reorganisation guidance, consultation documents should contain an accurate reflection of the facts concerning school closure. In this case, the documents simply state that Godre’rgraig School cannot return to its former site. We believe this was a deliberate attempt to mislead the public and to bias the consultation in favour of the predetermined decision to close Godre’rgraig School along with Llangiwg and Alltwen Primary Schools.

These are our concerns regarding Godre’rgraig School and the decisions and actions made over the past four years. In the light of the recent recording, it would appear that Rob Jones does not have the interests of the people and communities he serves at the forefront of his agenda, nor does he respect individual members of the community. He clearly states, in the recently released recording, that if he had his way, ‘all schools would be 3-16’ and we believe this suggests that he had already made his decision in 2019, if not before this time. This is at least a full year before the announcement to create a 3-11 primary school was made public, and the consultation process was started. He also suggests that he is willing to ‘find money down the back of sofas’ to push through things that he would like to push through regardless of whether this is best for the people he is supposed to represent. We are concerned that Godre’rgraig School was temporarily relocated to the Cwmtawe site and then included in the 3-11 primary school plan, in order to facilitate the eventual creation of a 3-16 school here.

We believe that the proposal for a large primary school in Pontardawe is not only failing to prioritise the best interests of pupils and the community, but is also a gross misuse of public money. We now understand that 21st Century Schools funding can be spent on refurbishing and upgrading existing buildings, having previously been told that this was not the case. We believe that this would better serve the primary school pupils of these communities and enable successful local schools to remain open. It is also likely that this would cost significantly less than the estimated £22 million cost of a new large 3-11 primary school.

I would like the points I have raised in this letter to be put before any committee or body responsible for investigating the leadership of NPTCBC and the possibility of inappropriate behaviour by Rob Jones and others at senior level within the council. We would like to see a public inquiry into the 3-16 school plan, and in particular into the biased, misleading and inaccurate consultation documents.

I look forward to reading your response to the points raised.

Yours sincerely
Dr Susie Davies
Chair of Governers
Godre’rgraig Primary School