PUPILS from two Blaenau Gwent primary schools will be educated at both sites until a new replacement school is finished in 2016, a meeting heard.

Plans to shut Blaentillery Primary School in 2014, due to a “very significant” number of surplus places, were subject to formal consultation between May and June this year.

Now a statutory notice of closure will be published by Blaenau Gwent’s education commissioner Bethan Guilfoyle.

During formal consultations, the arrangements for teaching Blaentillery and Abertillery children were changed, Ms Guilfoyle told a meeting of the council’s executive committee, resulting in the new proposal to continue to teach children at both sites until the new school is ready in 2016, when all pupils will transfer there.

Seven classes, comprising nursery, reception and Years 1 and 2, will be taught in Abertillery, while Years 3 to 6 will continue their education at Blaentillery Primary School.

The council has secured what it calls ‘in principle’ funding of £20.25 million for a range of new school buildings and improvements and is in the process of developing a “strategic outline case”

for the Abertillery proposal, according to a report which went before members.

Meanwhile, Briery Hill Primary School, in Ebbw Vale, is set to be demolished and the land sold by the council, after no objections were received to its closure.

Briery Hill will close on August 31, 2013, members of the executive committee confirmed on Wednesday.

Statutory notice of their intention to close the school was first published on June 5, and no objections were received, said Lynn Phillips, assistant director of leisure services and school transformation.

Pupils will be educated at the Ebbw Fawr Learning Community primary phase as of September 1 this year.

The county’s education commissioner Bethan Guilfoyle has already agreed that savings of £40,643 will be reinvested into the 21st Century Schools capital programme.

Councillor Haydn Leslie Trollope, member for social services, asked how the vacant building would be protected from vandalism.

Mr Phillips said the building would be protected in the short term but said the intention is to demolish it and sell the land.