Following a phone call with Arwyn Thomas, Head of Education at Swansea Council yesterday evening, I can now report that he has agreed to look at extending the deadline for this consultation until two weeks beyond receipt of the information requested in the FOI. The 20 working days of the FOI end on 31st March and therefore this would make 14th April the end of this phase of the process.
Arwyn Thomas agreed to consider this extension as a reasonable adjustment under the Disability Discrimination Act to allow disabled children and their families to feed into the Council’s “genuine consultation”, once the relevant information has actually been made available for them to do so.
In spite of the point about the lack of information being made very clearly (and many weeks ago) to the Council, Mr Jones has asked for parents to re-iterate the reasons why this adjustment is reasonable under the Act. Parents are now undertaking this extra work.
Here is the FOI request submitted on 3/3/14:
Please provide detailed accounts clearly showing how much money is spent on
1. EOTAS. Detail exactly how much has been spent in the last three years on each three separate groups.The accounts for Pathways, Pupil Referral Units and Home tuition have to be shown separately in order for comparison to be made. Please also provide any projected funding information that is currently available even if it hasn’t been either agreed or finalised.
2. Pathways. How much on salaries, details of all staff group costings, eg how much on teachers, managers, cleaners, etc. How much on buildings, maintenance, equipment, lap tops and mobile phones, travel, administration etc
3. Pupil Referral Units; Please provide the same detailed breakdown of costing.
4. Home Tuition; please provide the same breakdown of costings.
Please detail how much money is spent per child, per hour in each separate department.
Please also detail how much is spent on equipment especially how much has been spent on equipment for teachers and staff at Pathways.
Please let us know exactly how many children are receiving education from each separate department on the 3rd of March 2014.
Please detail how many hours each individual child gets.
Please detail how many hours were provided by each of the three providers, on the third of March 2014.
Amendment 5:00pm on 14/3/2014 – It has now been confirmed, as of this afternoon that the consultation period for the proposed changes to the Home Tuition Service has been extended under the Disability Discrimination Act to 14th April 2014.
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