This tends to confirm suspicions that education in Carmarthenshire is being run more like a project as the "Modernising Education Programme" is rammed through, and rather less like an education service.
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Put two Welshmen together and you are likely to get three opinions, but one of the things we can all agree on is that we are very good at running ourselves down in comparison with the neighbours (except in rugby, of course).
So it was with a sense of inevitable doom that we would be told once again on the evening news bulletins that Welsh children were lagging behind their English counterparts and the rest of the UK in the GCSE tables. Followed by a forecast of torrential rain with possible local flooding over the coming bank holiday weekend.
And so it was, although apparently the gap in GCSE attainment narrowed slightly. Or not, depending on who is reporting:
BBC News - GCSEs: Wales' pupils results fall but gap closes with UK
Western Mail: GCSE results show widening gulf between Wales and rest of UK
The problem with statistics of course is that they can be made to show anything, especially when the dataset is as huge as it is for GCSE results.
The national statistics for Wales mask huge variations, just as they do for England, to the point where you have to wonder whether anything meaningful can be read into them. Unfortunately, though, these are the headline figures which are picked over by the BBC and the London media.
Results at a local authority level are much more useful, although they will obviously also mask significant variations from one school to another.
So as we brace ourselves for high winds and heavy rain, here are a few rays of sunshine plucked from the tables.
Wales | Carmarthenshire | Ceredigion | Gwynedd | |
A*-A | 19.2% | 20.5% | 22.6% | 21.3% |
A*-C | 65.4% | 66.3% | 71% | 71% |
A*-G | 98.7% | 98.9% | 99.4% | 99.6% |
Ceredigion and Gwynedd deserve particular praise.
Carmarthenshire's performance at just a whisker over the national average is disappointing when compared with its neighbours in Ceredigion and Neath Port Talbot, where 79% of passes were in the A*-C range. Needless to say, Carmarthenshire's department of spin didn't see it like that:
Pupils across Carmarthenshire have scored top marks in GCSEs. The percentages for grades A*-C, and overall passes, have surpassed the Welsh averages, and maintained the achievements of previous years.
With A*-C passes running nearly 5 percentage points behind Ceredigion and a staggering 12.7 percentage points behind Neath Port Talbot, serious questions need to be asked.
In fact, Carmarthenshire performed worse in the key A*-C grade band than any of the surrounding local authorities. Even Pembrokeshire managed to do slightly better in this category, which is saying something.
| | Wales | Carms. | Swansea | Neath Port Talbot | Powys | Ceredigion | Pembs. |
| A*-A | 19.2% | 20.5% | 20.9% | 19% | 21.4% | 22.6% | 18.9% |
| A*-C | 65.4% | 66.3% | 68.8% | 79% | 69.8% | 71% | 67.1% |
I will leave the heavy duty number crunching to Syniadau. Given the emphasis placed on Welsh medium education by Gwynedd in particular, but also by Ceredigion, it would be interesting to see how Welsh medium schools stacked up. On the face of it, they have performed well.
Meanwhile in Carmarthenshire it was great to see some very good results from the doomed Ysgol Pantycelyn in Llandovery, despite the county council rather than because of it.
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