Hands off Cardiff's schools

PARENTS, PUPILS and teaching staff in Cardiff are outraged at the city council's plans to close 17 secondary, primary, infant and nursery schools across the city.

The council's proposed 'education reforms' will shut some schools and merge others while expanding a few more. The plans, which are far bigger and with more far-reaching effects than teachers, pupils and parents expected, could hit every school in the city.

In Whitchurch, the biggest school in Wales will see its lower school site closed and relocated to the same site as its upper school. A parent asked incredulously how could the whole school be squeezed into the upper school's site?

Parents are also worried about children's schooling being disrupted, longer school runs and job losses for teachers. The council claims that action was needed to solve the problem of falling pupil numbers but many teachers were angry at the number of teaching posts to be lost over the course of the plan.

They ask why Cardiff council is not looking at reducing school class sizes, for long a basic aim for teaching trade unions, rather than savaging schools and jobs.

Even though the council made the announcement at the time of the Easter holidays, banners of protest were hung out in protest at the closures at some schools. That is a good sign that a campaign of opposition to these plans involving education unions, school students and the local communities can be built.

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In The Socialist 13 April 2006:

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