 Donna Williams and Sian Priestland will run the new school |
Work has begun on a new �5m school that will cater for 400 infant and primary school pupils in the Amman Valley. It will replace Garnant, Glanamman and Twyn schools, but at a time when parents across west Wales are fighting mergers and closures, it has won broad support.
Donna Williams, in charge at Glanamman for the past eight years, has been appointed head teacher, and she said the new school would provide pupils with facilities their parents could only have dreamt of.
The school will open in April 2005.
At a turf cutting ceremony on Monday she said: "When the parents and members of the community saw what was on offer the majority were supportive.
"Not everyone was in favour but the state of the existing schools is quite appalling at the moment.
"We are short of space and do not even have room for the children to play properly at the moment."
Sports pitch
The new school will have infant and junior sections, along with a nursery unit, multi-purpose hall, branch library and computer unit for community use.
There will also be a all-weather sports pitch and Dyfed-Powys Police are to have a room set aside for surgeries.
Chairman of the governors Colin Evans said it had taken five years to come up with proposals that suited most people.
"The important thing was we started talking to the community from the beginning," he said.
"We wanted to carry them with us and asked them what they would like to see before the first line was drawn on a piece of paper.
"We had two public meetings, talked to the elderly residents, the local sports clubs and anyone else who wanted to be involved.
"Inevitably there were a few against it, but what we are going to get is a brand new school and community facilities worth �5m."
Lifelong learning
Carmarthenshire council has similar plans to merge schools in Llanelli, but there the authority has run into opposition from parents.
In Pembrokeshire parents at Hermon School have won legal aid to challenge the council's plan to merge their school.
Carmarthenshire's cabinet member for education Mary Thomas said: "It is a problem that we can't show people the finished buildings before we start.
"We hope that this will be the catalyst to other schools going down this road.
"What we want to create is modern 21st Century facilities for lifelong learning."
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We are short of space and do not even have room for the children to play properly at the moment 
