Jack Sargeant highlights Shotton School’s history project in Welsh Parliament

A Shotton primary school has been highly praised for its local history teaching in a recent session of the Senedd.

Local Member of the Senedd Jack Sargeant brought attention to the work Ysgol Ty Ffynnon, which was subsequently commended by Education Minister Jeremy Miles.

The pupils at the school have meticulously created a timeline that weaves together local and national Welsh history, highlighting significant events like the development of Shotton Steel Works, the creation of the NHS, and the recent construction of their new school building.

Their project spans from the middle ages to contemporary times, encompassing notable figures such as Owain Glyndŵr and Nye Bevan.

During his visit to the school, Jack Sargeant witnessed the students’ efforts firsthand.

Impressed, he presented their project to the Minister as an exemplary model of engaging and effective teaching.

In his address to the Senedd on Wednesday, Mr Sargeant praised the project’s ability to connect children with their community’s industrial heritage and asked the Minister to join him in congratulating the students and staff for their exceptional work.

Jack said:

It’s local history that engages children in a way that little else does. I recently visited Ysgol Tŷ Ffynnon in Shotton and saw the work that pupils did on a local history project there.

These children live in a community steeped in the history of industry. They created a timeline—a local timeline and a national timeline.

It included going from Owain Glyndŵr, right to Nye Bevan and the impact of the NHS, through to Shotton steelworks, right on our doorstep.

The modern section of the timeline included the creation of this very Senedd. It also included the building of Ysgol Tŷ Ffynnon itself, a new state-of-the-art school, funded by Welsh Labour’s twenty-first century schools programme.

Minister, will you join me in congratulating the students and the staff at Ysgol Tŷ Ffynnon for their work, and will you encourage other schools across our nation to do the same to learn more about their local history?

In his response, Minister Jeremy Miles acknowledged the significant contributions of Ysgol Ty Ffynnon, he said:

I thank Jack Sargeant for highlighting the fantastic work that Tŷ Ffynnon primary school is doing.

It’s a reminder, isn’t it, that our history in Wales is a history both of princes and also of radicals, and that richness and the fullness of it is what we want our young people to learn about.

I think it’s great also to hear how they’re making use of sustainable communities for learning funding, to use the school space for this purpose.

I reflect, if I may, that one of the challenges that we have in schools at the moment is how we can re-engage some of our learners who may be feeling anxious, who may be feeling uncertain about being back in school.

And the one thing I think we can probably all agree on is that that sense of belonging, that you have a community and a history that you belong to, is a really important part of being on that journey, and I think the kind of example that he’s given today is a really powerful illustration of that.