Cardiff's LEA is the latest casualty in inspectorate reports. A couple of days ago, Estyn, the welsh inspectorate, classified it as needing "significant improvement", or one step above the bottom, "unsatisfactory."
As this blog endlessly reminds readers, the quality of education, and the ability of anyone to improve it, is in very deep doo-doo, and nobody is taking decisive action.
Because LEAs have consistently been unable to improve the situation, they are claimed to no longer have this responsibility. Quite why we still have 22 LEAs can probably only be explained by some back-room dealings to ensure those in well-paid jobs can get to their pension without too much fuss. Those hoping for a cut or even an abolishing of LEAs altogether, have been disappointed.
But, you may also be disappointed if you apply some thought - never a welcome thing with councils - to how 'consortia' are constituted.
Who are the members? Well, for north Wales, which has come in for particular criticism from Cardiff Bay over the past few months, this is not as readily-determined as it could be. Their current website is full of tosh about their hopes, but precious little is given away as to who does what. A large part of the non-PR stuff seems to be accessible only to members.
What can be deduced from the sparse documents made available to the plebs, is that the consortium is simply a gathering of senior LEA staff from each of the constituent councils.
In other words, the consortium is nothing new at all - it is simply those LEAs pretending that, somehow, as a bigger group, they are different and better, and won't be liable to failure as many of them have been as standalone LEAs.
One could call it a gathering of the failed.
So now you know. Not only have the bigwigs managed to keep their LEAs and perks from the chop, they've shape-shifted into what is in many senses, and quite falsely, being presented to the public as a new way of doing things. But if the same people are in new clothes, what, other than the clothes, has changed?
Just like the welsh TV channel that nobody watches, we're yet again stuck with the same, tired old actors, and a comfortable knowledge that today is as familiar as yesterday. That's education. That's Wales.
