The story beneath another anti-Welsh headline

The Western Mail and its sister paper Wales on Sunday have a sorry record when it comes to reporting about the Welsh language, and they have made it yet worse with this story today:

     Autistic children banned from school canteen - because they
     do not speak Welsh

To start, some background information would probably be helpful. Brynglas Primary School was closed in July because it had an unsustainably large number of surplus places. The building was then taken over in September this year by Ysgol Bro Teyrnon, Newport's third Welsh-medium school, which had been temporarily housed at Maindee Primary School. I wrote about it here. It was probably not an ideal site for Ysgol Bro Teyrnon because it is to the north of the city and very close to Ysgol Ifor Hael in Bettws, but Welsh-medium education is growing so quickly that there was little choice but to locate it in the first building that became available.

However there is a small unit for children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders on the same site. It is the newer building with the pitched roof to the left of the main building in the aerial image below, and the second image shows it as seen from street level. Rather than making it part of Ysgol Bro Teyrnon, Newport Council made the decision that the ASD unit would be run as a satellite of Maes Ebbw School, the existing special needs school in south west Newport.

     

     

Underneath Wales on Sunday's damning headline about autistic children being "banned" from the canteen, the facts of the story are rather different:

First, the children at the ASD unit were not banned from using the canteen by Ysgol Bro Teyrnon. That was a decision taken by the teaching staff of the ASD unit and Maes Ebbw School. Apparently they thought it would be confusing for children with ASD if the children they were mixing with were speaking a language they didn't understand.

Second, even though teachers at the ASD unit decided it was better for the children not to mix, there is nothing to stop the ASD unit pupils from using the Ysgol Bro Teyrnon's canteen at a different time. That proposal was made in the very first week of term.

Third, it seems that the head of Maes Ebbw School has written to the parents of children at the ASD unit asking them what they would prefer to do. If they disagree with the teachers' initial decision and want the children to mix with children speaking Welsh, there's no reason why they can't. If they want them to use the canteen at another time, there's no reason why they can't. If they want them to eat in the classroom there's no reason why they can't. The only proviso is that there needs to be agreement between parents and teachers at the ASD as to which of these three options is best, as it obviously wouldn't be practical to have some mixing, some using the canteen at another time, and some eating in class. Lack of agreement is what seems to have triggered this story.

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It seems clear that the parents of seven children at the ASD unit are not happy, and nobody can blame them for that. But it would appear that their unhappiness is due to rather more than just their children's eating arrangements. Despite what the head of Maes Ebbw says, it is very hard to see how "being part of the Maes Ebbw family" is of any practical benefit to children in the ASD unit because Maes Ebbw is 5km away on the other side of the city. The arrangement is one of administrative convenience, not one that is designed to meet the educational needs of autistic children. The lack of opportunity for contact with other children is the root of the problem.

In educational terms, and subject of course to individual assessments and the level of disability, it is generally right for children in an ASD unit to have a good degree of contact with children in mainstream schools, and the very last thing anyone would want is for them to be isolated. Autism is isolating enough in itself without making things worse. The best way to deal with this is to have small ASD units attached to mainstream schools ... but they must obviously be attached to schools which have the same medium of instruction.

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What has happened is that Newport's plans have been badly thought through, and create as many problems as they are designed to solve. As can be seen by reading the documents on this page, the council had planned to close the ASD unit at Brynglas and establish a new ASD school on the premises currently occupied by Gaer Infants, again in the south west of the city. But this would mean closing the current Gaer Infants School and moving the pupils to Gaer Junior School, which is obviously contentious. [Note: The decision to close Gaer Infants has now been confirmed. See comments for details.] The two buildings are shown below, with the infants school on the right.

     

But the next problem is that Gaer Infants is much too big for twelve autistic children, and the documentation makes it clear that the only way the plan would be viable would be for the new school to admit additional pupils with ASD from outside Newport. The fundamental flaw with this proposal is that it involves educating autistic children further away from their homes, as well as concentrating more of them into one building, which is the exact opposite of trying to integrate them as much as possible with children in mainstream schools.

There are plenty of English-medium schools in Newport with surplus places, and it should be possible to choose one, or maybe two, of them and remodel some of that surplus space to suit the additional requirements of autistic children. Those children would be educated closer to their homes, and doing things this way would actually safeguard the future of one or two English-medium schools which might otherwise have to close, which is a win-win situation.

However it would appear from the documentation that the amalgamation of Gaer Infants and Juniors is probably justified anyway on the grounds of rationalizing surplus places; and if that is the case I would suggest that a better use of the Gaer Infants building would be to establish a much-needed fourth Welsh-medium primary school in the south west of the city.

New Welsh-medium schools

This week marks the start of a new school year, and that means it's time to celebrate the opening of some new Welsh-medium schools, or some existing schools which have transferred to larger buildings. Here are two of them. There are more to follow.

 
Ysgol Bro Alun, Gwersyllt, Wrecsam

Ysgol Bro Alun is a brand new primary school to just to the north west of Wrecsam. This is from the local newspaper:

Overcrowding to end as new school in Gwersyllt opens doors

A new £5.9 m Welsh medium school in Gwersyllt will open its doors today. The community primary school for 3 to 11-year-olds is located on Delamere Avenue and will be known as Ysgol Bro Alun after its naming in February. Building work on the new school by contractors Harry Fairclough began in July 2012 and today it opens its doors to its first influx of pupils.

     

Long-time campaigner for the new Welsh school, Gwersyllt councillor Arfon Jones said: “We’re very pleased that at last the school is opening. It has been a four-year battle but we have prevailed. There has been very high demand in Gwersyllt and Llay for Welsh education and we welcome it opening. Ysgol Bro Alun will reduce the overcrowding in Plas Coch.”

The new school will share a headteacher and governing body with Ysgol Plas Coch, seeing Osian Jones take the helm. Mr Jones said: “It’s very exciting. There’s been a lot of hard work over the last few months and myself and staff have been in almost every day of the summer making sure everything is in place. The parents have been here for an open day and are very impressed. The facilities are second to none.”

To begin with 56 children have been enrolled in the nursery and reception classes. It’s expected the school will then grow year-on-year and other classes will be utilized.

... Each classroom of the school has direct access to external covered play and learning areas, which means pupils can go out come rain or shine. The school also has sustainable green features including a bio-mass central heating boiler, solar panels, high levels of insulation and triple glazing.

The Leader, 3 September 2013

Apart from the small thumbnail in the article, I don't yet have any pictures of the completed building. But these are the architect's drawings of what it should look like:

     

     

     

     

But did it get built as planned? Pretty much. The building contractors, Harry Fairclough, have been documenting the progress of the building works in this blog, and these pictures show it in a not quite finished state.

     

     

     

Hopefully, most of the mess will now have been cleared ... but the children will be quite capable of making enough mess of their own.

 
Ysgol Bro Teyrnon, Newport

Ysgol Bro Teyrnon is Newport's third Welsh-medium primary after Ysgol Gymraeg Casnewydd and Ysgol Ifor Hael. It opened in September 2011, but in a temporary location at Maindee Primary school in central Newport, just behind Rodney Parade rugby ground.

The good news is that it is now moving to a new permanent location in the building that used to house Brynglas Primary School, which was closed this summer because of very low pupil numbers. These are some pictures of it.

     

     

The new home is very welcome, and it's in a pleasant enough part of Newport ... however it's probably in the wrong part. It is to the north of the city, not far from Ysgol Ifor Hael in Bettws. The real need is for a new WM school to serve the centre and western half of Newport, where there is currently no Welsh-medium provision at all.

To illustrate why location is important, the intake for Bro Teyrnon when it was located in the at Maindee Primary in central Newport was drawn mainly from south west and central Newport (see here), and the intake was full, with 27 new pupils last year. But this year there have only been 14 admissions, indicating that a number of those in south west and central Newport are not prepared to travel the extra distance.

Newport therefore has two pressing problems: the first is to establish a new Welsh-medium primary school to serve the south west of the city; but the second is to establish a Welsh-medium secondary school. At present the only WM secondary school for the whole of Gwent (Newport, Monmouthshire, Blaenau Gwent and Torfaen) is Ysgol Gyfun Gwynllyw in Pontypool. This has been expanded, but will soon be inadequate to meet the growing numbers in the primary schools that feed it. There is now an urgent need for a new WM secondary school to serve Newport and south Monmouthshire.

Ysgol Bro Teyrnon

Because it was only reported by the BBC in Welsh, I thought it would be a good idea to tell anyone who missed it about the official opening of Ysgol Bro Teyrnon in Newport last Friday.

     

     Ysgol Gymraeg newydd i Gasnewydd

This school had its first intake of children last September, and was planned to take 17 in the first year. It started with 16, but the demand has meant it has now had to take 24. Roughly the same number of new pupils will start this coming September. In total, more than 105 new pupils are expected to be admitted to Newport's three Welsh-medium primaries in September, and the demand is expected to keep on growing.

     

The problem is that Ysgol Bro Teyrnon does not have a permanent home. For now, it is being housed in Maindee Primary School—just behind the Rodney Parade rugby ground as we can see in the picture above—which has enough surplus space to accommodate maybe three WM year groups, but no more. Newport had planned to build a brand new two form entry WM school at Percoed Reen, to the south west of the city between Dyffryn and Coedcernyw as part of their original 21st century schools bid, at a cost of £12.5m. But the cuts to that programme of capital spending resulted in it being dropped in their revised bid:

Welsh-medium primary provision has been reduced in concept by a reduction in capital from £12.5m to a mere £1m, taking this project from a new build to remodelling within the current estate in order to relocate to a permanent site.

Revised 21st Century Schools Bid, November 2011

This means that the new home for Ysgol Bro Teyrnon will have to be in an existing school building, and the options are limited. I believe (though someone with more local knowledge might tell me better) that the former Durham Road Primary school building has not been disposed of following the move to the brand new Glan Usk Primary school a few years ago. The old building is hardly ideal, but it's better than nothing.

     

Apart from moving into vacated school premises the only other option would be to amalgamate two existing schools onto one site, and then use the other building. Needless to say, that would be fraught with difficulties.

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As mentioned in the video report, the next big problem will be to open a WM secondary school for these children to move up to in a few years' time. At present children in Newport, Monmouthshire, Torfaen and Blaenau Gwent move on to Ysgol Gyfun Gwynllyw in Trefethin, but the continuing expansion of WM education across Gwent means that a second school will be needed within the next few years.

The obvious location would be somewhere in Newport; but if Newport can't afford to build a new WM primary, it's unlikely that they will be able to afford at least twice as much to build a brand new WM secondary. The most likely solution would therefore be to take advantage of the fact that Torfaen are planning on amalgamating Llantarnam and Fairwater schools on a new site (with the support of both schools, as we can read here) which they can still afford to do within their revised 21st Century Schools bid.

     

As we can see form the map above, Llantarnam School is less than 2km from the Newport border and has good transport links to take children from Newport and Ysgol Y Ffin in Caldicot, and perhaps from Cwmbran too. From the picture below it appears to be in serviceable condition, but if appearances are deceptive it could at least be a temporary solution until a new school can be built.

     

Taking one step back to see the wider picture, the biggest long-term problem is finding the capital to build new school premises. This is particularly true in Newport because it does not have a great number of surplus places in EM schools, mainly due to population growth. The original 21st Century Schools programme allowed for 70% funding from the Welsh Government and 30% funding from local authorities. In the revised programme, the split is 50% each.

The Welsh Government cannot borrow, and this situation is unlikely to change anytime soon. It certainly won't happen until after Silk has reported, and in my opinion won't happen even then unless the WG agrees to accept significant tax setting powers at the same time. The Treasury's argument is that you can't borrow money on your own account unless you have at your control the means of raising money to pay it back. But there are two other possibilities.

The first is the Build for Wales model, which is essentially PFI but through a not-for-distributable-profit body. The problem with PFI is the excessive profits made by the consortia, particularly on maintenance over a 25 or 30 year period; but that problem disappears if the profits are recycled to the next scheme (or back to the public purse) rather than distributed to private shareholders.

The second possibility is for the Welsh Government to coordinate the existing borrowing powers of local authorities, but to directly reimburse them for the cost of that borrowing. This has already been done once: only last month the WG set up a £60m programme with local authorities to pay for road repairs. As I mentioned in this post at the time, we should not be borrowing money to pay for maintenance, but it would be perfectly acceptable to use the same model for capital expenditure on new schools.

Four more Welsh-medium schools

As this is the start of a new school year, I thought it would be good to celebrate the new Welsh-medium schools that are opening their doors for the first time.
 

Ysgol Tan-y-lan, Swansea

This is the first new WM school to open in Swansea since Llwynderw in 2002, and it is long overdue. Morriston is one of the parts of Swansea with the where the demand for WM education is strongest, but this is the first school in the area.

     

     

As we can see from the photographs, it is by no means a large school. When it was home to Graig Infants, it had a capacity of 113 which would imply an admission number of about 14.

But the demand for places at the school far outstrips that. As we can read here, the school will start with 20 children, and another 15 are due to start after Christmas and Easter. So it seems very clear that Swansea are having to admit children on a basis that will be unsustainable in the long term. They will therefore need either to open another school or find new premises for this school within about three years.

Swansea are set to open another new Welsh-medium school in Bon-y-maen on the east side of the city next year. However I still think that the best solution to meet the demand in and around Morriston will be to re-open Arfryn Primary as a WM school and adjust the catchment areas accordingly.
 

Seedling School at Maindee Primary, Newport

This new school is Newport's third WM primary and is being housed within Maindee Primary, just behind the Rodney Parade rugby ground, which has a very large number of surplus places. The school at Bettws, Ysgol Ifor Hael, was only opened in 2008.

     

There will be space for an annual intake of 17 children, although I'm don't know how many are starting this week. Eventually Newport will have to find a permanent location for the school, probably within three years.
 

Ysgol Dewi Sant, Llanilltud Fawr, Vale of Glamorgan

This is one of two new WM schools established in the Vale of Glamorgan this year. They are both described as "Starter Schools" and are in temporary buildings. This one is just next to the comprehensive school and leisure centre in Ham Lane East. No photographs as yet, but these are the plans:
     

     

I have to say that, as temporary buildings go, the quality is very much higher than would usually be expected. The layout is good, and I've been told that everybody is pleased with how light and airy the space inside is. There are 18 children starting this week, and if the numbers grow as expected it will need to be extended in a couple of years time.

It's perhaps worth noting that this sort of solution can be implemented very quickly. Only ten weeks ago, local MP Alun Cairns and headteacher Helen Jennings were standing in an empty playing field. Then the new school arrived on the back of six lorries.

     
 

Ysgol Gwynfor, Y Barri, Vale of Glamorgan

This starter school is the grounds of Ysgol Gyfun Bro Morgannwg. The design is identical to Dewi Sant, except that an additional double classroom unit has already been added, and the plan is for a further extension to be added in due course. As with Ysgol Dewi Sant, headteacher Sian Owen is very impressed with the standard of accommodation.

     

There are 17 children in the reception class, and another 10 in the nursery with more expected after Christmas and Easter.

The school has been given the temporary name of Ysgol Nant Talwg, but I'm sure that this is only because it isn't yet housed in a permanent building worthy of Gwynfor Evans' name.

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Although the quality of both these demountable buildings is very high, they will eventually need to be replaced by permanent buildings, almost certainly on the same site. But when this happens, there is absolutely nothing to stop them being moved to a new site to start another new school, either in the Vale or somewhere else.

A few years ago, the Vale of Glamorgan undertook a comprehensive survey of parental wishes regarding Welsh-medium education, found that the demand was much higher than their current provision and, to their credit, then acted quickly to meet the need. This is an innovative solution, and other local authorities could learn from what they've done.

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Maybe four new schools are not as many as we'd like to see, but every one is a step forward. They represent the hard work of those who have campaigned for them, often for many years, and that's something to thank them for and celebrate.