Ceredigion County Council plans to shut county sixth forms and develop a “centre of excellence” to teach A-level pupils instead is opposed by a majority of those surveyed, a feasibility report says, amid fears over staff retention, job losses and the impact on pupils’ education.

Ceredigion council launched the study after seeking ways to plug a gap in school finances.

The feasibility study report outlines that “it is clear that the post-16 grant from the Welsh Government is not sufficient to sustain post-16 provision in its current form in Ceredigion as the expenditure is between £1.6m and £1.8m above that of the grant.”

With the county council having to find millions of pounds in savings across all services, plans were hatched to transform sixth form provision, with two options put forward for the study to look at.

One option was to keep all six county sixth forms open within a more collaborative model, while the other would see sixth forms shut across the county and one or more “centres of excellence” being developed.

While the report called the plan for centres of excellence a “fair, ambitious and innovative solution to the current challenges facing post-16 education”, it warned there was a “lack of detail regarding the Centre's plan and fiscal model which makes it very difficult to express a balanced view of the scheme.”

“The majority of stakeholders in Ceredigion secondary schools with sixth forms oppose the idea of centralising provision in a Centre of Excellence for a number of reasons,” the study report outlined.

“They are concerned that schools would lose the sense of belonging to the community as so many of the local connections stem from the sixth form.”

The centre of excellence plan would be “an opportunity to create a state-of-the-art learning Centre with the best facilities and resources for young people in Ceredigion which exceeds the type of resources and facilities that could be offered in a school,” the report said, but warned it may make retention of teachers in schools harder.

“The possibility of schools losing their sixth form threatens the quality of the KS3 and KS4 provision in the schools as there is a risk that schools would lose their most experienced teachers to the centre,” the report said.

“Teachers wishing to teach A-levels may move to other schools which have a sixth form, and it would be harder for 3-16 or 11-16 schools to attract ambitious teachers without an opportunity to teach the sixth form.”

The report outlines that only one school, Ysgol Penglais, has a financially sustainable sixth form, with the study showing that closing it is “clearly not justified.”

Under the other option, a strategic board would be developed to co-ordinate sixth form provision across the six schools, but the report warns that it may not be 'radical' enough a development to deal with underlying problems and would only be a compromise.

The first option is likely to be implemented while work is developed on the longer term plan for centres of excellence.