Leading members of Cymdeithas yr Iaith stepped up the campaign for the future of Welsh-medium Village Schools by taking over a school building in the early hours of this morning. The five broke into one of the buildings of Ysgol Mynyddcerrig – closed by Carmarthenshire County Council at the end of last term – and changed the lock. The council used the building a few months earlier for their sham consultation.

The five who took over the building are the National Chair of Cymdeithas Hywel Griffiths, the Society’s Vice-Chair in Carmarthen Iestyn ap Rhobert, the Society’s Education spokesperson Ffred Ffransis, the Dyfed Organiser Angharad Clwyd, and Student Representative Siriol Teifi. From inside the building Ffred Ffransis explained:"We have today carried out the sentence imposed on Carmarthenshire Council during their trial on the field of the Urdd Eisteddfod when the Council was convicted of fraud in the consultation process over the future of Village Schools. It was proved that the Council had taken its decisions ahead of any consultations and was determined to sell off dozens of Welsh-medium Village Schools to raise funds for the Council. The sentence was that action should be taken to make the sale of Ysgol Mynyddcerrig more difficult so that the Council did not benefit from fraud.""Today we have occupied the school building on the first day of what should have been a new term and we are keeping the key symbolically on behalf of the local community.""We are also releasing today our new policy document (attached) 'Village Schools – the case for Positive Rationalisation' In this document we ask the Welsh Government to take the dramatic step of transferring the buildings of Village Schools from Education Departments to the Department for Rural Affairs on a national level and the Department for Community Regeneration on a county level. The LEA would hire that part of the building necessary for running a primary school.""It would be the responsibility of the Dept of Rural Affairs to maintain and upgrade buildings and work with partners to ensure relevant community use of other parts of the building. In this way, the future of Village Schools could once again become a discussion about education rather than Real Estate. The buildings could also become available to attract European Community Development funding."