30-01-07
Welsh medium education is continuing to make inroads in Monmouthshire, Wales' most easterly county. Since being established in September 2001 a mere three miles from the English border, Ysgol y Ffin has had to put up with a restricted and inconvenient site, but now at last the education authority has accepted the need to move it to a better one in Caldicot.
Monmouthshire Education Authority is proposing to move the school to the site of Sandy Lane Infants School in Caldicot, which would enable it to establish a nursery. Ysgol y Ffin currently has 72 children, a figure which could grow to 210 on the new site with up to 30 in a nursery.
The hope is that the new school will open in September 2008.
Ysgol y Ffin originally opened in September 2001 with 15 children in reception and another five children aged seven (Year 1) following threats by RhAG to take the council to judicial review. The need for the school had been brought to crisis point by the refusal of Ysgol Gymraeg Casnewydd, itself oversubcribed, to take any more children from Monmouthshire.
It is a breath of fresh air to read the statutory notice relating to the proposal: "The Local Education Authority also believes that demand for Welsh Medium education across the County is being suppressed by the lack of sufficient and suitable facilities."
