Reply to the Consultation

By responding to the Consultation in an email

Step 1: Create a new email message and give it a title (be sure to include “Llangwyryfon”), e.g.

Response to the Consultation on Llangwyryfon School

Step 2: Copy the email addresses from section “3. Who?” into the “To:” box of your email

Step 3: Download this response form:

Llangwyryfon Consultation Response Form (MS Word .docx document)

Step 4: Complete the form including your message either by mixing and matching or rewording some of the suggestions from section “4. What?”; or, ideally, by writing a personal message about how the school touched your life in a positive way. (Don’t worry too much about getting the message absolutely perfect, the quality and quantity of the message are not as important as the fact that you send it.)

Step 5: Save the form, attach it to your email and click Send!

By responding to the Consultation in the mail

If you aren’t comfortable responding by email, or you would prefer respond in writing - either using a word processor or by hand, download this response form:

Llangwyryfon Consultation Response Form (MS Word .docx document)

and after completing it, send it  to the Council at the address below.

You can write your message either by mixing and matching or rewording some of the suggestions from section “4. What?”; or, ideally, by writing a personal message about how the school touched your life in a positive way. (Don’t worry too much about getting the message absolutely perfect, the quality and quantity of the message are not as important as the fact that you send it.)

Chief Education Officer,
Schools Service,
Second Floor,
Canolfan Rheidol,
Rhodfa Padarn,
Llanbadarn Fawr,
Aberystwyth,
SY23 3UE

Alternative Means

If you aren't able to follow either of the methods above, either come along to Llangwyryfon School on Wednesday evening, the 6th November between 6:00 pm and 8:00 pm, where assistance will be available to help you prepare your response, or contact us for further assistance:

Contact us

These are the email addresses of Ceredigion’s Councillors and of Ceredigion’s Welsh Assembly Member, Elin Jones and Ceredigion’s Member of Parliament, Ben Lake.

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Use our suggestions below to craft your own letter, or (even better) write your own personal response. (Important warning: please don’t copy the full text verbatim as the Council will disregard any messages that are deemed to be duplicates!)

Dear Councillor,

I am writing to you to express my opposition to Ceredigion Council’s plans to review the future of Llangwyryfon Primary School with a view to closing it. My concerns are as follows:

Community

• The school is at the heart of our community, not simply the village, but the wider rural area. It has provided an excellent, inclusive education for generations of children and is a vital hub for nurturing the Welsh language.
• Llangwyryfon Primary School is the beating heart of the community and without a local primary school the life and soul will be ripped from the local area. Young families will move away from the area in order to be closer to alternative schools and Llangwyryfon will be robbed of the children and young people that form the life blood of society. The village and local area will shrivel and die.
• Llangwyryfon school is embedded intrinsically into local society. The school hosts community activities promoting local traditions and Welsh culture, and the community provides a platform for the children to perform publicly, learn social skills, and immerse themselves in shared history and life experiences in a live, real-time environment. Llangwyryfon children don’t learn about Welsh history from books, they learn it from the very people who lived it.
• Local schools like Llangwyryfon reach out to all sectors of their community, from mother and baby groups to gardening clubs. Closing them destroys the ties that bind us.
• Llangwyryfon School is just one component in a daisy chain system of economic, environmental and social regeneration. The “Cylch Ti a Fi” (for mothers and babies) integrates with the “Cylch Meithrin” (for toddlers), both being held in the village hall a stone’s throw from the school. The “Cylch Meithrin” has a multi-faceted transition program to ease the children into the Primary School, where local history, culture and the Welsh language are embedded in the curriculum. As soon as the children reach secondary school age, they are offered the opportunity to join Llangwyryfon Young Farmer’s Club and learn to take responsibility for things like organising community events, raising money for charity, and performing and competing in the name of the club, the village and the area. This system grounds young people in the area, instils a deep-rooted sense of community, and reinforces the socio-economic infrastructure that secures the next generation of children. Taking the primary school out of this system will break the chain and end this centuries-old regenerative cycle.

Welsh Language

• The school is one of very few remaining in the county where the language of the school yard is still Welsh. Other “Welsh” schools have already succumbed to English as the language of socialising and play, with Welsh relegated to lessons and homework. This strips the children of their confidence in using the language in a real-life context and is the reason we need schemes like the Welsh Language Charter in schools, “Mentrau Iaith” in the community and a National Centre for Teaching Welsh to Adults. If children were allowed to keep their Welsh in the first place, they wouldn’t need to relearn it in later life.
• Many non-Welsh speaking families deliberately elect to send their children to small rural schools like Llangwyryfon and are willing to pay a premium to get them here, specifically for the quality and robustness of the school’s Welsh language education and culture. Even children with no Welsh at home have left Llangwyryfon school as fluent speakers with the confidence to go on to a Welsh medium secondary school.

Quality of Education

• Llangwyryfon is a very good school according to the very people appointed to make this judgement, Estyn, and has achieved this high level consistently for many years. If the school were to close, there is no assurance that the children would be sent to a school of equally high educational standards instead. Rather than being undermined, devalued, and closed down, the school should be praised and set as a benchmark for other schools to aspire towards.
• In other parts of Ceredigion, small schools have been closed because a large, modern, well resourced area school has been built nearby. There is no new area school in north Ceredigion, rather, these children are going to be squeezed into existing, slightly-less-small schools, increasing the class sizes to near capacity with no additional teachers promised. How can this possibly increase the quality of education, either for the children of Llangwyryfon, or for the children of whichever school they are going to be shoehorned into?

Quality of Pastoral Care

• Smaller classes and close attention to children as individuals encourages communication across year groups and builds confidence.
• The children of Llangwyryfon school are happy children – they get up in the morning and look forward to going to school – their parents and the children themselves attest to this. They are known and understood on an individual and personal level by their teachers and feel valued and trusted. Because of the smaller class sizes, the teachers can very quickly identify changes in behaviour and engagement and can tailor challenges and support to each child at a granular and individual level. Many of the parents have attested to this strength of the school and fear that in a larger school their children could have been allowed to drift, to fall behind, and could have lost interest, resulting in a very different path and outcomes. In Llangwyryfon school no child is left behind.

Future Generations

• Small rural schools contribute directly and uniquely to many of the goals set out in the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act. At Llangwyryfon School teachers and pupils actively take part in creating

• • A prosperous Wales
  • A resilient Wales
  • A healthier Wales
  • A more equal Wales
  • A Wales of more cohesive communities
  • A Wales of vibrant culture and thriving Welsh language

• A globally responsible Wales

Financials

• While the financial challenges facing Ceredigion County Council are well documented, it is worryingly unclear what financial benefit, if any, can actually be realised from closing the school, once the significant costs of transporting the children long distances over narrow, winding, badly maintained country roads are factored in. Coupled with significant staff redundancy costs and the very generous salary costs of all the Education Department staff working away on these proposals behind the scenes, there is a very real risk that closing the school would end up costing the Council money rather than saving anything.

Pupil Numbers

• Much is made of the decline in population numbers across Ceredigion over the last few years, and especially of the number of babies born since Covid. However, in Llangwyryfon, the number of children of eligible school age living in the area increases over the next four years. There is even demand from young parents living outside the official catchment area of the school, who want the school to remain open so that they can bring their children here, even though they live closer to another school.

Political Considerations

• Nationally, it is not Plaid Cymru’s policy to close primary schools, and indeed in cases like the recent closure of Rhigos Primary School in the Cynon Valley, it was Plaid Cymru fighting tooth and nail with the community to try to save the school. If so called “Plaid Cymru” Councillors in Ceredigion are prepared to simply throw out random chunks of their own Party’s policies at will, who exactly are we the electorate voting for in Ceredigion?

Environment and Transport

• In the context of Welsh Government’s “Llwybr Newydd” strategy, their National Transport Delivery Plan and their Carbon Net Zero strategic plan, which are underpinned by a commitment to “reduce the need for travel by bringing jobs, services, and facilities closer to where people live”, it is unconscionable for Ceredigion Council instead, to take jobs, services and facilities further away from where people live and force them to increase the use of transport and increase polluting emissions in order to reach them.

The Broader Context

• Llangwyryfon School is not fighting this battle alone, rather it is fighting alongside around seven other primary education sites in north Ceredigion (Ceredigion Council will not confirm any specifics about its plans). This would leave a gaping educational void in the heart of Ceredigion from Aberystwyth to Lampeter and from Aberaeron to Tregaron, with all the factors listed above multiplied eightfold.

For these reasons, I call on you as Councillors to vote against this proposed course of action and, instead, explore alternative means of raising revenue that do not harm the future of our children in the process.

Kind regards,

The Statutory Consultation will close on the 26th November, therefore the best time to do this is now, or as soon as possible thereafter!

A small number of posts, including Corporate Lead Officers and above, and some other staff, e.g. within Democratic Services are “politically restricted” posts. (If you are employed in one of these posts it will be an explicit part of your job description, and you will already be well aware of it.) These staff must not express any political bias. However:

“Every other employee (including school staff) have the right to take part in campaigns similar to the ones that you’re proposing”.

- Barry Rees, Corporate Director Ceredigion Council, 30/04/2024