Over a 100 people attended a protest by parents and governors outside County Hall Carmarthen between 8.30am and 10am this morning (Monday 23 July) ahead of Carmarthenshire Council's Executive Board meeting. Members of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg were there supporting the protest.

At 10am Carmarthenshire County Council’s Executive Board will be discussing a recommendation to adopt a new formula which would effectively cleanse the county of every small and medium village school except for “a small number of educational locations” which are very remote. The new proposed formula would get rid of the current support for smaller schools and federations and base everything on total pupil numbers. As a result, small village schools will lose large chunks of their funding.Cymdeithas yr Iaith’s research into the effects of the new formula show that Welsh-medium schools will be the big losers. Category A (Welsh-medium) schools will lose a total of £460,040 in funding. Category AB Schools (Welsh and English streams) will gain £269,365, and Category B Schools (English-medium) will gain £190,433. 50 of the Welsh-medium Category A Village Schools will be worse off under the new formula, while just 13 of them will be better off.Cymdeithas Chair in Carmarthenshire, Sioned Elin (who herself has children at a Village School) and who attended the protest commented:"The Council is getting ever more frustrated by all the opposition to their closure plans and the subsequent delay to their plans. So they now plan to starve Welsh-medium Village Schools into submission and place their governors in impossible situations. In the process, they would be dealing a terrible blow to Welsh-medium education and to our Welsh-speaking communities."Surprise, Surprise!Yet again a lengthy consultation process about the future of a village school has had no effect whatsoever on Carmarthenshire Education Officer who are recommending that the Executive Board meeting this morning 23rd of July should sanction the issue of a closure notice for Ysgol Llansadwrn. This will follow an earlier item in the agenda, which will ask the Board to adopt a new financial formula aimed at starving village schools of funds.In a letter to every Board member, Cymdeithas Education spokesperson Ffred Ffransis says:"Yet again you are being asked to rubber-stamp the closure of am Welsh-medium Village School without any Language Impact Study nor Community Impact Study being undertaken.""Your officers say that the Consultation Process has not produced any viable alternative to closure. Does it not strike you that this is linked to your new proposed funding formula, which is designed to make federation unviable? Do you not see that the lack of joined up strategy between the Education and Community Regeneration Departments make the full community use of existing school buildings impossible.""This time, please reject the Officers' recommendations and instruct them to fully review the effects of closure and the alternatives.""The biggest scandal is that the Officers are working from a template to organise the mass-closure of schools with a cavalier attitude. The paragraph used argue against federating in the Llansadwrn area is exactly word for word the paragraph used in January '07 that argued against federating in the Mynyddcerrig area. It is a cut and paste job."