Over the years this blog has followed the campaign - at first triumphant and later doomed - to save Stiperstones primary school in Shropshire.
I have been sent a letter about its imminent closure that was written for publication in the Shropshire Star.
As I cannot find it on the newspaper's website, I shall keep the letter anonymous while from quoting it:
I have just learnt that this term Stiperstones School is to close after more than a century. It follows Westbury a couple of years earlier and, no doubt, others will follow. ...
These closures are due to the way in which the government funds schools, i.e. by head count. The logic is that fewer pupils per class equates to greater costs per individual. This is typical of silo thinking and top down decision making.
The question of increased transport costs, stress on younger children having to travel further to alternative schools, and the impact on families living in rural communities is not factored in, not to mention the extra cost of extending the facilities of the schools to which they are transferred.
The bottom line is always money, ignoring the fact that schools with a good ratio of teachers to pupils are better able to cope with special needs, and are able to benefit from the help of local volunteers, for example in listening to reading. Current Government policy quite clearly threatens small schools.
In the case of Stiperstones it would have needed almost double the roll to survive on current Government rules, which in this case would be beyond its health and safety limits!
Our rural communities need to attract more young families and a good local school is one of the biggest incentives. This however, is strategic big picture thinking and sadly we are beset with knee-jerk ‘leadership’. ...
When the Lib Dems were in power in the Shirehall, no school was 'reviewed' until its roll had fallen to 20, nor considered for closure unless an inexorable and permanent decline was evident.
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