The children of Carway went back to school this month the same way they left in July: on a bus to somebody else’s village.
Carway Community Primary was shut days before the start of last September’s term after a structural survey found the council could not guarantee Block Three would stay up. Every pupil was moved 2.5 miles to Gwynfryn School in Pontyates, told to keep wearing their Carway uniform, and promised the arrangement was temporary.
The council said at the time that the children would keep their free school meals, breakfast club and after-school provision, that transport was being finalised, and that it was looking for somewhere to put the village’s Cylch Meithrin. No timeline was given then, and none has been given since.
Thirteen months on, nothing has been built. Capital papers for Monday’s Carmarthenshire Council cabinet meeting show £1.84m set aside this year for mobile classroom provision, of which £35,000 is forecast to be spent. Beside the line, a single sentence: “Mobile provision at Carway being reviewed.”
Asked why, the council’s cabinet member for education, Cllr Glynog Davies, said the note reflected the position in June, when work was under way “to explore the longer-term future of education provision in Carway and the associated capital implications”.
“Consequently, the report noted that the mobile provision proposal was under review,” he said.
He did not say whether the mobile classrooms will still be delivered, or whether the Carway site will reopen. The council is “considering the longer-term future of education provision in Carway through its established democratic processes”, he said, with more to be shared with parents, staff and the community “as those processes progress”.
His statement also refers to “formal proposals” being “developed and considered”, without saying what they are.
Pupils continue to attend Ysgol Gwynfryn, he said, and parents have been told so. “We recognise the importance of this matter to pupils, families and the wider community.”
What the families are living with
For parents it means a second year of the school bus for children who used to walk, siblings starting reception in a different village from the one they live in, and a school building standing empty a few hundred yards from their front doors.
Carway is still a school on paper. The council’s schools budget list gives it £346,743 for the year and forecasts it will end March £23,000 in deficit, having started the year in surplus. Gwynfryn, which is now teaching Carway’s children as well as its own, is forecast at £14,000 in the red.
The three schools share a headteacher and a governing body under the Federation of Carway, Gwynfryn and Ponthenri, so the same leadership team is running a school that has no pupils and a school that has too many.
The knock-on for Pontyates
Carway’s closure has already frozen a decision on its neighbour. The council had planned to consult on closing Ysgol Pontiets, which has 24 pupils and more than 70% surplus places, but shelved it in November because of the Carway situation. Pontiets is forecast to go from a small surplus to an £80,000 deficit this year.
Campaigners for Pontiets said in November that the pause was a relief but that “the anxiety and uncertainty” would go on. The two schools sit a mile and a half apart on the same road, and whatever happens at Carway now decides what happens next door.
The wider picture is not encouraging for anyone hoping for a quick fix. The same cabinet pack shows the county’s schools heading for a £16m combined deficit, the education capital maintenance grant from the Welsh Government coming in £1m below what the council expected, and a schools building fund of £17.8m listed as “to be utilised for future schools projects”.
Money for school buildings is being squeezed elsewhere in the same document. Fencing work at the additional learning needs centre in Llanelli has been “paused because of cost increases”, and the Bryngwyn refurbishment will now “complete in future years”, with £1.2m of this year’s budget pushed back.
When the school was closed last August, the council said the decision had been made “solely to ensure the absolute safety of pupils and staff”, that it understood the timing was “frustrating”, and that further assessments would decide the building’s future.
Those assessments have never been published. The cabinet meets at 10am on Monday to note the capital report, including the Carway line, without a separate decision.
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The council need to sort our school, they have had the money now give us our school back. Parents or children was never asked about the change of school we was told .things need to change as we want our school back end of .many thanks Claire warren parent .