Chance of a lifetime for Gorseinon children

A CHANCE of a lifetime for the children of Gorseinon is beckoning with proposals for a new primary school taking shape in their community.

At the moment youngsters at Gorseinon Primary School are spread out across three sites in buildings not fit for 21st century education.

Now Swansea Council has a window of opportunity to build a brand new £6m school right in the heart of the community that will benefit generations of pupils for years to come.

Glenda Gibbon, head teacher at Gorseinon Primary School, said she and the school community as a whole are desperate to see a replacement which will see pupils brought together on the same site for the first time in the school’s history.

She said: “I’ve seen the new draft artist impressions and they are fantastic. I can’t say how much it would mean to me and all the pupils at the school to have a new school like this. It would be an amazing moment if we can make these dreams a reality.

“I know parents would support me in saying that teachers and staff at the current school buildings are doing a brilliant job in trying circumstances.

“The infant school where we teach four to eight year olds doesn’t have a blade of grass of green space and we’re holding up some external walls with wood buttresses. And owing to issues with the sewer, I don’t want to describe the smell there is from the toilets sometimes.

“We simply must have a new school and I do feel that to miss the opportunity now to get one would be such a shame for a town that deserves better and can have better.”

Jen Raynor, Cabinet Member for Education, said the council’s plans for a new Gorseinon Primary School on Parc y Werin are making progress. But she said that owing to the way in which the Welsh Government would fund it’s half of the building costs, it’s unlikely a new school could get built if work doesn’t start in this financial year.

She said: “We carried out a full public engagement earlier this year and we got positive feedback. We looked at a range of options for the location of a new Gorseinon Primary School and the Parc y Werin proposal was by far the most compelling.

“The new school would be located in the heart of its community and only around 12% of the park would be taken up by the new school building. We all want to transform the education environment for the children of Gorseinon. We can do that, but we need to act quickly.”

To find out more about the Gorseinon Primary School story go to www.swansea.gov.uk/gorseinonprimaryproject