NEEDY HIT BY CLOSURE

13 June 2005

The council says it has made its proposal to close Dylan Thomas Community School on purely educational grounds while in the same breath quoting market forces. In the open market there are always winners and losers and too often the most disadvantaged are the losers.

Dylan Thomas is indeed a small school but it serves some of the most disadvantaged in our society. It gives a voice to those struggling to make themselves heard. The school is a community dedicated to improving the lot of its children and all independent reports suggest that it is doing it well.

This is the community that will lose if we keep regarding education in the same way that we would talk about supermarkets. Surely in a society as affluent as ours there is a place for a small school dedicated to doing the best for the poorest and most challenged in our society?

I suggest that instead of educational criteria they have used the following yardsticks:

What will raise the most money?

Who might cause the least fuss?What will lose the least number of voters?

Why is it that all the so-called hard decisions the council have made have all affected Townhill, Mayhill and Penlan who have lost three comprehensive schools and several primaries in the past four years? Perhaps we should look at the voting registers for answers.

Parents and the community should fight this proposal with great vigour or lose a vital, caring, progressive school of which one of the inspectors said: "I hope I am still on the team for your next inspection because I see exciting prospects in the next few years."

T E Turner, Rockingham Terrace, Briton Ferry, Neath