SIR,

On behalf of all the students and staff at Monmouth Comprehensive School, may I thank the community for their help in keeping our school open last week.

The amount of water on our site meant that we had to rely on our community for their support during this trying time.

Monmouthshire County Council was superb in making sure students could access the school from across the Wye Bridge with Kymin View Primary School opening their community room to allow our students to wait in the dry. The support from our bus companies was also immeasurable. MCC also assisted by sending in specialist cleaning teams to work with our site team.

The Environment Agency came to pump the water away from our site and the leisure centre helped throughout the week in making sure students stayed safe and dry. In addition, I would like to say thank you to our neighbours and the town for having to put up with us parking in different places.

Many parents offered to help in a number of ways, from providing spaces for learning, to coming to scrub parts of the school site. Your messages of encouragement and congratulations were very welcome and kept us going, especially after the power cuts, more water coming down and the terrible gales.

It is humbling and makes me enormously proud to know that our community will do whatever it takes to ensure students are cared for and their learning continues.

Thank you, again, to everyone who helped in making a difference.

Vaughan Davies

(Headmaster of the school)