£1,500,000 MAINTENANCE BILL COULD CLOSE CWMAFAN PRIMARY

A freedom of information request has allowed us to see the full scale of backlog maintenance costs at Cwmafan Primary School. The £1.5 million figure will concern some parents and will be seen as a risk to closing the school.

The Education Department for NPT Council have stated “The school building stock is ageing and the Council is facing increasing backlog maintenance and repair costs. As money and opportunity becomes available the Council will seek to replace existing schools with new builds and state of the art teaching and learning facilities.”

Potential merger?

Neath Port Talbot Council are increasingly looking to merge schools as against looking for direct replacements. Most recently, in the Swansea Valley, where the Education department are looking to replace three ‘medium sized’ primary schools with one ‘super primary’ of around 700 pupils.

One advantage they say is that super-schools “will be managed with one head teacher and one governing body and will have one budget allocation and one group of staff.”

Labour Councillors Supporting Mergers

Any school closure and school merger is likely to have the backing of local councillors Rhidian Mizen and David Whitelock. The Councillors for Bryn & Cwmafan were fully supportive of that merger in Pontardawe, voting to close the three schools on June 16^th 2021. Cwmafan Primary School has a similar backlog figure by itself to the three schools in the Swansea Valley combined. 

How big could the school be?

Cwmafan is not the only school facing a large backlog in maintenance costs. The freedom of information request also revealed that Tywyn Primary requires £2 million to be spent on the school. Central Primary requires £1.3 million to be spent on the school and has a “significant quantity of asbestos”. Eastern Primary also has issues with asbestos and needs £300,000 spent on it. Whilst Blaen Baglan over £1.3 million and Baglan Primary over £2.5 million. In total, these 6 schools require around £9 million spent to bring up to standards.

Former leader and Taibach councillor Rob Jones stated ‘he could not justify, continuing to support’ these types of schools and so a solution is likely to be needed. The most likely outcome would appear to be large school mergers. Funded by the Welsh Assembly through the 21st Century Schools Programme.

Although the area is too big for just one primary school, it could be possible to close all 6 schools and create two schools of between 700 – 1,000 each. This seems something the education department could suggest. It is also likely to have the backing of local councillors. Councillors who have an abnormal amount of power regarding education matters.

Local Councillors

Incredibly, out of the 15 Labour councillors who voted to close the schools in the Swansea Valley, 10 represent schools within this area. These ten councillors are proven to prefer new, large schools of around 700 pupils, to older community schools, and so a merger seems inevitable.

The ten councillors are :-   

Cllr Susanne Renkes represents Baglan, Rhidian Mizen and David Whitelock represent Bryn & Cwmavon, Sharon Freeguard, Dennis Keogh and Saifur Rahaman all represent Port Talbot. In Sandfields East Matthew Crowley, Sandfields West Robert Wood and Suzanne Paddison and in Taibach Rachel Louise Taylor.

Local Opinion

School mergers are generally unpopular. Parents tend to understand a school being upgraded within its community but are less understanding of large mergers which see schools move away from walking distance.

Next year will see a council election and it is unlikely that anything would be suggested before then. It is a discussion which needs to be had though. Parents in the Swansea Valley felt they had no democratic representation. Some were particularly upset that there was no talk of a new school before the last council election.

What happened in Pontardawe?

There has been wide-spread objection to the school closure in Pontardawe. The Pontardawe Town Council, Community Councils, Former mayors, local councillors and 93% of residents objected. However 15 Labour councillors voted to close the schools whilst 11 Plaid and Independent voted against. 

There is anger in the Swansea Valley that the result was predetermined. Former NPT leader Rob Jones was recorded stating that he wanted the schools to close before the consultation began. There are also concerns about the misleading pupil figures. The council predict that 402 pupils are projected to be in the 3 existing schools in 2024. Yet 587 will attend the new school that same year (according to the report). This has caused some residents to believe that there is a fourth school which will be closed to fill the missing numbers. (you can read more on the pupil figures here)

There is also a wide-spread belief that the emergency closure of Godre’r’graig Primary School was a part of the plan. The school was closed ‘overnight’ prior to the consultation. A temporary school was placed 3 miles away, near where the proposed school is to be located. The council stated that there was a potential landslip behind the school. Although houses either side of the school have been told that their houses are safe.

It must be said that the council stand by their figures. They also state that the closure of Godre’r’graig had nothing to do with their plans. However, there is a genuine belief in the Swansea valley that the council have closed their schools in an underhand way.      

STILL UNPOPULAR

Asides from that, the school proposal is also very unpopular. The location of the school is the far North/East side of the valley. It is within half a mile of the Swansea council border. This will mean there is no English medium school within 5 miles of Ystalyfera at the other end of the valley. This would see kids as young as 3 needing to catch a bus to school on their own. Which is highly controversial.

The size of the school will be the biggest in the Borough and is seen as somewhat of an experiment. There are worries by some parents that their kids will become a ‘number’ and that teachers won’t know them.

There is also a huge worry about the community impact. Less interaction at the school gate. The environmental damage as parents drive to school, the inability to walk and exercise. Essentially, the objections were vast but residents feel that they fell on deaf ears with the Labour councillors.

As well as all of this, there is a democratic concern. Parents have stated how they cannot democratically stop this. Not one councillor in the Swansea Valley supported the proposal. This decision was forced upon the valley by Labour councillors from Neath and from Port Talbot, who are unaffected.