The new £20 million Y Gwyndy campus in Caerphilly has officially been opened by First Minister of Wales Carwyn Jones.
The three to 16 age range Welsh medium campus has been built by Caerphilly County Borough Council with £10 million of Welsh Government funding through its 21st Century Schools programme.
The new campus is built on the site of the former St Ilan Comprehensive School which closed in 2007. The Grade II listed main building was originally opened in 1933 as Gwyndy Senior Girls School.
The site is now home to Ysgol Gymraeg Caerphilly and Ysgol Gyfyn Cwm Rhymni.
The new school campus took its first intake of Year 7 pupils in September 2013, but the official opening marks the end of the third phase of building works.
Ysgol Gyfyn Cwm Rhymni’s original Fleur-de-Lys site now caters for post-16 education.
Speaking after the official opening on Wednesday, December 9, First Minister Carwyn Jones said: “It’s been great to see first hand the fantastic Welsh medium learning environment that’s been created here in Caerphilly.
“The Y Gwyndy campus is testament to the local authority’s desire to provide the best possible facilities for learners in the area. It will be a huge benefit to the children and young people of Caerphilly and the community as a whole.
“We are investing £1.4 billion through our 21st Century Schools and Education Programme to rebuild and refurbish over 150 schools and colleges in Wales.
“We’ve provided £10m for the Y Gwyndy campus, one of our earliest projects, and seeing up close how that money has been spent for the benefit of future generations of learners in Caerphilly is simply fantastic.”
New school – good! New Welsh school – awful!
Welsh is a dying language. It should be phased out of public usage in Wales. This new school will inhibit that chances of all children learning there. Welsh speaking students already do worse according to the statistics.
That statement is worthless coming from who knows who? you might as well keep your opinions to yourself, they have no credablity particularly in relation to Welsh Culture, politics, and the Welsh education System, because, they come with absolutely no gravitas whatsoever, and they have no `identity` anyone with an opinion worth anything will express it using their name so that people who disagree know they are not talking to a wall.
Coming from an obviously fake name does not make one’s opinion invalid. Such an ad hominem approach is usually evidence of a person’s struggle to put forward a defence of something.
In this case I have raised two big points (both unchallenged); Firstly, Welsh is a dying language that inhibits a person’s ability to do well. If a person is serious about wanting to progress in life that person would be learning in English, and spending spare time to learn a second, more widely-spoken language i.e. definitely not Welsh. Secondly, those who do learn in Welsh and speak Welsh usually under perform when compared to their English-speaking peers. If children do not perform as well as children being taught in English it is irresponsible for parents to send their children to a Welsh school.
However, the problem goes further than a problem with parents; the problem extends into government policy. This school should be an English school, not a Welsh school. Spending large amounts of public money on something that does not benefit individuals is wasteful.
The Welsh language is the dying grandmother on a hospital ward being kept alive by a life support machine. It is time to turn off the machine, and place the grandmother on the Liverpool Care Pathway until it dies.
I cannot understand why the St. Ilan school was closed in the first place. It is not as if the settlement is getting smaller. I sense a political agenda at work here.