The National Education Union (NEU) is calling for a radical overhaul of the school improvement consortia, which cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds and fund advisors to support schools to drive up standards.
The union is calling time on these bodies and wants a working party of serving teachers and headteachers to decide on an alternative.
It says their members’ health is being affected by the pressure exerted by education consultants and challenge advisors tasked to find ways for schools to get better results.
The four school improvement consortia, created by the Welsh government and launched in 2012, are funded by grants, including the Pupils Development Grant, and the 22 local education authorities they assist, the union said.
But a motion going to the NEU Cymru’s first annual conference – which was postponed due to storm Emma – says the money is not being well spent at a time when budgets are squeezed and teachers are being made redundant. The motion will now be heard at a re-scheduled conference later this year.
The motion asks delegates to agree: “Conference Cymru calls on the union to demand that the Welsh government undertakes an impact assessment of the costs, benefits and risks associated with each of the regional consortia.
“This should not just be an Estyn report but a complete in-depth analysis possibly under the auspices of the Wales Audit Office and the Children, Young People and Education Committee.”
It goes on to ask the conference to note how pressure from the consortia affects teachers’ health and asks members to agree: “Conference Cymru is of the view that we have to ‘call time’ on the regional consortia as presently constituted, for the health of our members and resolves that the union in Wales shall set up a working party made up of serving teacher/headteacher members, with the brief to formulate an alternative more cost-effective structure to Regional Consortia.”
It goes on: “Conference Cymru further believes that the level of expenditure on challenge advisor salaries and the bureaucracy of regional consortia, at a time when the underfunding in schools is leading to teacher redundancies, is unacceptable. Wales’ local authorities are not getting value for money from the consortia.”
The Welsh government is currently reviewing the performance of the consortia. Ahead of the Welsh Assembly election, three of Wales’ main political parties – the Welsh Lib Dems, Welsh Conservatives and Plaid Cymru – all pledged to scrap the consortia if they won power. Wales’ education secretary Kirsty Williams, who is the only Liberal Democrat in a Labour government in Wales, has agreed to look at their performance before coming to a firm decision.