Good News for Gwernyfed School

I've just seen this, shared by Gareth Ratcliffe on Facebook.

It seems that Powys County Council may be about to scrap their plans to close Gwernyfed School and merge it with Brecon High!
Here's the relevant part of the report prepared for the full council meeting of 8th September, with the recommendations:

"2.Gwernyfed High School and Brecon High School Consultation proposal.
a)To close Brecon High School and Gwernyfed High School on the 31stAugust2017, and to establish a new English-medium 11 – 16 secondary school that will operate across the current sites of the two schools from 1stSeptember 2017 (“the New School”);
b)From the 1stSeptember 2017, Post-16 provision (academic and vocational) to be delivered by NPTC Group of Colleges in Brecon;
c)From the 1stSeptember 2017, Welsh-medium secondary education to be delivered at the Builth Wells site of the proposed new school in Mid Powys (provided that the Proposal is approved by Cabinet following consultation);
andd)To close the school sites at Gwernyfed and Brecon upon the opening of a new school in Brecon, in 2019/20 (“the New School Building”).Portfolio holder draft recommendation.

1.To consider the Consultation Report and Responses Report
2.To abandon elements a,band d of the Proposal and to bring a new reportback to Cabinet with draft recommendationsfor Brecon and Gwernyfed High Schools, in accordance with the Schools Reorganisation Policy 2015, by no later than February 2017;
3.To re-consult immediately on element c) of the Proposal, i.e. the closure ofthe Welsh-stream at Brecon High School from September 2017;
4.To immediately submit a revised Outline Business Case to Welsh Government’s 21stC Schools Programme for capital investment in both campuses. This will include a new build 11 – 18 campus in Brecon and improvements to the Gwernyfed campus."

So the first paragraph is what they were thinking of doing, and the second paragraph says that they are throwing out a), b) and d) and consulting again on moving Welsh language provision to Builth Wells.
Instead they are now proposing to invest in both Gwernyfed and Brecon High, with a new school at Brecon and improvements at Gwernyfed!

Meanwhile, the recommendation is that Builth Wells and Llandrindod Wells High Schools will be closing and re-opened as one school across two sites, as in the original County Council plans.

The consultation documents are now available on the Powys County Council website (and the consultation analysis is 292 pages long!)