Education chiefs in Powys don’t know how many pupils are being lost over the border to sixth form colleges in England, while the responsibility for finding out where many of the brightest Powys youngsters are going to continue their education has been passed on to secondary school leaders.

A meeting of Powys County Council’s Learning and Skills scrutiny committee on 13 February received a report based on the last summer’s GCSE and A-Level results in the county.

They show that Powys pupils do well at GCSE and results are above the Wales average.

But this performance drops off at A-Level with pupils lagging well behind the national average.

Cllr Angela Davies said: “We know what our pupils do at GCSE – do we track them and know which pupils stay in our schools?

Cllr Gareth E Jones added: “We have one very successful sixth form which is Crickhowell High School – what work is being done by the authority to see what they are doing and if that could be used across the authority?”

He also asked what was being done by the council to find out how many youngsters from Powys were at Shrewsbury and Hereford sixth form colleges.

“I would have though that’s an essential part of data we require,” said Cllr Jones.

Director of Education Dr Richard Jones said: “It’s quite a clunky process it involves the team contacting the colleges and other providers to ask them for the data.

“We need to gather that data before our learners leave Powys.

“It’s really difficult after the event because we are relying on Hereford or Shrewsbury to tell us and tell us accurately.

“We had a change of process last week where we will be asking schools to collect that destination data which should streamline the process and make it more accurate.

Education 14 plus lead officer Chris James said: “There is absolutely no obligation on the colleges across the border to work with us, thankfully we’ve developed good relationships with the majority of them.

“Ultimately if a college doesn’t want to share that data, we have no way of making them do that.

Last year it was revealed that a radical shake-up of post-16 education in Powys is on the horizon,

And this could see all sixth forms in Powys schools axed.

The preferred way would see a sixth form college set up with one board of governors and management team across two sites in Brecon and Newtown.

Similarly, a sixth form college would be based across Welsh medium all through schools at Ysgol Bro Hyddgen in Machynlleth, Bro Caereinion in Llanfair Caereinion and potentially Builth Wells.

The Welsh medium sixth form would also be run separately.

A backlash has already been seen with a “Save our Sixth Form” campaign already underway in Crickhowell.

Further north the sixth forms at Llanfyllin and Llanfair Caereinion all through schools and Welshpool High School are considering working together from next September to provide a broad selection of subjects for pupils under a proposal called Trisgol.