Change to age at which Mid Wales children start primary school

Powys County Council's cabinet has agreed to amend primary and infant school admission arrangements from the start of the 2017/18 school year.

The decision means that in future, children will start school in the September after their fourth birthday - currently they can start school at the beginning of the term in which they have their fourth birthday.

All children would be admitted in to school at the start of the autumn term in September

The revised arrangements would start for the commencement of the 2017/18 school year in September 2017

Additional hours of free pre-school provision will be available to parents.

The change could lead to job losses in the primary schools across the county, some councillors have said.

Councillor Arwel Jones, cabinet member for schools, said: "There's no secret that we are proposing this revised policy to help in our bid to meet the £27m budget savings target over the next three financial years.

"Current calculations indicate that these changes will provide efficiencies of £1.2m every year.

"This decision will bring us in line with the majority of other councils in England and Wales where children start school in the September after their fourth birthday."

Chairman of the people scrutiny committee, Councillor David Jones, said he hoped the extra hours of free pre-school provision could be given in nursery settings which full time working parents already use, otherwise they may not be able to access it.

He also asked had any work been done to identify which schools may lose teaching jobs because of this change in admission ages.

Councillor Aled Davies said the change in admission ages could lead to 60 primary school teachers losing their jobs.

The county council said it would be looking to redeploy teachers and any redundancy costs would come out of a centrally held budget.

Councillor William Powell asked the cabinet to defer a decision on the matter for 12 months to assess more of the impacts and to give families time to organise their own situations.

But Councillor Wynne Jones said this issue had gone through the budget process, board seminars and full council and the simple fact was that if the cabinet did not go ahead with it or delayed it, it would have a major impact on the council's budget.

"This is austerity, this is what austerity looks like," he said.

Councillor Avril York said in the consultation documents 80 per cent of respondents said they did not want this change in admission ages but she said on social media the debate was quite different and some older parents were saying they felt children now start education too young and other authorities are doing it.

Members unanimously agreed to change the age of admission.