Here are the responses of the campaign to the two engagement exercises that Cardiff Council is holding.
Response to “Engagement on short-term changes to Welsh-medium secondary education in 2027/2028”
Dear Leader of the Council and Cabinet,
We express great disappointment at the lack of planning by the Council for the year 2027-2028, given that the council has known the numbers of children who will need Welsh-medium secondary places for several years.
We expect that the Council will work closely and communicate clearly with schools and families to find a solution to the problem of a lack of places for 2027-28.
Any “temporary” or “short-term” solution should work in harmony with the plan for the existence of four Welsh-medium secondary schools in the capital and the fourth as part of a Welsh-medium school for all ages (3-19) located in, and to serve, Butetown, Grangetown and neighboring areas in the south of the city.
Sincerely,
Ysgol De Caerdydd Campaign
Response to “Engagement on sustainable growth of Welsh-medium secondary provision”
Dear Leader of the Council and Cabinet,
As part of the public engagement for Welsh-medium secondary provision in the city we wish to convey
- our strong support for a Welsh-medium all-age school (3-19) to be located in and to serve Butetown, Grangetown and the surrounding areas of south Cardiff (Option 5 in the document “Engagement on sustainable growth of Welsh-medium secondary provision”).
As you mention in your introduction to the engagement, schools affect every part of family and community life, our children, our life patterns, our work and our local area.
The Welsh language belongs to everyone so every child should have the right to follow a Welsh-medium education within their community.
Over the past few years, there have been several cases of children from Butetown and the surrounding area not being able to get places at Ysgol Glantaf, only for the decisions to be overturned through the appeals process. But overturned or not, the situation caused a lot of anxiety and unnecessary worry for many children and their families at a formative time, with several children facing the possibility of having to attend different secondary schools to their peers. That uncertainty is expressed in the community to this day and affects families’ decision making, including whether or not to apply for Welsh-medium schools – especially at secondary level. The crisis highlighted several adverse structural defects in the provision of Welsh-medium education in the capital.
As things stand today –
- There is no local Welsh-medium secondary school for Butetown, Grangetown and the surrounding area so Welsh-medium secondary education is not an integral part of the fabric of the community and the geographical structures of Welsh medium high-school education have discriminated against families in the south of the city for decades.
- In order to attend a Welsh-medium secondary school, pupils who live in the south of the city must leave their communities daily. This means that some families choose for their children to attend local English secondary schools after studying in a Welsh-medium primary school. Many other families must disregard Welsh-medium education entirely because there is no convenient and accessible secondary provision available in the community. This is an injustice.
- The south of the city is home to the most multicultural communities in the capital and Wales, but no Welsh-medium secondary school exists to represent and celebrate this multiculturalism. This shortcoming is disgraceful and of national importance.
- Contrary to one of the cornerstones of the Curriculum for Wales which states the importance of celebrating the unique identity of your community while learning about the world, the children of Butetown, Grangetown and the south of the city are required to leave their communities to receive a Welsh-medium education at schools halfway across the city.
- The south of the city is also one of the most economically disadvantaged areas of the capital and Wales and research on our behalf proves that Butetown and Grangetown wards are among the areas with the worst accessibility to Welsh-medium education in the capital. This is further proof that the current structures of Welsh medium education discriminate against the families of the most multicultural communities and the most economically disadvantaged area of the city.
- With inevitable population growth in the south of the city due to the new flats of the Local Development Plan, the infrastructure is not in place to serve the residents of the future which includes Welsh-medium primary and secondary schools.
- None of our capital’s Welsh-medium secondary schools are located in new buildings and there is no provision at all in the south of the capital. When you mention the need to reduce disruption in your survey, you disregard the impact of how not having a Welsh-medium secondary school in a community disrupts families in all kinds of ways and how that has and is excluding thousands of children from the Welsh language for the rest of their lives.
What is needed and why –
- Any short-term plans by the County Council should feed into a long-term vision where four Welsh-medium secondary schools exist in the capital, one to represent each point on the compass, and that in first-class buildings.
- The Welsh Language and Education Act 2025 means that the Council has a duty to actively grow Welsh-medium education. Increasing the number of Welsh secondary schools is therefore absolutely essential. The only way to ensure fairness and inclusion for all children is to establish a Welsh-medium secondary school in every compass point of the city. In a city the size of Cardiff, Welsh-medium secondary schools are needed in the North, South, East and West. Only that will ensure convenient, accessible, safe and sustainable travel. And in line with the Council’s own vision to create a sustainable city and 15-minute neighbourhoods, only a Welsh-medium secondary school for each community fits that vision as well.
- Accordingly, we completely reject any plans that threaten to remove Bro Edern and Welsh-medium secondary education from the east of the city. All areas need Welsh-medium secondary schools.
- We reject most of the remaining proposed options in the same document as they are insufficient to meet the needs of south Cardiff (Options 1, 3, 4, and 6) and in some cases are unacceptably disruptive (Options 2 and 3). A new fourth Welsh-medium secondary for ages 11-18 (Option 4) would suffice if located in Grangetown/Butetown but would be insufficient without also including a plan for providing a new Welsh-medium primary in the area, and increasing the number of primary streams on the site over time.
- When considering the geographical spread of Welsh-medium schools, it must be taken into account in which community children live and that they wish to attend a local school – an organisation that represents them with their peers from primary school around them. In this regard, the Council must change its individualistic culture from ensuring that ‘every learner who wants a place… can take advantage of one’ to a worldview that accepts children as people who belong to communities and who also have the right to stay in them.
- In the south of the city, there is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to open the capital’s first Welsh-medium school for all ages and to serve that specific area. A campus that will be a resource of use for the whole community and a vibrant, civic place where the Welsh language will be central and part of a multicultural, multilingual story.
- On an all-ages site, it will be possible to make effective use of the infrastructure that would be created by co-locating services. Also, having a campus that offers a childcare service can help parents to be able to return to work or training – which is important in an area with obvious deprivation. Children and families would be able to foster contact with the site from the age of 6 months to adult education, normalising a Welsh-medium educational site in their lives. The site could also be a centre for children’s services in the area, or even in partnership with other public bodies. Being serious about a centre for all ages, there is a golden opportunity in south Cardiff to put social infrastructure in place for an area that is going to be developing as a result of the Local Development Plan. Resources could also be offered for adult education, community leisure activity, local cultures – and all these in an area that sometimes lacks affordable resources for parents and families, with the Welsh language at the heart of it all.
In your introduction, you state that this is our opportunity as residents to say what is most important to us. But this is really your opportunity as Leaders and Cabinet – to put right structures that have discriminated against families in the south of the city for decades and to ensure, finally, that community Welsh-medium education – from nursery to secondary – is available to everyone.
We therefore formally call on you as Leader and Cabinet of Cardiff Council to declare your intention to establish the fourth school immediately by publishing a specific, statutory proposal for a Welsh-medium school for all ages 3-19 to be located and to serve the families of Butetown, Grangetown and surrounding areas. And that as a matter of social justice.
Sincerely,
Ysgol De Caerdydd Campaign