Cardiff City Council plans to merge Tremorfa nursery school with St Alban's Catholic Primary School and Grangetown nursery school with Grangetown Primary School as part of its reorganisation of early years education provision. Both nursery schools were graded outstanding by Estyn, the schools inspection body for Wales.
Proposals for the early years changes were approved at the council meeting on 30 April. They outline plans to build more children's centres with extended services and to review the role of nursery schools, replacing them with nursery classes attached to primary schools. The council claims that 'this will enable children to take part effectively in the Foundation Phase, achieve high standards at Key Stage Two, and transfer seamlessly to secondary education'.
The plans will now be put out for a public consultation.
Helen Brown, whose three-year-old son attends Tremorfa nursery, said, 'I used to live in Leeds where I worked on a review of primary and secondary education, so I feel I can give an informed opinion on how school amalgamations work. In Leeds lots of nursery schools were closed or amalgamated and, with hindsight, stand-alone nurseries would have worked better. In my opinion, the closure of those nurseries took away the heart of the community. In the cases of stand-alone nurseries going into larger schools, there were no councils I worked with where it worked well. Promises that the provision would not change were not kept to.'
A source close to Grangetown nursery school, who did not wish to be named, said, 'At no point has anyone from the council been able to proffer any reason or any sound educational research on why the schools should be merged. There is, however, plenty of research, such as the EPPE project, which says children do better throughout life if they attend stand-alone nursery schools.
'The council would save minimal amounts of money by merging the schools. Is it really worth risking standards like this in an area where children and families are vulnerable?'
