Infant school blaze opens debate on safety in Welsh schools

Following the fire which broke out at an infant school in Mountain Ash last Thursday, teaching unions have called for security to be tightened and the safety of pupils to be made a primary objective.

At this point in time it has not been established whether the blaze was started deliberately or if it was an accident as the investigation is still ongoing. However, arson attacks and vandalism have become key issues when it comes to Wales’ schools and have become an all-year-round problem.

And now, unions have said that more needs to be done to protect the country’s local communities, which need to be vigilant in moving forward.

Since the fire which devastated Ynysboeth Infants School, the debate has been raging as to what needs to happen to prevent these kinds of occurrences happening again, especially when the majority of these schools are old and vulnerable to fire.

Iwan Guy of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) said:

“We don’t know what caused this blaze and it may have been an accident, but we do need to get the message out to the public to be vigilant and create a culture where the public report any incidents to the police.

“Security in schools isn’t tight enough, so we need to act as a community to prevent vandalism or arson in schools.

“Often a school will just have a small fence, which is easy enough to climb over. We need the local residents – who know the people behind the incidents – to be vigilant.”