A secular group has backed Pembrokeshire County Council’s plan to redesignate a Teifi faith primary school as a nonreligious community school.

Back in May, Pembrokeshire County Council voted to remove Voluntary Controlled (VC) status from Welsh-medium Ysgol Cilgerran’s Church in Wales school despite 97 per cent of the responses to a consultation having opposed a change which the church describes as ‘entirely unnecessary’.

That consultation followed a review which “considered the extent of surplus school places in the area, set against a significant decline in the pupil population,” the council has previously said.

Hundreds opposed the proposed changes, with a petition on the council’s own website gaining 391 signatures.

Cilgerran Voluntary Controlled Primary School. Picture: Church in Wales.Cilgerran Voluntary Controlled Primary School. Picture: Church in Wales.
Cilgerran Voluntary Controlled Primary School. (Pic: Church in Wales)

The Church in Wales has objected formally to the proposal and has warned it will take legal action on the grounds of “public misrepresentation and unqualified legal assertions made by Pembrokeshire County Council officers,” and “discrimination against faith schooling”.

At the council’s July meeting, Cilgerran parents, teachers, and students travelled to County Hall, Haverfordwest to protest.

Their colourful protest signs, made by students, carried messages such as “You can’t fix what isn’t broken”, “Leave our VC status alone”, and “Don’t take away our identity for a few £££”.

One of the protesters, an ex-pupil and governor, Sarah Moore, has said: “I’m here today because I’m horrified that the council are talking about taking the church status away from our school. The church gave that land for the school over 180 years ago.

“97 per cent have voted against this and yet they’re still trying to do it. If we want our children to stay in a church school, the nearest one is Letterston. So where will these children have that good education that they are getting now?”

The Church has said it has deep concern about what it sees as a pattern of the council’s recent actions regarding Church Schools.

In June, councillors voted to close Manorbier Church in Wales Voluntary Controlled School, which was damaged by a fire in 2022.

It has also expressed concerns about VC status being lost for Tenby Church in Wales VC school after councillors backed a consultation on penitential education changes in the Tenby area.

Wales Humanists recently supported the council plans, writing to Pembrokeshire County Council expressing its support for the proposal “on behalf of the area’s substantial non-religious community”.

It says, according to the 2021 Census, almost half of people in Pembrokeshire identified as having no religion.

Since then, another secular group, The National Secular Society (NSS), has expressed its support for the council.

The NSS campaigns for publicly funded faith schools to be phased out, and for religiously selective admissions to be abolished.

Welcoming the move, the NSS praised the council’s “secular approach to education” as the “best means of ensuring publicly funded schools are equally welcoming to all children, regardless of their backgrounds”.

The NSS added: “Inclusive schools which educate pupils together are one of our best means of promoting community cohesion, whilst faith schools which divide children on the basis of religion and are entirely out of step with the irreligious and religiously diverse Wales of today.

“Schools we all pay for should be managed in the best interests of everyone, not used as a vehicle for the agenda of religious institutions”.