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EDUCATION: Village schools start the fight for survival

Small rural schools in Herefordshire and Shropshire remain under threat. Pat Ashworth investigates

Where will the axe fall? Hope C of E Primary School, near Minsterley, Shropshire; above: the headlines in the national press in recent weeks © not advert
Where will the axe fall? Hope C of E Primary School, near Minsterley, Shropshire; above: the headlines in the national press in recent weeks

TALK TO anyone fighting the closure of village schools, and the name that crops up without fail is that of Dr Beeching. Parents, teachers, and governors bitterly draw parallels with the short-term thinking that closed hundreds of railway branch-lines in the 1960s, both in the haste with which the Beeching cuts were carried out, and in the devastating impact on rural communities.

Two weeks ago, in a cost-cutting exercise that brought shock and dismay, Herefordshire announced the closure of 35 village schools (16 of them C of E foundations), and Shropshire the closure of 22 (all C of E) (News, 25 January, 1 February).

Faced with a storm of protest about disempowerment and lack of consultation, Herefordshire’s chief executive announced a recall of the proposals to allow for a longer period of consultation. Shropshire County Council followed suit, after parents and governors vented their anger at a cabinet meeting.

Rural communities will now be seizing the opportunity to make their case. School governors now know the rationale for the closures. Funding to be made available from central Government will see the complete replacement of the five worst primary schools in every county, and the significant refurbishment of 50 per cent of the rest. It will apply to all schools in the maintained sector, and is acknowledged to be a good move to address inequality of provision.

But, in order to access the funding, local authorities need to show that they are carrying out some sort of rationalisation exercise. Shropshire Council quotes falling pupil numbers, showing that 25 per cent of all primary-school places could be vacant by 2012. Schools of fewer than 80 pupils are the ones targeted, regardless of their educational value, but in both counties there is more than one set of demographics, and considerable disagreement about projected birth rates.

The perceived short-term “quick fix” could be regretted in as little as three years, say campaigners, and once the schools are closed, gone, too, is the possibility of a sustainable rural community.

HOPE SCHOOL, in Hope Valley, Minsterley, near Shrewsbury, is on the hit list for potential closure. A flourishing voluntary controlled school of 47 pupils, it exemplifies best educational practice, and has had both Beacon and Pathfinder status. OFSTED reports have described it as giving an enviable education. It has had national recognition for its innovative use of IT for communication at all levels.

The school has always had about 50 pupils, and does not have falling numbers: indeed, at the request of the local authority, it renegotiated its admission numbers from 60 to 52 to incorporate a nursery. The move has paid huge dividends in the school and in the community.

On the crest of a steep and winding road, surrounded by the South Shropshire hills, Hope is housed in a 1960s building that replaced the original school on glebe land down in the valley. It borders on fields, has open space for play, and is neighbour to the village hall, whose own future would be very much in doubt if the school closed.

The stereotype of mothers chattering at the school gates is actually the backbone of the community, parents say: without such a gathering to make arrangements and make friends, there would be isolation and no reason to meet.

“This school has everything going for it,” said Richard Morris, a parent governor. “There would be a huge hole in the community if it were lost. Other businesses might go to the wall — the people who run the shop, for instance, work 24 hours a day and rely on the traffic to and from the school. You get rid of that and you get rid of the heart. All you have is a dormitory for Shrewsbury. We’ve already got that problem long-term, with the price of housing in rural areas.”

Children here come from all backgrounds. Many walk considerable distances to school and think nothing of it. They have a low- carbon footprint, eat healthy school dinners cooked from locally sourced produce, and, in the words of Mr Morris, meet every criterion on the local authority’s summary of key aims for Shropshire schools.

From the list of ten key aims for the future, they can tick off everything from “primary schools playing a lead role at the heart of their communities” to “first-class ICT facilities” to “expand successful and popular schools”. They have everything here — except 80 pupils.

Parents and governors describe the proposals as a knee-jerk reaction by the council. “The policy of closure has not been thought through,” said David Dobbs, a governor. “The children would not simply go to one other school: they would be spread, breaking up all friendship groups. It goes against all the council and government policies, including green policies — the carbon footprint gets to be size 12, because the kids are having to travel further. I don’t see where the cost saving comes. They have budgeted for £200,000 just in extra transport costs.”

The school’s success attracted further funds from central government to develop it. “Back to the Beeching analogy; it’s painting the railway buildings before you close the railway,” said Mr Dobbs. “What do you do with a school building? It can’t be a house. It’s not suitable for an office — there’s no demand for offices here, and there are already problems in trying to rent, for instance, the local garage. It would be against all the council’s policies on development in an area of outstanding natural beauty. What does it become? A boarded-up wreck?”

Because this is already one of the lowest-funded education authorities in the country, the savings are sought on an already very low input, say the governors. “I accept that whatever political colours you wear, central government funding has always been too low for local authority funding,” said Richard Morris. “But the cost savings for the local authority are a few pounds per child, and that’s only if their figures are right.”


© not advert
“Save our school”: a child’s plea is posted in the window of Hope Primary School in Shropshire PAT ASHWORTH

The school has an acting head at present: to his chagrin, the previous head learned of the falling axe on the same day that he accepted promotion in another school. Anna Bayliss, a parent governor who has two out of her four children currently in school, can see what could happen in the schools earmarked for closure: gradual deterioration; a moratorium on spending; staff who have to look to their own career interests; and parents who have to look to the long-term interests of their children. “[The authorities] will get their way by default — by doing nothing. Already, schools are losing pupils. Then they’ll say: your numbers are falling. It’s a cleft stick.”

Before Shropshire backtracked on the proposals, governors had already agreed to campaign and petition against closure. Each school will have to fight its own corner, but Hope School is writing to others in the same position to seek any possibility of a parallel campaign on the basic principle of keeping small schools in rural areas.

ASK the children what they like about their school, and they fall over themselves to tell you. “Knowing everyone in the school”; having “lots of places to go in the summertime, when we can pick daisies”; “we know everybody — kind of everybody is my friend.”

In multi-age classes: “We look after the younger ones — they ask us if they need help. We help them cut up their food at lunchtime.” “I walk to school. It’s only two miles.” Julia is an athlete, and Ellie a musician: such things have not been squeezed out of the curriculum.

Church schools are valued here even by those, such as Mr Morris, who are not Christian, but who like an ethic that is about valuing each other. He sees the church school as “a handy tool for the social and moral well-being and nurturing for the children and for the children’s relationship with one another”.

The Revd Alan Toop, Vicar of Minsterley and Rector of Habberley, is an ardent advocate for the school. “The diocese must put its weight behind this campaign. We need the backing of a lot of very good professionals. They must support our right to have good rural schools that have a general morality about them, and are part of the community of a rural area. We need all the help we can get.”

DR IAN TERRY, the Diocesan Director of Education for Hereford, accepts that there will have to be some closures and amalgamations, and acknowledges the justice issue. St Paul’s C of E School in Hereford is the lowest-funded primary school in the country, at roughly £2000 a year per capita. The smallest schools in Hereford and Shropshire cost £4000-£4500 per capita.

“While we accept that some schools may have to close, this should be on educational grounds, not just about economics,” he said. “It is a question of balancing our concern about the low levels of funding available for urban pupils against justifiable costs for rural sustainability.”

Dr Terry is angry at the lack of any serious consultation on the Herefordshire closures, and at the council’s total disregard of its partnership with the Church.

“We own 36 of the 81 schools in Herefordshire: we are a major player,” he said. “With the Roman Catholic director, we got as close as you can to making a formal diplomatic protest. We had been excluded from the process, and from being able to hold the exclusive strategic overview of our schools’ development which the 1991 Boards measure requires us to hold. And excluded from being strategic partners with our heads and governors, and from co-ordinating pastoral care with our churches. We were spitting, frankly.”

Herefordshire broke the news of its closures by assembling all the heads for an announcement. None had previous knowledge of which schools were to close. “Heads were bursting into tears as their school was named in front of everybody. It was appalling,” said Dr Terry.

In Shropshire, senior officers approached individual heads, but what makes the governors furious is that apparently no one visited the schools before the decisions were made. Mrs Bayliss had one permitted question at the council’s cabinet meeting last week: “Who has visited Hope School, and when, and whom did they meet?”

Of the 114 primary schools in Shropshire, 78 are church schools, held jointly between Hereford and Lichfield dioceses. “What has been said about Herefordshire applies to Shropshire: we understand the need for the exercise,” said Dr Terry. “Shropshire has involved us to a greater extent than Herefordshire in the process. We shall continue to make the point that small schools should not necessarily be closed when they are offering high-quality education.”

The Bishop of Ludlow, the Rt Revd Michael Hooper, and the Bishop of Shrewsbury, Dr Alan Smith, were outspoken in their criticism of the proposals and in their defence of sustainable rural communities. Bishop Smith had decried the closure plan as “representing a narrow view of education which is simply concerned with tests, exams, and ticking boxes”. He had also pointed out that the announcements failed to take into account the public consultation on the closure of post offices in Shropshire, not expected until April.

“Some villages might lose their school and post office at the same time. The council unfortunately set a quite unrealistic schedule for their consultation,” he said. “Why was this being rushed? We need more time to make good decisions.”



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