“Local authorities are not allowed to open new schools”
What Steven asked Tracy Coombs, Medway Council Portfolio Holder for Education
Cllr Tracy Coombs was first elected as a Medway councillor for Watling ward in May 2023 and was immediately given a Cabinet role as Portfolio Holder for Education. Steven went to Gun Wharf and sat down with her to discuss what brought her to Medway, the challenge of class sizes, and the most trouble she got into at school.
What is your position within Medway Council's Cabinet?
I am the Portfolio Holder for Education, and since July, I've had SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) added to my portfolio after we had three cabinet members, who were elected to parliament, stand down, and we had a little move around.
What does that practically mean? What is your involvement in education and SEND in Medway?
It's a largely strategic role, so it covers a lot of things. Everything from thinking ahead to how many school places we'll need in the coming years, where we're going to need those school places, and you've got to think a long way ahead for these things because if it means building a new school clearly, there's quite a long build-up period to that being open and new children being able to go on roles. It's thinking ahead with things like that. I oversee early years, further and higher education, Medway adult education, looking at standards in schools, looking at the workforce, that we've got enough childcare places for people who need it. We look at school transport. It's a really wide-ranging remit as far as schools are concerned. On the SEND side of things, that's a really important role. We work very closely with Parent Carers Forum, we work closely with Health and various other partners, trying to make sure that we have got the right provision for our children and young people in Medway who've got special educational needs and disabilities. That means making sure that we've got enough school places for them, that they're the right type of school places. Not every child with SEND should be in a special school, nor necessarily do the parents want them to be in a special school. It's making sure also that the mainstream schools are supported in meeting the needs of those children who want to be in a mainstream school. I work very closely with schools and with other partners to make sure that we've got the right provision for these children and that we're meeting their needs.
You mentioned school numbers. When it comes to cohort sizes, is that set locally or nationally?
Schools, legally, up to year two, can only have class sizes of 30. Older than that, they can be bigger, but of course, we don't want classes to be too big. Ideally, we want a class size of 30. Smaller classes come with financial challenges because schools are funded, amongst other things, on pupil numbers. If you have a class with only 20 children in it, then it's more difficult to maintain that funding and to set a balanced budget. The difficulty that we have in Medway is that we've got inward migration. We've got developments going on, and we don't necessarily have the spaces in the right places. We are working really hard to make sure that we address that. Schools have been absolutely brilliant working with us, adding bulge classes and new groups where needed. We're also looking at opening new schools. We opened Riverside in Rochester last year. We opened Maritime Academy, the permanent site, last year. We're working on permanent expansions to some schools as well because we have a growing population.
Is there a limit to how many classes in a school?
It's pretty much based on the geography of the school. For some schools, it's just impossible for them to expand further. Others have got more room for expansion, and they're the ones that we're working with and talking to about taking a different approach.
There is no legal limit on how big an individual school population could get. Of course, the big schools largely are secondary schools. Most of them are academies. That's very much for the academy trust and DfE (Department for Education) to make that determination.
Do we have free schools in Medway?
We have academies, and free schools are part of the whole academy program.
Previously, free schools were thought of as being set up by individuals.
That has changed. It was a very big thing for a moment. If you mean in terms of have we got a group of parents who've set up a free school, then no.
What experience did you bring to this cabinet position?
I was a teacher. I worked at Parkwood Infant School in Rainham, which was my first teaching post. Then I went to Brompton Westbrook Primary School on the borders of Gillingham and Chatham, where I worked in early years initially and then I went on to be a headteacher. I had nine years’ experience as a headteacher in a Kent primary school, a village school. I've got that whole professional background behind me, which is extremely helpful.
What is the biggest challenge you face in your position for 2025?
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