Matt
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Newwales – why should families etc… in larger homes be penalised by Band C and above and have to pay for those who are in Band A and B properties? Rate payers already have to prop up all the council tax exempt households as it is.
If there would be a rate hike it would fairly have to be across the board. But at the same time I’m sure plenty would be reluctant to pay any extra across the board when so much money is wasted every year – Money that went to Ty Pawb, money that was wasted on legal fees for the Groves and so on and so forth.
Also, the things that were cut back in the difficult decisions, they’d need to be reinstated rather than lost for good.
I’ll pay extra money to the Fire and Rescue Authority though if it means ensuring the long term safety of the pump and firefighter jobs they continuously threaten to axe.
Calling Mike Godwin – your law has been triggered.
P.s. In your write-up how dare you forget Bavarian white sausages, the Bavarian mountain hound, 3 popes, Henry Kissinger and Levi Strauss.
If that’s the case then someone else needs to be in charge. Football managers get quickly sacked from roles when they do poorly, as do Government cabinet members. Seems bizarre at council executive level to keep someone still doing the same thing when they are clueless. It means nothing that they are head of an independent grouping.
Clr Phillips is great at keeping Penycae tidy with his voluntary group of people, dealing with litter, fly tipping and dog fouling – on a highly frequent basis. I know this is at village level, but if he knows a thing or 2 about keeping the place clean I’m sure there’s himself and plenty other councillors who can keep their local wards clean and tidy who would be able to do a better job as Environmental Lead or even just a special delegation towards town cleanliness.
Clr Marc Jones has just posted this:
Well, this is problematic…
• The lead member for litter enforcement says it would take 12-18 months to sort out a replacement service for Kingdom, yet the contract is due to end in 8 months. Does this mean there is no Plan B?
• Sorting out a regional alternative would also take time. But there’s no evidence that Wrexham is talking to Conwy, Flintshire and Denbighshire – who ARE discussing regional collaboration – as are Ynys Môn and Gwynedd.
• We know Kingdom only issued 46 tickets in July (rather than the usual 300 a month). We understand they have not issued a single ticket in September, so WCBC effectively does not have a litter enforcement team.
• The estimated cost of establishing an in-house team does not take account of the income. A council team would keep 100% of the Fixed Penalty Notices handed out.
• Back in 2011, there was an effective dog fouling enforcement team – paying for itself. Kingdom has completely failed to tackle dog fouling.
Kingdom have not done any enforcement in September! A year to sort out a replacement at least.
A more hands on partnership with Coleg Cambria would be a good idea after all it directly affects the quality of 6th form level students they receive from feeder secondary schools in Wrexham.
Wxmbda – learning is the main point of school – but if it’s such a big deal – why at College Level and University level are people allowed to wear what they want and they still learn? Why are the top academics in the world being churned out of US schools where there is largely no dress code. Any dog, monkey or pony can learn rules to get a reward and avoid punishment. Uniforms are part of corporate conformity – the McDonald’s worldview where everyone is the same & works as a cog – perform machine-like repetitive actions. Brilliance & difference isn’t rewarded, it’s frowned upon.
The problem is these ‘uniform’ jobs where everyone wears a dress code and does the same thing from a manual is an industry that is dying out – repeatable tasks – like in factories where robots are on the construction line – service industries are going to be automated and replaced by AI in the next 20-30 years.
We are going to need far more people who are highly skilled in things like programming – a grouping notoriously lax in their dress code that have to explicitly follow rules of a coding language otherwise programmes fail and safety errors occur or large financial losses are incurred. If rule following required conformity to everything in life surely down to what they wear surely all programmers should be forced to wear suits?
Also are children allowed to act like complete buggers at home or in town because they are wearing their own clothes? Do the rules stop applying once you are out of uniform?
I guess that is the case that more often than not the standards improving services need improving themselves! I notice they mentioned some kind of objectives they want to achieve by 2020 but did not really state what those were. I’m always wary of that in terms of PR talk where organisations or even entire countries set out huge goals for 2020 because it sounds like a nice bold memorable number in people’s minds – a good sound bite. With that being less than 18 months away we’ll see if they do start improving local schools.
Also, the reason I mentioned London particularly is because it is the case in Manchester that they are struggling to get the improvement gains in inner city schools that London have with similar mixes of children and many of the reasons I mentioned above are cited to be the issue – shorter improvement programmes, less funding.
I think locally the type of improvement culture amongst children from some families is very low because they have very low expectations due to the background they have come from. But that is surely something that needs to be tackled – we can throw millions at a cultural arts hub that apparently hopes to inspire local artists and performers etc… Of course it’s not doing it yet but that was the intention of making a cultural change.
When you look at the money being put into developing Cambria and Glyndwr they want to attract students from further afield and improve the offering to local students as well – that’s a type of educational culture shift. They’re also trying to build new and improved primary schools – both Welsh and English and expand at that level and update and expand existing ones. So the weak link is at the secondary school level – that’s where kids are getting let down – during the teen ages when they are most impressionable.
Watcher you need the £££ to attract the top level management, teaching and support staff – if you pay peanuts you don’t get the best staff. All our top teachers based locally get poached over the border into England – anyone shines in a place like Rhosnesni and they’ll find a better job offer in England.
To keep them in Rhosnesni It’s almost like giving hazard pay to dangerous jobs as the actual incentive to work in the difficult environment should be there then maybe standards will lift.
Maelor School is a completely different ball park – several local church feeder primary schools in a well to do rural area plus all of the affluent and bright kids bussed in from elsewhere. The Maelor doesn’t have to waste its time and resources forcing kids who don’t want to learn and don’t want to be in school – those kids at the Maelor actually want to be in school – contrasting to those left behind in Rhosnesni.
London is the one really bucking the trend getting results – decent end GCSE grades from those in the most deprived background and the respective schools have received millions in extra funding vs the rest of the UK. Also, instead of their transformational education programmes lasting just a few years like we have in Wales before the money runs out. They have programmes that have been in place for 10 years and they say it takes about that long for any meaningful change to happen for education standards when you have large numbers from deprived backgrounds.
So I guess it’s a combination of everything lack of money, lack of skilled education workers all round, lack of long term support programmes etc…
There’s not a great deal anyone can do about the home environment some parents will never be able to give the kids the motivational, aspirational or help with learning support they need because they’ve come from generation after generation of forgotten underachievers. To break the cycle starts and finishes with the school environment. To suggest children are doomed to fail because their parents and older siblings amount to very little means to impose a rigid class system that we are so desperate to break free of.
Again, worth spending the money at the school level to install better facilities, inspirational teachers. This might make kids want to go to school – perhaps even if it is because it’s better than being at home. Then more might learn something and if it turns out loads more educated pupils who are then capable and self assured enough to go onto college and get jobs then it’ll reduce unemployment and poverty in the area. Then they can be the supportive parents to their kids that their own parents weren’t equipped to be – thus breaking the vicious inter-generational cycle.
If there are 2 things I think they should spend money on its health and education – sadly we are getting short shrift on both round here.
It doesn’t matter how smartly you get everyone dressed – until something is done Wales-wide – our schools are going to continuously underperform and the pupils will continue to be let down even if they are in full military dress with polished gleaming brass and boots.
At some point someone needs to make a massive admission that the Super Schools have colossally damaged secondary education in the middle of town. Especially when the desired effect (promise) was to create 2 schools with larger pupils numbers but of a higher quality educational experience for all who attended. Now, post the special measures pupil numbers have plummeted at Rhosnesni (unsure of situation at Clywedog) because it is such a poor establishment. Many of us who went to St David’s on that site and were proud of it don’t consider our school to even exist anymore as association with Rhosnesni would be a complete mockery.
Once this somewhat scandalous incident is detailed and a line drawn under it – nothing short of an emergency bailout from the WAG will help improve the situation – not just small handouts that haven’t been working, but a multi-million pound stimulus. It’s either that or a whole generation are going to end up underqualified and not set-up for the world of work or life.
We’ve discussed this in several threads (usually with Alun) that until the WAG do something about increasing funding and attracting better quality teachers to replace the broken comprehensive system in Wales (see academies in England) then things are going to continue going downhill.
At the moment tough acting and ordering people about with uniform is just a band aid over a bullet-wound at Rhosnesni. Don’t get me wrong the new head sounds like he means business, but not until he delivers rather than just talks – will I have faith restored in that school. It won’t even be his fault if he doesn’t turn things around (due to the aforementioned issues) – but best of luck to him.
They took the time to update and publish the uniform statement on the site with the image and no-one noticed…
Social media has its uses…
Someone has pointed out that when you actually go on the school website to view uniform policy, several of the pupils pictured at the top of the page are not compliant. This is the main publicity image used across the site.
— Me (@somewherecymru) September 6, 2018
