THE head teacher of a primary school destroyed by a fire on New Year’s Day feels that after the highs and lows of 2016, the new year is a chance for optimism.

Last year, in the early hours of January 1, the infant and nursery block at Cwmbran’s Coed Eva Primary School were ravaged by fire. As pupils started back in school this week following the festive period; head teacher Gill Ellis said 2017 is full of reasons to be hopeful as plans are in place to re-build the parts of the school which succumbed to the flames.

“I feel that we’ve come a long way in that year period. It’s been a year of challenges and a year of ups and downs but I feel the future is now bright,” said Mrs Ellis.

“We’ve got a new design for our part-build forthcoming so this time next year, we should have moved into our new build.”

After losing the buildings on the area referred to now as the ‘slab’, the school will be using a patch of land adjacent to the main building for the new building.

“The loss that we had from the fire, which was the old infant site, we will replicate but in a more modern design,” Mrs Ellis added.

“Fortunately we have land just below our forest school site and those plans have been drawn up and have reached the pre-consultation phase.

“The designs for the new part-build are available on the Torfaen website.”

The school will be using the design which has been used at the newly-finished Blenheim Road Primary School in Cwmbran, and the plans in relation to Coed Eva are set to go before Torfaen’s planning committee over the coming months.

“There’s been a number of highs,” she said.

“The children recorded two songs with Gareth Malone for his Christmas album A Great British Christmas and that was definitely a highlight as the children were very excited and enthusiastic for his visit.”

Since April, the school has used a set of temporary classrooms to accommodate the children’s education. Although the temporary classrooms have served the school well, the head teacher sees the prospect of permanent structures as something to look forward to.

“By April, we had all of the demountables in which gave us more space but we only lost five days with the children from the initial disaster to getting them back into the school,” said Mrs Ellis.

“It eased the problems, not in terms of storage but we’ve compromised and have a lot to look forward to.”

Coed Eva ward councillor Fiona Cross praised the school for being able to return to normality so soon after the fire, and added there is much to look forward to in the coming months.

“The school has managed to get back onto its feet incredibly quickly,” said cllr Cross.

“Everyone has worked really hard in order to make the school safe and ensure that the students’ education remained at the forefront.

“It’s been absolutely amazing to be here, one year later, and have a perfectly functioning and active, but importantly a hopeful, school.”

In the weeks following the fire, a fund was set up to help the school get back on its feet and purchase items which were necessary to allow the children to return to lessons.

“The future regarding the replacement of permanent buildings on the school site is out to consultation. We have had some feedback from the community and it is just a case of seeing what comes back from that,” added the councillor.

“From there, hopefully it will go to and through planning and the classrooms will be built. It’s just a matter of waiting for that to go through and make sure that it goes through within the year timeframe.”