Drop-in sessions over schools’ merger

By Elgan Hearn, Local Democracy Reporter

Drop-in sessions will be held at Llanfyllin as part of an ongoing consultation to discuss merging both high and primary schools.

The consultation will continue to run until January 31, but people will get the chance to discuss the proposals with staff from Powys County Council’s education department at Llanfyllin County Primary (CP) School on January 10, from 4pm-8pm and Llanfyllin High School on January 16, from 4pm-8pm.

It is proposed to close both schools and to establish a new bilingual all-through school for pupils aged four to 18 on the current sites of Llanfyllin CP School and Llanfyllin High School.

If the merger takes place, the current target date is to close the two schools on August 31, 2020, with the new school opening the following day.

In March 2018, the cabinet agreed a new school organisation policy, which sets out the council’s aspiration for ‘secondary schools to become ‘all-through schools’, or part of multi-sited arrangements’.

Llanfyllin would join Ysgol Bro Hyddgen in Machynlleth as only the county’s second ‘all-through’ school.

Falling pupil numbers has been part of the problem with Llanfyllin CP school having 147 pupils and the high school 707, a sharp drop from six years ago when the figures were 176 and 871 respectively.

Peter Lewis, who represents Llanfyllin, said: “I believe this next step will bring the beginning of the end of the uncertainty for the teachers, pupils and parents, which has hung over us for the last 10 years, by securing the future bilingual education provision at Llanfyllin.”

Once the consultation period has ended, a report will be produced which will outline the feedback received. They will then decide whether or not they wish to go ahead with the merger.

If they go ahead, a statutory notice would be published, and there would be a period of 28 days for people to submit objections.

The cabinet would then need to consider another report summarising any objections received, and decide whether to continue with the process or not.

To give the council your views email school.modernisation@powys.gov.uk.