A TORFAEN primary school, part-destroyed in a fire on New Year’s Day, has received almost £4,500 through donations to help it begin to recover from the damage.

The nursery and infant building at Coed Eva Primary School was torched in the early hours of Friday, January 1.

Since then, organisations across the borough and beyond have held fundraising events, including a fun run created by the school’s PTA and the ward’s councillor, Fiona Cross.

“It was fantastic challenge which I enjoyed personally in bringing it all together. But I also enjoyed seeing the willingness of the whole community,” said cllr Cross.

“The fact the school is back on its feet so promptly is down to the staff team within the school and of course the pupils themselves. As the ward councillor, I’m extremely proud of all of them.”

Two giant cheques were presented to the school’s head teacher Gill Ellis on Wednesday morning, including one from housing association Melin Homes for £1,652.

The second cheque, for £2,780.80, includes money raised at the fun run held on Sunday, January 24, and an array of other venture all designed to help the school.

“The only way we could have achieved this is through teamwork and the willingness of everybody involved – Torfaen Leisure Trust, Melin Homes and parents from the school who volunteered like Paul Mason and Helen Williams as well as the entirety of school’s PTA. They all got involved,” said cllr Cross.

“Anything from the graphic designers in Fairwater, Grays Grafix, who printed the numbers and the giant cheques to other entities like Sainsburys who gave us goodies for the kids on the day – their desire to get involved was amazing. No-one involved in this has said no so far.”

Mrs Ellis, the school’s head teacher added: “It is a real example to true community spirit at its very best. We are extremely proud of everybody especially our children who are the heart of the school.

“I can’t believe the progress that we’ve made since New Year’s Day. Six weeks on and with half term next week, we are certainly returning to some sense of normality in the sense that the children are all back in school.

“We have four temporary classrooms in place, which the children of the nursery and year two are accommodated in and we have more coming over half in terms of surplus educational space,” she said.

“It’s just been a massive re-organisation and a strategic way of working to get the school back together.”

Seven men from the Cwmbran area, aged from 14 to 21, were arrested and bailed on suspicion of arson at the beginning of January in connection with the incident.