Cardiff school closures

anm_2

Has anyone got any views about the school closures and all the changes that the goverment has got planned for all schools in cardiff...Or maybe the goverment got plans for the schools in your area (away from cardiff)
If so you can air your views here
So come on and let me know your opinions

Ok then i will go first my children go to a catholic school which is going to close in 2013 which wont effect my 2 eldest in the slightest, but they expect my youngest to start at a high school which is going to close 3-4 years after and then expect her to change schools whilst she is studying for her GCSEs, after the closure they expect the children from her year to go to another school where they will have to travel right across to the other end of the city to get to the new school that they are building,

ALWAYS_POOR

I am probably very controversial in my opinion but it seems that they are opening too many Welsh speaking schools to the detriment of the English speaking schools . . . Some young primary children in my area will now have to walk over a mile to school whereas before they only had to travel a very short distance. They will never be able to do the journey unaccompanied by an adult and this will probably mean that traffic will increase due to extra school runs.

anm_2

I totally agree about your opinion about the welsh schools they are turning half my daughters school into a welsh medium and my boys high school is turning into one as well....... my daughter is going to have to travel across the city to get to high school when her time comes so therefore will not be able to participate in any after school activities at all

my 14 yr old son is also attending a protest tommorrow afternoon to try to save his school

pavlovs_dog

i personally am in favour of more welsh speaking schools. our children (when we have them) will go to welsh medium education. if we had children now and wanted to put them in a welsh medium primary in cardiff, they too would have a fair trek to the nearest one.

i dont believe that welsh medium should take priority - im all for choice. but the reason they are opening more welsh medium schools is because of ever increasing demand for places. more and more parents (the english speaking ones as much as the welsh) are choosing welsh medium education for their children because it is regarded as offering a "better" education. more than 90% (i think its more like 98%, which is startling) of children in welsh speaking schools are from english speaking families. it all comes down to demand

having recently done a spell of work in cardiff schools in preparation for my teacher training qualification, i personally think the plan is long over due. the standard of buildings the kiddies are being taight in are laughable, schools are not financially viable to run, and in the end its the kids who suffer the most. as a result of the changes, they will either be taught in new purpose built buildings, or modernised old ones, thus creating a safe and suitablie environment which is conducive to learning. less money will be required for repairs and maintenance, so more money can (or should at least, you know what cardiff council is like :rolleyes: ) be spent on teachers and resources.

im surprised that it has taken this long for a plan to be drawn up - by the time the plans are deployed and completed, the children who would have most benefitted from the new system will be too far through the system to benefit (or will be caught up in the change overs). but it is a step in the right direction for the children of the future. be interesting to see what mention if any the plans make of the falling birth rate, and how they plan to react to this.

also, i forsee future problems in oversubscription at the existing cardiff and vale welsh medium secondaries. whilst they may be coping fine now with the demand for places, all these welsh medium primaries will place further demand on the welsh secondaries, which in time will either need expansion, or a new one built.

just my tuppence worth, will watch the debate with interest :beer:

anm_2

There may be a demand for welsh meduium schools but in my personal opinion this is at the expence of my children who attend catholic schools... The goverment think it is viable to close these schools and this i feel is at the expence of my childrens religon..

currently there are only 3 catholic high schools in cardiff ,corpus christie they are not touching but the remaining 2 are to close (which may i add have had a lot of work done to them St Illtyds has had a a total rebuild of its buildings) to be replaced by one catholic high school in the lower building of Whitchurch high (therefore effecting Whitchurch high pupils as well). I dont think there is going to be room in the 2 catholic schools for all these children ..

When they sell off the land for some of the schools they will probably build houses on them, then new families will move to the area and where are alll there children going to go because all the schools will be full.

pavlovs_dog

i was discussing this further over the weekend, with OH and 2 very good friends. out of the four of us, i was the only one who didnt go to a catholic school. of the three who did, only one was from a practising catholic family. the other 2, my OH included, went there because a church school education was seen as a better education than could by offered by the other schools in the area.

looking to the future, mine and OHs children will definately go to a welsh school, and our friend's children may possibly also end up in welsh medium education. it seems therefore that welsh medium education is the new church school education

as for the maintenance/rebuilds, part of the reason for this scheme is that it is cheaper to knock the older schools down and start again than it is to repair them. the outstanding repair bill for cardiff schools is up in the millions. having experienced both sides of the coin - being taught in 'temporary' portacabins and brand new purpose built buildings, i sure as hell know which i prefer!

Backbiter

pavlos_dog make some excellent points. The main issue is that Cardiff has to find £60 million plus to repair and refurbish its dilapidated schools. It HAS to do this, believe me - many of them were built cheaply about 50 years ago and had a lifespan of 20 years. They are in a shameful state, but won't get spruced up or rebuilt unless they can make savings elsewhere - which is where the 8000 surplus places in primary and secondary schools come in.

I fully understand anm's and always poor's anger and resentment towards Welsh medium schools, but the fact is these have NO surplus places - there aren't enough places to meet parental demand, so this area has to expand. It's not an anti-Catholic reorganisation, but I do sympathise with the disruption your children will suffer. My children will be moving to new buildings next term (in RCT, not Cardiff), but I can't wait for them to leave the shabby run-down place they've been in for the last few years.

Don't give up the fight to save your local schools, though - these are just plans and I'm sure changes will be made. I agree it's wrong that Catholic children will have to travel from East and West Cardiff to the North - ridiculously long and complicated journey (but no different from the one currently faced by kids who have to get to llandaff North and Fairwater to get to Welsh schools).

pavlovs_dog

Backbiter wrote:

I agree it's wrong that Catholic children will have to travel from East and West Cardiff to the North - ridiculously long and complicated journey (but no different from the one currently faced by kids who have to get to llandaff North and Fairwater to get to Welsh schools).

this really strikes a chord with me.

whilst it is lovely if you can put your kids in the school you want, a school that just so happens to be right on your dooorstep, this is a reality for few, not many.

i think if you feel strongly enough about them going to a particular school, the commute is a compromise that has to be made and accommodated. whilst in an ideal world no parent wants their child walking for miles, or catching one bus after the other, you cant have your cake and eat it too. if a short commute was that important, you'd put them in the local school and be done with it.

i am an former stanwell pupil. i have lived both ends of penarth; a 10 mintue walk away, and a 40 minute walk away. i have also lived in barry, where i faced a mile long walk to the bus stop before a bus journey to Penarth. it was a sacrifice i was prepared to make because of the quality of education received at Stanwell. a significant proportion of Stanwell's pupils are bus-ed in from barry and sullly. the same goes for the cardiff and vale welsh schools, or the special needs schools such as erw'r delyn; majority of their kids are bus-ed in too.

at one stage, there was a boy in my year who commuted from merthyr :eek: it is not uncommon for pupils from far outside the catchment area to try for a place in a successful school. if we choose to 'reject' our local comprehensive becasue it does not fit with our ideals, i dont think we are really in any position to moan about how far little jimmy has to walk, because we made that choice

ALWAYS_POOR

IMHO I think that the reason for the increase in popularity of the Welsh schools could possibly be because people feel more 'elite' to say that their children attend a Welsh speaking school. Cardiff is not generally a Welsh speaking area, in fact, the population has always been quite cosmopolitan, but I have come across heaps of people who boast that their children attend the 'Welsh' school.

I wonder how many of the children are actually welsh speaking when they start school . . . surely it would be more valuable to attend a French speaking school, far more people in the world speak French than Welsh and surely it makes no difference if the children are not brought up in that language. They are being educated in a foreign language regardless of which language that is, surely it must affect the quality of their education.

This discussion is very interesting.

By the way, I live in an area which is losing a very good primary school, is it more than coincidence that a brand new Welsh primary school was built nearby very recently?

pavlovs_dog

the last census results show that the welsh language is going through something of a revival at the mo, no more so than amongst the under 25s.

put it down to the cool cymru campaign, cylch meithrin, elitism....either way, its real, and its happening.

i mentioned in an earlier post, up to 98% of children at welsh medium schools are from english speaking backgrounds. parents who want a wlesh education for their child are encouraged to attend welsh playgroups such as clych ti a fi, and a welsh nursery (meithrin), so an increasing number of children from english speaking families have a grasp of welsh by the time they reach primary school age, and those that dont are given extra classroom support to ease the transition.

as for sending them to a french school, im not getting into the whole welsh is a dead language debate. what i will say is that the attitude in this country towards modern foreign languages is disgusting, and its hard enough to get the government to support promoting and use of one of its own languages, never mind any of that "foreign rubbish" :rolleyes:

although whilst on the subject, children who are bi/multi lingual have be shown in recent tests to better across all areas of the curriculum. i think its because they have a much wider vocabulary, and so are better at thinking outside the box. you might have 3 different words for 'door' (for example), where as they'd have 8 or 9. i'll see if i can find some links...

pavlovs_dog

mudiad ysgol meithrin - bilingual from birth

parents for welsh education

BBC (just about everything you could ever want to know about bilingual education)

hope you find these interesting. the bbc one in particular is very interesting reading, as it is probably the most balance account, offering both pros and cons