HELP Threatened school closure - has anyone any experience of influencing the outcome?

[ANTagony]

The local paper has suggested that schools in the county with less than 80 pupils have been short listed for closure. The centre of our village life is the primary school (its the only thing still open in the village). Its quite a few miles into town and another school. Has anyone any clue how you can go about stopping or protecting a school from closure before plans get to the decision made stage?

So you don't actually know for sure? I would speak to the HT of your fears...then form an action group...a tiny school near me closed reently despite its outstanding Ofsted...and a massve campaign. Try to get a loccal celebrity or MP on your side.

We don't know for sure its closing but it is a mini school, just 2 classes. Less than 50 pupils so much smaller than the 80 pupil small school guideline for Wales.

I want to be ahead of the game in starting a campaign before the decision is made and the paper trail consultation (we've already made our decision and its final)period begins.

I will contact the MP. Need to think hard about celebs - there must be someone.

Thanks for your response

The reality is that any school which is smaller than 1 form entry (210 pupils) as a primary school is going to be struggling to survive financially.
The only way out of this is where it is in a rural location then the LA has to devise a funding formula which allows sufficient funding for these absolutely vital schools to survive.
Having said that if there is another school within say 3 miles I have no sympathy and one or more of the schools have to close to get to a realistic size of school. When you look at it in that way then there are actually a lot of schools that should shut.

admission, The OP says she lives in Wales, so your figures of 210 pupils do not apply in Wales.

To the OP, Will your county be providing free transport if the small rural schools are forced to close.

If all those small village schools are closed then the children will be forced to go to schools in the towns, although I am guessing those rural Welsh towns are smaller than some English villages.

I also expect that you could make a case for saying that the Welsh language is of paramount importance for the children and the communities.

Find out when the Cabinet has its next meeting. It may be this Tuesday. Phone around parents in the other villages, and go to County Hall and lobby the cabinet members.

Phone up the Daily regional newspaper and ask them to send a photographer to record your lobbying or demonstration.

Get hold of a copy of the "Consultation Document" published by the Council.

Have the schools in the nearby towns got the spaces to accommodate all the pupils from those village schools closed? Or will the County have to build a brand new school?

Wow lots of interesting points. I'm going to have to get the other parents involved in some lobbying.

We are in rural Wales and county will provide transport into town. Last winter we couldn't get into town, other than by tractor for 6 weeks. For some children it will be 10 miles to school and a change from Welsh medium to English. The current other schools in town don't have adequate places and the children would most likely have to be split up amongst the other schools. My own children, who are Welsh medium educated and fluent wouldn't be prioritised to get into the Welsh stream school in town because I'm English.

The village school is the hub of the community with many of the elderly members also involved in activities and gaining support. Its the village lifeline and town is mainly English (so am I) but the school enables the mix of English wives to learn a little Welsh with the two parent Welsh families and through our bilingual children and Welsh partners continue the traditions of support in the community.

I can understand the suggestion that a small school is more expensive to run but in a rural community a school is so much more than a 9- 3 place of learning. Its the place where we look out for one another, its also a sort of market at Friday collection where people barter and trade produce, its the place where we arrange childcare and relative care for one another (not facilities that are readily available in rural communities unless you can afford a live in helper). We don't have other facilities any more - shops, pub, mobile library, mobile doctors etc and no play parks or village hall. The rural bin collection is sporadic to say the least. To an extent our taxes are not supporting lots of other things in our community that may be available in more densely populated areas.

It would seam building a brand new school would be expensive and the town centre whilst small doesn't have any obvious sites so I guess it would be out of town.

Lots to think about!

I support you wishing it not to close and wanting to run a campaign to stop the closure, but lots of those other things that you mention about facilities are often run by the community who fund raise and volunteer time.

In our (urban) community I was part of the community association and it was an eye opener how much was done by volunteers that a lot of people would assume were tax payer funded, and other associations offered a lot more than we did.

If the closure does go ahead could you ask the council for use of the building as a community building so that you don't loose a lot of the community activities that go with the school?

Do give your local councillor a call, they should know what is happening about the closure and should be fighting for what's best for the community.

Also consider those schools across the border in the neighbouring counties.

Try to get the Unions on your side.

What a pity that the Number ten prime ministers petition site was closed down.

I think the new government closed it down in June.

advice to the OP. If it is half term this week I suggest that you take as many of your children as possible to lobby councillors going in to the council meeting at county Hall.

We stopped ours being closed. See if you have any campaigners and PR people/journalists locally and get them on board. There are national associations which will help - the national assn of small schools, and ACE, and the Campaign for State Education.

Believe in your campaign and you can do it. Petitions, unfortunately, are not that effective - press releases are much better. Your library will have books on effective campaigning.

The Trefriw peitition is very interesting. When Conwy announced their plans for school closures I new our school could in the future be potentially at risk. There is further good source material that they've found for their petition.

I will contact a few other parents about starting a petition and see if we can use the petitions link.

I've read quite a bit online today and the county policy 1 document says that if they're are fewer than 15 ks1 and 20 ks2 pupils for a period of three years the county reserve the right to start consultation on the schools future. This excludes numbers in nursery and reception so brings the school numbers down further.

The ks1 (traditional infants) is looking quite healthy with a larger than traditional reception, good nursery intake and an active parent and toddler group meaning we know that future numbers look quite good. I know of three mums expecting in Dec/ Jan (me included) and a few that already fall into the same year group so the potential future numbers really are more healthy. The KS2 (juniors) is not so healthy as it was a lower birth rate period in the catchment - it is this bracket that pushes us into the risk of consultation.

The nursery and reception classes represent 50% of the school numbers just to put things in proportion.

Thank you for your thoughts and suggestions. I'm still trying to get my head around the best course of action.

Last year the local paper ran a story about a number of schools including my local village school closing in 2011. Six months down the line they ran another story saying it was to be rebuilt and extended to accommodate growing numbers so I would suggest it isn't wise to take the story as gospel and to check it out carefully.
Incidentally we are getting a new build bigger school next year

I really hope that it is just a local paper seeing if they can create a story in an otherwise quiet couple of weeks. The pupil numbers are expected to go up but the school doesn't have capacity for 80+ pupils that some assembly documents have suggested as a minimum.

I also realise if I make lots of noise I may highlight the school as an issue, when presently its just a name to councillors, amongst many others, that may take years to getting around to reviewing. I don't want to push us to top of the consultation pile.

The school has an active band and we do have a small supermarket in town that have used displays by the children before so its a good thought.

I think I need to have a word with the local councillor about the newspaper article in general without initially naming names.

I can see that the school is very important to you and your community (in fact I'm a little bit !), but I can also appreciate the economies of scale of the larger schools.

You say that you use the school for trading and bartering. Could you go to the LA with an offer to share the upkeep? Perhaps use some of the trading income, share the cleaning of the school between residents, feed any hiring income into the school and offset against the transport costs to the bigger school?

Economies of scale work well in denser populated areas - I'm not entirely convinced that 3 year olds travelling long distances to get to 2 hours schooling is going to work. Most likely they'll be unsocial 5 year olds starting when transport options kick in as not everyone runs multiple vehicles to enable getting kids to nursery or reception year.

We have a really active PTA and a lot of the schools resources have been paid for by the community not the council - play ground, sports equip, IT equip, the schools grounds/ gardens are maintained by parents. The extra curricular activities and extended curriculum are also parent provided. I'm sure parents/ the community members that could would be up for contributing more if it ment keeping the school open.