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Bridgend Council’s Education & Youth Services Committee will be updated today on work to improve school performance in the county (pdf).
Following a Welsh Government review, in September 2025, Bridgend Council took on greater responsibility for school improvement from the Central South Consortium. This is the first update provided to the scrutiny committee since that happened.
Changes result in more improvement staff focused solely on Bridgend
Since the change, the equivalent of four full-time staff (called “improvement partners”) have been deployed to school improvement tasks. Under the old model, this work was spread across all local authorities in the consortium area, and none of them worked solely with Bridgend’s schools.
The job of the improvement partners is to help schools identify what needs improvement and collect the information needed to monitor those improvements. If a noticeable decline in standards is identified, enhanced support is offered. This work sets deadlines and provides extra support from the Council.
The Central South Consortium still exists, but its remit has been cut back to providing professional development to teaching staff and supporting curriculum development.
Once a term, the leaders of secondary schools hold a “TeachMeet” to discuss common problems, sometimes focused on specific subjects (i.e. science).
Primary and secondary schools could work more closely together in the future
Bridgend Council is developing a new three-year strategic education plan, which will come into effect from the autumn term 2026.
This is set to include the development of “clusters”, whereby primary and secondary schools work more closely together to smooth the transition between the two for pupils.
In terms of outcomes, the evidence points to Bridgend’s schools punching above their weight.
For the last three years (pdf), schools in Bridgend have generally performed at or above the Welsh average across the board. This is despite Bridgend having the fifth highest percentage of pupils eligible for free school meals.
However, while Bridgend also has a lower proportion of pupils leaving school with no qualifications, this has been on a disappointingly upward trend since 2023.
