Closer engagement between the community in Tenby and the town’s secondary school could prove to be key in reversing a decision by the education and training inspectorate Estyn to place Greenhill School into ‘special measures’ last year.

After it was announced in December of last year that Greenhill School had been placed in ‘special measures’ - Pembrokeshire County Council’s cabinet member for education Clr. Guy Woodham said that a further inspection would be carried out after two years before any measures were lifted. Until then support was to be provided by the local authority and Estyn – who will visit the school each term for monitoring – to improve standards and resolve middle management issues.

Poor behaviour and teaching standards were listed amongst reasons for Estyn placing the school in special measures, with improvements not being made quickly enough.

Tenby town council recently offered to facilitate a meeting with the school’s head Ray McGovern, governors and the county’s acting director for children and schools, to offer as much assistance and support for the facility, and look to a way to help staff and students reverse the decision.

At the meeting Mr. McGovern told councillors present that the school had entered a ‘special’ category some time ago, but when Estyn had conducted their progress review, while there had been some signs of improvement, e.g. dealing with the de?cit in the budget, staff morale, and expectations, which had placed the school on a more secure footing - it was felt that not enough progress had been made in certain areas.

He said that while being in ‘special measures’ was where no school wanted to be, it was a double-edged sword as it also brought levels of help and support going forward.

While the ‘Post Inspection Action Plan’ focused mainly on what was required to be done internally, Mr. McGovern felt that the school also needed to re-engage with the town, and had prepared a document based on the mission statement: ‘Community at the heart of the school, and the school at the heart of the community’ - which he felt could help address this with the assistance of the town and the town council.

Points raised included - a ‘passport to employment’ - where a link with local employers to promote work and life related skills could be created to ‘raise students’ aspirations; enhancing the school environment which would look at ways of encouraging students to take an active part in life, and focus on activities to help move away from unhelpful behaviours; public service and volunteering - to help make students part of the community in a structured way through schemes such as - railway station/beach cleaning, and getting involved with things like repairing dry stone walls to develop skills.

Mr. McGovern said that he felt it was important to create a ‘sense of identity’ for the school within the community.

PCC were supporting a training programme developing the ‘excellence in teaching’ framework over a number of days with advisors working with staff on the ‘School Improvement Strategy’; and practitioners were in place to improve quality of teaching, thereby reducing demand for students to go out of the catchment area.

Clr. Laurence Blackhall said that he felt that the suggestions were hugely positive and welcomed the opportunities for a shared endeavour with the community.

PCC’s acting director for children and schools Steven Richards-Downes told the meeting that there were some very positive things happening at the school, and that not all of these such as Greenhill producing some of the best results in English in Wales were celebrated.

He said that PCC were supporting the ‘technical’ stuff, with the school and local authority having action plans to ensure improvements were made, but the question was how to light a fire under the community, to get the positive messages out there and get everyone behind the school.

Sometimes admitted Mr. Richards-Downes, ‘special measures’ could be the right place to be as it enabled the school and PCC to pull the right levers to achieve improvement.

He said that while Greenhill was giving students opportunities to improve literacy, numeracy, communication skills, respect, understanding, and reaction under stress, there were challenges including falls in numbers and struggles to attract teachers.

In relation to staff recruitment ??? were looking at the drive to bring teachers to the area, but that these were challenges that were not unique to Greenhill but faced by heads all over Pembrokeshire.

Clr. Mike Evans commented that, due to the number of students who attended over the years, Cambridge University actually had a Greenhill Society - which was a tremendous success story for the school and town but sadly the negative views of a vocal minority seemed to attract more attention.

Following the meeting, Clr. Laurence Blackhall told his colleagues at Tuesday night’s meeting of the town council that some concrete ideas had been discussed for the school, and that greater engagement with the community was needed to move them forward, to strengthen links between Greenhill and the town.

He suggested forming a small working group to take the ideas forward and set-up a further meeting with staff and governors at the school as soon as possible.