Church schools in Patron Saint’s county ‘under threat’
Church education in the county which is the birthplace of Wales’s Patron Saint is under threat from a series of actions by the local council which the Church in Wales warns could amount to religious discrimination.
The Church in Wales has issued a formal notice that it will take legal action against Pembrokeshire County Council if it presses ahead with plans to remove church status from Cilgerran Voluntary Controlled Primary School.
On May 14th the council voted to remove the Voluntary Controlled status of this thriving Welsh-speaking rural school despite 97% of the responses to the consultation having opposed this entirely unnecessary change.
A letter has now been sent to council officers on behalf of the Diocese of St Davids and the Church in Wales making it clear that if the council persists with this course, the Church will take legal action on the grounds of:
- Public misrepresentation and unqualified legal assertions made by Pembrokeshire County Council officers.
- Discrimination against faith schooling
The letter also makes it clear that, contrary to the information given to councillors in the meeting, if PCC removes VC status from the school, the Church will not make the site available for a successor school. This renders the case on which the proposed removal of VC status is based untenable.
The move follows Pembrokeshire County Council’s decision on June 15th to close Manorbier Church in Wales Voluntary Controlled School, which was damaged by a fire in 2022, and which, despite repeated assurances from Cabinet Members and senior officers that it would be rebuilt, has been allowed to sit empty while the number of children, forced for years to learn in temporary accommodation, has declined.
A spokesperson for the Church in Wales said: “Pembrokeshire County Council’s behaviour in the case of Manorbier VC School has been utterly unconscionable. The Council has presided over a catalogue of delay, incompetence and broken promises resulting in the literal destruction of a thriving school which has served its community for more than 150 years.
“Taken together with the gratuitous attack on the church status of Ysgol Cilgerran, this amounts to a targeted assault on the inclusive Christian education which Church in Wales schools have provided to their communities for generations.
“That the council should be pursuing this potentially discriminatory action against Church schools in the county which is the cradle of Christianity in Wales, and which takes pride in being the birthplace and shrine of our nation’s Patron Saint, is a bitter irony. We are not prepared to allow it to happen. We are grateful to those councillors who have defended these schools and we now look to all the county’s elected representatives to halt this destructive course of action.”
Please find attached a copy of the legal letter sent to Pembrokeshire County Council: Letter to Pembrokeshire County Council