A plan to strip a north Pembrokeshire faith primary school of its religious status has been dropped.
In May, Pembrokeshire County Council voted to remove the Voluntary Controlled (VC) status from Welsh-medium Ysgol Cilgerran, despite 97 per cent of consultation responses opposing the change, which the church called ‘entirely unnecessary’.
The consultation received 203 responses, with 197 opposing the proposal and just three supporting it.
That consultation for the “discontinuation of Cilgerran Church in Wales Voluntary Controlled School and establishment of the same as a 3-11 Community School” followed a review which “considered the extent of surplus school places in the area, set against a significant decline in the pupil population,” the council has previously said.
Councillors have previously been warned the proposals were “fundamentally flawed,” with the school’s land legally in trust as a Church of Wales school, the change “essentially creating a new school with no premises to occupy”.
Hundreds opposed the changes, while a petition on the council’s website attracted 391 signatures.
The Church in Wales formally objected and warned of legal action, accusing council officers of “public misrepresentation and unqualified legal assertions” and “discrimination against faith schooling”.
Cilgerran parents, teachers and pupils travelled to County Hall in Haverfordwest to protest at the council’s July meeting.
Their colourful, pupil-made protest signs carried messages including “You can’t fix what isn’t broken”, “Leave our VC status alone” and “Don’t take away our identity for a few £££”.
The Roman Catholic Church in Wales also urged Pembrokeshire County Council to drop the plans, while Wales Humanists and the National Secular Society supported the council’s proposals.
The council published a statutory notice in June and received 91 objections, which was presented to councillors at the October 15 meeting of Pembrokeshire County Council; a report for members recommending the contentious plans be dropped.
The report said the status change “gives rise to separate and potentially complex property and occupation issues”, while the diocese challenges “the council’s ability to discontinue the existing school and thereafter continue to occupy the school site for the purposes of the newly established community school”.
It called for the changes to be dropped in part because of serious legal questions over ending the school’s current status and occupying the site as a community school, going ahead would “create a material risk that continuity of education at the existing site could not be assured during or following implementation”.
At the meeting, the call to back the recommendations was made by Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member Education and Regeneration Cllr Paul Miller, who warned the school faced a similar long-term demographic challenge of declining pupil numbers to many other parts of the county, a particular concern in the northeast.
“The challenges have not gone away, there’s no hiding from the fact there are fewer children around,” Cllr Miller said.
Members backed the recommendation.
