Pupils from across England and Wales will be celebrating 200 years of church schools at a special service in London today, Oct 14.
They will be traveling to Westminster Abbey to take part in a service to mark the bicentenary of the National Society which was set up to promote Christian education.
And they will join the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who will preach at the service, and the Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan.
As well as taking part in the service, pupils from St John Baptist secondary school in Aberdare will be filming the event and interviewing the Archbishops. Others will be parading their school banners at the Abbey. These include pupils from schools which won competitions to design a school banner in order to go and represent their dioceses. The schools from Wales are Ysgol Llangaffo, Anglesey (Bangor) St Paul’s school, Isycoed (St Asaph) and Ysgol Penboyr in Llandysul (St Davids).
Archbishop Barry said, “This service is a wonderful occasion to celebrate our church schools, of which we have 168 in Wales.
“The National Society was founded to ‘promote the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church throughout England and Wales’. Times have changed but today church schools in Wales are a strong feature of the educational landscape. They continue both to serve the communities in which they are situated and to provide an education within Christian ethos. They are both distinctive and inclusive, serving those who do not belong, especially the poor, as well as those who do belong to the church. And that’s something to celebrate.”
For more information about the National Society Anniversary – http://www.natsoc200.org.uk/