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December 28, 2024
New build schools and newly merged schools will all get underway in Cardiff in 2025. Cardiff council has announced a number of schemes to update facilities and respond to the need for Welsh medium education. They include:
Fairoak Primary
The new Fairoak Primary is due to open in September 2025. The school will replace Allensbank and Gladstone primary schools.
It will open at the junction of Fairoak Road, Crwys Road, Cathays Terrace and Whitchurch Road, occupying the site currently shared by Gladstone and St Monica’s Church in Wales primary schools. Fairoak will have a catchment from Cathays and parts of Gabalfa, Heath, Llandaff North and Plasnewydd.
Allensbank and Gladstone Primary Schools will formally close on August 31, 2025. Applications are now open for reception places to start at Fairoak Primary School in September 2025. The deadline for applications closes on January 13, 2025.
Pupils currently on roll at Allensbank and Gladstone Primary Schools will be able to transfer over to the new school.
The Court School - Ysgol Cynefin
Building work for two new buildings to replace The Court School has just begun and will get underway in 2025. The £23m-plus project is being delivered under Cardiff Council and the Welsh Government’s Sustainable Communities for Learning Rolling Programme.
The size of the school will increase, it will take boys and girls and involves relocating the school in Llanishen from its current site in a Victorian mansion to two new-build sites -one on land to the south of Fairwater Primary School on Wellwright Road and the other south of Pen Y Bryn Primary School at Dunster Road in Llanrumney.
Contractor Kier, which also built the new Fitzalan school, was chosen to undertake the detailed design and build of the scheme. Once complete, the new school will be known as Ysgol Cynefin which means ‘habitat school’. The new school will grow from 42 to 72 places, with 36 pupils on each site from the 2025-26 academic year, helping to meet the city’s demand for primary age specialist provision.
Both sites will boast a range of comprehensive facilities including multi-use games areas, sports and soft play areas, sports pitches and horticultural areas.
The development will include:
Construction of Ysgol Cynefin is expected to be complete by the Spring term 2026.
Fairwater Campus
Work will soon resume on the £108 million pound project to rebuild Cantonian High and other schools on the Fairwater Campus. The firm that was originally building the development went into administration in the autumn halting work.
Cardiff Council announced in November that it has appointed Borley Engineering Services Ltd (BESL) as the interim principal contractor for the scheme. The council said the move means work can restart on the site as soon as possible whilst a tender exercise gets underway to select a replacement principal contractor to see the project through to its completion.
The local authority had not long been celebrating the topping out of the Fairwater Campus project when it was announced in September that ISG Construction Ltd was in trouble. A Cardiff Council spokesperson said: “We are fully committed to ensuring the progress of the Fairwater Community Campus project and have put in place an arrangement that saves the supply chain. By selecting BESL as the interim emergency principal contractor, we will get workers back on site as soon as possible, ensure workers are paid for work done, minimise delays, keep costs down, protect jobs, and safeguard the supply chain while protecting the public investment that has already taken place in what is one of the UK’s largest education projects.”
Once complete, the campus will include Cantonian High School, Riverbank School, and Woodlands High School. All three schools will be located in the new buildings on site.
The opening is likely to be 2027 rather than 2026 as first planned, it has been reported. The council has published an updated timeline for Fairwater Campus which shows that full-scale construction on site could resume by March 2025.
Willows High
Work has begun on a new £60m school building for Willows High in Splott and will continue throughout 2025 before opening to pupils in the 2026-27 academic year.
Once complete the new building will include features such as a sports hall, gym, drama studio, and grass pitches which will be available for public use outside of school hours.
The project will see the existing high school in Tremorfa relocated to Splott and rebuilt to provide capacity for 900 learners aged 11 to 16 in addition to a 30-place special resource base for pupils with complex learning needs. The school is being constructed in Lewis Road on the land formerly used for Splott Market.
