A senior staff role has been created by Powys County Council’s Education department as part of a response to a scathing report by Welsh education watchdog Estyn, while £400,000 will be diverted to help schools including Ysgol Bro Hyddgen in Machynlleth which is in “need of significant improvement.”

A meeting of Powys County Council’s Finance Panel on 11 September received an update on the performance of the 2025/2026 council budget during the first quarter.

Contained within the report was a request from the Education department for a money transfer of £400,000 from the “School Improvement and Attainment Reserve.”

The report said that the money is requested to: “support schools and the Education service to deliver improvements required following the Estyn inspection of the local authority.”

In March, it was revealed that Estyn had found that the council’s Education department was “causing significant concern.”

Four recommendations had been given to the council to address the problems.

Cllr Danny Bebb asked: “What assurance is there that the £400,000 draw down for Estyn-related school improvements will be effective?”

Director of Education Dr Richard Jones explained that this sum was not to address site security or school maintenance issues, which is being funded from different sources.

Dr Jones said: “That £400,000 will directly fund activity which responds to the outcome of inspection report, and also supports individual schools that are currently placed in a statutory category.”

He said that the department needed to “strengthen the capacity” and bring in new school improvement advisers.

As part of this move, a new head of service role has been created in the department to deal with Additional Learning Need (ALN) and school inclusion.

Dr Jones said: “You’ll be aware that Estyn, in their report, speak about the need for us to balance roles and responsibilities at a senior level within education.

“So, by introducing the Head of ALN and Inclusion, we’ll be able to have greater strategic oversight of ALN in the authority.”

Moving on to schools, Dr Jones said: “A school in a statutory category is required to write a Post-Inspection Action Plan (PIAP) which is approved by the local authority and Estyn.

“That PIAP will have resources aligned to each of the actions required to deliver improvement, and this will fund those actions.”

The schools that will receive help include Machynlleth’s Ysgol Bro Hyddgen all age primary and secondary school – which needs significant improvement following an inspection in November last year.

In January, the Estyn inspection report from that visit to Ysgol Bro Hyddgen said that attendance and teaching quality must be improved, while the current arrangements for safeguarding pupils are a “cause for concern” and “significant health and safety issues” were found on the school’s secondary site.

Earlier this year, a risk that the standard of education in Powys secondary schools is plummeting was escalated to a council wide strategic register to “ensure” that the whole cabinet and senior staff have “oversight” of how the risk is managed.