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?

The school have just been involved in visiting local artists at work in the wider community. My eldest son was really taken with it. They're involved in Urdd and have a couple of big ones (KS2) who are regular winners of competitions - incredibly artistic.

The thing that I really love about the school is it works with each childs strengths. If a child is enthusiastic about a subject the class will run with it for a day or more and do all sorts of activities around that subject. The enthusiasm of the initiator rubs off on the others and they all appreciate each others interests. They have one boy who loves space, the planets, space exploration and invariably aliens. Another is fascinated by dinosaurs, the latest craze/ enthusiasm is all about volcano's, my eldest is really into building and automating things, the younger anything that involves physical activity. My elder son is autistic and this is a school we selected and moved into the area because it can cater for him and they are fantastic at tolerating his needs - they've helped me get him formally assessed. His last, larger school, took me to one side and said they didn't think main stream schooling was a long term option for him, I was forever being called in for behavioural issues. This is why I'm getting myself a bit het up about potentially closure.

You are ticking a lot of the boxes that would suggst that the school should stay open - welsh medium school, 10 miles to the next school which may be english medium, a growing population in foundation stage of the school.
But at an admission level which is going to be below 80 because the facilities simply are not there this is always going to be a difficult situation. I would still contend that anything less than 210 is financially difficult to run but accept that many schools in Wales are smaller than this.
I think you have two ways of moving forward -the first is to ensure that the school really is the hub of the village by having it in use all the time for village activities. If you like it is making sure that suitable publicity is given to all the activities which use the school premises - this is where the local press can be helpful.
The second is to make the school unshutable - when is the next Estyn inspection due - an outstanding grade is always helpful. However I do wonder whether there is an opportunity to federate with other local schools.
The problem is that both these suggestions need the school and the governing body of the school to understand and take the necessary action. What is the reaction of the school and GB to the potential closure.