Five years on and schools’ big shake-up takes shape

Apr 8 2008 by Staff Reporter, South Wales Echo

The massive shake-up of schools remains the most hotly-debated issue in Cardiff. In the first in a series of articles, education correspondent Moira Sharkey explores the changes ahead

FIVE years after Cardiff’s education chiefs first warned schools were facing crisis point due to falling rolls, the capital is in the midst of its biggest school reorganisation.

A string of school mergers is finally taking shape and plans are being drawn up for a 21st-century special educational needs campus as the first phase of the shake-up is rolled out.

This £19m plan has proved to be the least controversial with changes going on unnoticed but the impact of this reorganisation will be felt by communities in every corner of the capital.

n Work is under way to create six primary schools out of six infant and six junior schools at a cost of more than £6.3m

n Plans have been drawn up for an £11m special educational needs campus which will offer specialist respite care.

n Three Welsh starter-classes have opened as a temporary measure to ease the overcrowding in Welsh primaries and a fourth is due to open in September at Phillip Evans Catholic Primary in Llanedeyrn. The total cost of these classes is around £1.5m including £306,000 for the fourth class.

n More than £180,000 has been spent on Moorland Primary campus in Splott which includes a Welsh starter class, Ysgol Glan Morfa.

Work is nearing completion on the amalgamation of Windsor Clive Infant and Junior schools. A central staff room with kitchen, a new headteacher’s office, two new deputy’s offices, a new main office and new reception area and a corridor linking the two the schools has been created.

At Danescourt Infant and Junior schools, which also share a site, plans are being drawn up for improvements and a new linking corridor.

In a joint statement Alison Morgan, headteacher of the infant school, and Shaun O’Connell, acting headteacher of the junior school, said amalgamation will “ensure progress and consistency of practice” and enable the whole school community to build on its strengths to create the new Danescourt Primary adding: “Governors, headteachers and staff have worked closely with the LEA to identify necessary improvements to the buildings and we now look forward to having a school building fit for the 21st century. This new facility will be of benefit to the children of Danescourt and the community as a whole.”

For schools not on the same site, change has proved more complicated. In Llandaff North, residents voiced their opposition to a decision which would have seen them lose their community centre for a year. Plans to teach the reception class of Hawthorn Infant School in the community centre while building work is carried out have now been revised. The community centre hall will just be used for lunch and some PE classes, so the usual timetable of courses and classes for other community groups can continue.

These first steps to a new schools service are not quite the radical shake-up that council bosses said was needed in 2003 when the then chief schools officer Hugh Knight first revealed that thousands of surplus school places were costing taxpayers £3m each year in running costs.

It was predicted then that as school budgets are linked to the number of pupils on the roll those bearing the brunt of the falling demand for places would not be able to afford to stay open.

The city’s smallest school closed the following summer. Viriamu Jones in Mynachdy, which had just 34 pupils, shut its gates for the final time after 80 years.

Council bosses agreed that doing nothing was not an option and argued that the problem needed to be managed.

Then the council’s Draft School Organisation Plan proposed that 980 primary places and 748 secondary places in the east of the city should be cut and 746 primary and 336 secondary places in the west should go by 2008.

That target, set by the then Labour administration, has been missed and delays have dogged the process. Public opposition reached fever pitch when the first reorganisation plan, this time proposed by the Liberal Democrat administration, to close up to 22 schools was published in April 2006. Just weeks later it was scrapped and it was back to the drawing board. This time a cross-party committee – the schools sub-committee – which included headteachers, union officials and church representatives, was tasked to come up with an agreed set of proposals. It took a further year to put the so-called fast-track proposals including the amalgamations firmly back on the agenda. The city is now finally seeing the first small steps towards change with a raft of measures still in the pipeline.

What changes to schools in Cardiff are already under way?

AMALGAMATIONS

The amalgamation of the following six pairs of junior and infant Schools:

- Hywel Dda Infant and Junior schools, Cambria Road, Ely;

- Windsor Clive Infant and Junior schools, Grand Avenue, Ely;

- Rumney Infant and Junior Schools, Wentloog Road;

- Danescourt Infant and Junior Schools, Danescourt Way;

- Severn Infant and Nursery School with Severn Junior School; and

- Hawthorn Infant on Hawthorn Road East, Llandaff North and Hawthorn Junior School, Hawthorn Road, West, Llandaff North.

Moorland Nursery has closed and been incorporated into the nursery unit of the adjacent Moorland Primary School which has been refurbished and reorganised allowing for more space for the Welsh starter class called Ysgol Glan Morfa with which it shares the site.

OPENINGS

Three of four Welsh-medium starter classes to meet record demand for places in Welsh primaries have opened at Oakfield Primary, St Mellons, Holy Family Catholic Primary, Pentrebane and Ninian Park Primary in Grangetown. The fourth class will open at St Phillip Evans Catholic Primary in Llanedeyrn, September.

IN THE PIPELINE

The rebuild and relocation of Ty Gwyn Special School is at the planning stage.

See tomorrow’s Echo for the key battlegrounds in the primary school reorganisation.

moira.sharkey@mediawales.co.uk