THE HERALD has seen a letter from the Council’s education department regarding its eleventh hour cancellation of a meeting between Kate Evans-Hughes, the local authority’s recently appointed Director of Education, and the School Councils of Tasker-Milward and Sir Thomas Picton School.

Ms Evans-Hughes, whose conduct during the consultation has been the subject of complaints to the local authority, cancelled a meeting with members of the schools’ pupil bodies due to take place on March 15 and Prendergast Archives Centre.

While school students were disappointed at the late cancellation of the meeting and the thwarting of their chance to let their views be known to the person with ultimate responsibility for ignoring them, the content of the communication to the schools telling them of the cancellation has raised yet more questions about the Council’s cavalier approach to its legal responsibilities.

The letter, signed by Huw Jones, Professional Officer, Planning Places & Admissions at County Hall, states that. ‘It is considered that there is little purpose in holding further specific events to ascertain the views of pupils on the Council’s proposals for Haverfordwest, particularly as we already have sufficient evidence of their views from previous proposals’.

However, that letter represents either a deliberate or negligent omission of one salient fact that appears at the head of every page of the Council’s current and ongoing consultation; namely, ‘Please note: this consultation supersedes all previous statutory consultation undertaken in relation to secondary school reorganisation in Haverfordwest. Responses previous consultations will not be reconsidered’.

In other words the Council, is telling students it has no need to consult with them because it has their previous responses which it will not consider.

The apparent complete contempt for the views of students is as nothing, however, with the very clear contempt that the Council has for the Code it is supposed to be following in relation to ascertaining pupils’ views. Those rules provide that Pembrokeshire County Council MUST make suitable arrangements to consult with pupils of any affected school… and, where possible, with children and young people who are likely to attend those schools.

As a minimum, this must include consultation with the school councils of the affected schools, but should also include consultation with individual learners where this is appropriate and practicable. Governing bodies must help facilitate this aspect of the consultation’.

At the very least, the letter from the Council to head teachers about the consultation with pupils is a gross misstatement of the position with the potential to mislead pupils that their responses are no longer required. At the very worst, the letter from the Council to head teachers about the consultation with pupils is a deliberate attempt to mislead both pupils and schools as to the terms of the consultation and pupils’ participation in it.

In either the event the breach of Code is clear and, should the Council elect to proceed with the consultation in spite of the breach, it lays itself open to a legal challenge on the basis of that breach.

The Herald invited a comment from the Director of Education and/or the Head of Legal Services asking for clarification of how the Council is able to reconcile Huw Jones’s email with either the content of the Code or the content of its own consultation document.

A spokesperson told us: ‘In accordance with the School Organisation Code, the Council has made suitable arrangements to consult with pupils, and the School Councils of all affected schools have been invited to respond to the current consultation on the proposal to reorganise secondary education provision in Haverfordwest. There is, however, no requirement to hold consultation meetings.

‘All responses from previous consultations have been declared null and void and will not form part of any evidence presented to Council.

‘The Council is committed to securing the views of all stakeholders and their responses will be included when the Consultation Report is considered by Council. This will clearly show whether young people have engaged in the process’.

We responded and pointed out that the response completely ignored the fact the letter said the Council did not need to meet with pupils as it already knew what their views were from previous consultations, even though it now said it would disregard them in ongoing exercise.

We received no reply.