School forced to teach maths in class sizes of 60 due to teacher shortage

A Welsh secondary school has seen class sizes for maths lessons swell to 60 pupils due to a teacher shortage. Governors have been left “begging” for help according to a former top councillor.

Pupils in years seven, eight, and nine at Caldicot Comprehensive are being taught maths in classes of 60 students at a time owing to a national shortage of specialist teachers, according to the head teacher. The situation was highlighted by councillor Rachel Garrick who was a member of the ruling Labour cabinet at Monmouthshire County Council until the beginning of this year. She accused the authority of failing to support its schools.

The comments came after the council’s Conservative opposition group brought a motion asking the council to express “concern” at the UK Labour government’s plan to charge 20% VAT on private school fees. The motion, that also called for the council “to publish plans to mitigate the impact of this policy on Monmouthshire children including providing local school places and supporting children whose education has been disrupted”, was rejected by the Labour-led council. The meeting was told the cabinet “fully supports” Labour’s VAT plan. A consultation on plans to end a tax break for some fee-charging schools in Wales was launched on Monday.

But Cllr Garrick was angered the cabinet member for education painted a positive picture of state education in the county. Cllr Martyn Groucutt said the council has received nine applications for pupils to move from private to its maintained schools which he said was “0.01%” of the child population and Monmouthshire has some 13,000 school places with a surplus capacity of around 2,000 places. He said children transferring would “benefit from a fantastic national curriculum, a shire county that’s pledged to raise standards and provide every child the ability to reach their full potential”. He added: “We would benefit tremendously from children joining the maintained schools from the private sector and a council that gives them just as good, in my opinion, or often better [education] than they get currently.”

A number of Tory and Labour councillors spoke along party lines before Cllr Garrick told members: “I’m wholesale disappointed with standard of this debate.” The Caldicot Castle councillor, who until October last year was responsible for the council’s budget and how it allocates funding, suggested the council has failed to honour commitments to schools.

She said: “I’m disappointed in some of the responses in terms of how many thousands of excess places and everything is wonderful. The reality is I’m receiving emails from chairs of governors begging this council to spend money it has allocated to them to improve their schools and to expand and sending my children to attend a school now teaching mathematics in classes of 60. I don’t think either side of this debate has any legs to stand on.”