A WELSH Medium school in Monmouthshire is set to expand to provide a nursery from April next year.

A proposal by Monmouthshire council to extend Ysgol Gymraeg Y Fenni in Abergavenny is due to be approved by the council next week.

The decision follows consultation, which highlighted concerns that there will not be enough places to meet the growing demand for Welsh medium education.

The proposal to extend the age range from four to 11 to three to 11 and offer 30 places to children at the school, which is currently the only Welsh medium primary school in the South East Wales Consortium that does not have a local authority nursery.

Governors at the St David’s Road school want to open a local authority nursery on the site because there is a need to for additional Welsh medium pre-school provision in north Monmouthshire.

They believe that accepting children aged between three and four in a nursery would enable them to raise standards.

It adds that it is essential that Cylch Meithrin Y Fenni remains within the school to ensure good transition arrangements, to meet parental needs, to provide wrap around childcare and to enable them to offer Flying Start childcare places.

Of the 42 responses received during the consultation period, only one was not in support of the proposal.

A report by Sue Hall, the council’s early years manager, said that Cylch Meithrin Y Fenni is the only Welsh medium provider of early education in north Monmouthshire and they currently only have one member of staff who is a fluent Welsh speaker. At Ysgol Gymraeg Y Fenni children will be fully immersed in the Welsh language. By having their own nursery class it is expected that children will enter statutory education with a better acquisition of the Welsh language.

The Welsh-medium nursery Cylch Meithrin Y Fenni, located in a demountable building on the school site, has been full with a waiting list for the past few years. By the summer term, it has not been possible for all three and four-year olds to access their full entitlement of five sessions per week of free early education.

The nursery will remain as an approved provider of early education to cater for the rising three year-olds in the spring and summer term if a new nursery is developed at the school.

A demountable building has already been adapted to accommodate the Foundation Phase curriculum and costs will be minimal as the intention is for Ysgol Gymraeg Y Fenni and Cylch Meithrin Y Fenni to share equipment and resources.

Objections can be sent to the council’s chief executive by October 19.