Ysgol Borthygest, Gwynedd

Ysgol Borthygest is a Welsh-medium school in Wales. Welsh schools are inspected by Estyn rather than Ofsted, and its latest report is published on Estyn's website.

It had 35 pupils in the 2025/26 school census.

Year groups range from 2 pupils (Year 4) to 10 (Year 3).

Its delegated budget for 2026-27 works out at £9,744 per pupil, against £5,176 in 2021-22. It ended 2024-25 with a deficit of £12k.

Estyn's report on its November 2024 inspection summarises Ysgol Borthygest like this:

"The headteacher’s strong leadership, along with the enthusiastic staff, provide an exciting curriculum for pupils and establish extremely attractive learning environments for them. They succeed in developing most pupils’ skills in a good range of stimulating and exciting activities. This engages their interest and ensures progress in their understanding and knowledge effectively. However, at times, teachers do not provide learning activities that challenge pupils sufficiently. The school is a safe space where staff nurture pupils’ respect, well-being and care, in addition to ensuring their pride in their community and in Wales successfully. The headteacher and staff know the pupils and their families well."

"They promote the school as a homely and caring place, which encourages pupils to demonstrate empathy and positive behaviour and enjoy their learning in a happy environment. An obvious strength of the school is the way in which pupils from all linguistic backgrounds come to speak Welsh quickly. The headteacher and staff work diligently to support pupils to continue to improve their Welsh language skills as they move through the school. They encourage pupils to use the language regularly in their learning and play. Recently, staff have given pupils opportunities to share ideas and suggestions about different aspects of the school. Although pupils have established beneficial groups, such as the school council, their influence on the school’s life and work remains limited."

"Leaders identify the school’s strengths and what needs to be improved appropriately. Overall, leaders have a good track record of implementing improvements, which leads to an increase in pupils’ skills and nurtures their well-being well. However, evaluation arrangements do not measure progress against the improvement priorities effectively enough. As a result, it is not always clear whether improvements will be maintained consistently over time."

Estyn made 3 recommendations: (1) Ensure that all learning activities challenge pupils to achieve to the best of their ability and that teachers’ feedback moves learning forward; (2) Sharpen arrangements for measuring progress against the school’s improvement priorities; (3) Extend opportunities for pupils to influence the life and work of the school.

The nearest other state primary schools to Ysgol Borthygest are Ysgol Y Gorlan (1 mile), Ysgol Eifion Wyn (1 mile), Ysgol Talsarnau (3.1 miles) and Ysgol Cefn Coch (3.2 miles).

The nearest railway station is Porthmadog Harbour Ffestiniog Railway Station, about 0.8 miles away in a straight line.

2 bus stops are within a five-minute walk; the closest is Ysgol Borth-y-Gest (after), 40 metres away.