A COUNCIL newsletter is a ‘sign of it’s desperation’, school pupils have said.

The newsletter, which relates to the council’s ongoing consultation on secondary education in mid and north Pembrokeshire, publishes an equal number of positive and less positive comments about the council’s plans to overhaul 11-19 education.

The publication was sent out to town and community council clerks for circulation to members and also to all county councillors.

After being contacted by a prominent county councillor who queried the newsletter’s balance, The Herald contacted County Hall and asked whether the distribution of comments within the newsletter reflected the actual balance of comments, for and against the council’s proposal, it had received regarding the consultation.

A council spokesperson confirmed that the comments were NOT representative of responses received by the Council, and told The Herald: “The point that we are making in the newsletter is that we are presenting a range of views and certainly not all are against the council’s proposal. We have not indicated anywhere in the newsletter that this position is equal. We have merely provided examples of the views being received. At its meeting in July, council will be provided with all responses received as part of statutory consultation. At that time Elected Members will be able to gauge for themselves the respective levels of support or opposition to the proposal.”

We spoke to a member of Save our Sixth Forms, the pressure group formed to preserve sixth form education within secondary education in Haverfordwest. They told us: “It is shocking but not surprising that the quotes supporting PCC have been specifically selected and given at least equal weight to those opposed, despite the fact that they are almost certainly heavily out-numbered. This document is a demonstration of how desperate they are becoming. When all of the responses are published as they were last time it will become apparent that the vast majority of responses are against the PCC proposal.”

The continued to point out that the document originated in the department which is responsible for the parlous state of Pembrokeshire’s schools: “We should not forget that this document has been written by an Education Department that has presided over Pembrokeshire’s poor performance on secondary education over many years.”

Questioning whether officers and councillors who had presided over decades of relative failure were in a position to make the best decisions, they said: “The recent fall In standards must question PCC’s ability to select the correct choice for the future and should have alarm bells ringing in councillors’ ears when they come to make a decision that will affect not just their grandchildren but their great grandchildren.”

The spokesperson concluded: “PCC are in grave danger of at best gambling with our children’s future and at worst destroying this county on the altar of a leap in to the transformational unknown. Let us hope that the combined fury of the people of Pembrokeshire combined with the noise of the bells is enough to persuade our elected representatives to put the county’s future before that of Jamie Adams’.”