MORE than 50 parents and children waved placards and chanted “save our school” outside Newport Civic Centre yesterday afternoon in a demonstration against council plans to merge two primary schools.

Yesterday was the final day of Newport council’s statutory notice period that it intends to close Gaer Infants School, in Melfort Road, and merge it with Gaer Junior School to create an all-through primary for three- to 11-year-olds at the junior site. The infants school is set to become an autism unit.

Sarah Osolinski, former Gaer postmistress and chairwoman of governors at the infants school, said: “I hope the proposals will be cancelled and hope we can go back to the beginning.”

Shortly before 4.30pm the three Gaer ward councillors, Debbie Wilcox, Mark Whitcutt and Herbie Thomas, went into a private meeting with some of the parents which media were not allowed to attend.

Hannah Berry, who is a school governor and parent, said afterwards that the meeting got heated.

“I asked the three councillors the question ‘do you support our cause?’ and was met with silence, absolutely nothing,” she said.

Cllr Wilcox handed a statement to protesters which said the governing bodies both expressed a wish towards amalgamation last year, and councillors had “repeatedly engaged with the chair, vicechair and head teachers of both schools together with an audit of correspondence with constituents on the issue”.

The statement said: “We have consistently made representations upon the basis of the views made to the cabinet member and senior officers of the authority.”

The council’s statutory notice, published on April 22, stated the plan would come into effect in September this year or “as soon as possible thereafter”, although it is possible that a decisionmay not be made until October if the matter is sent to Welsh ministers.