RDC(3) RRSWC9

Rural Development Sub-Committee

Inquiry into Reorganisation of Schools in Rural Wales

Response from John Milsom

Dear Ms Morris

I am writing to you as I understand you are collating responses to the current consultation exercise on the future of rural schools.

Here in Gladestry we have a small primary school, catering for somewhere between 30 and 55 students (I understand that 55 is the physical limit). I believe that this places it in the zone of vulnerability for closure, but I must emphasise, even before I begin my case that any attempt at closure would be resisted tooth and nail by the entire community.

Why?  Because our school is one of the foci of our community and one of its principal unifying features. Almost everybody gets involved in its activities in some way or other. Everyone who has something to offer, offers it. We are fiercely proud of our school, and fiercely supportive of it.

All of which would be irrelevant if it could be shown that, either because of its small size or some other reason, the school was providing our local children with an inferior education. Well, Ofsted says that it is providing them with a very superior education, and I guess they should know. And while some of the reasons for this may be specific to Gladestry (an exceptionally talented and dedicated head teacher is on such reason), others are general to all, or most, small rural primary schools.

Firstly, it is at last being admitted by most educationists that pupils benefit from small class sizes. I was a university teacher for 25 years, and I know it to be true for 18-22 year olds. How much more true must it be for 5-11 year olds. There is less bullying, because in a small school any bullying that does occur is noted almost instantly, and the full weight of the community is on hand to stop it. The work-home balance is better for these pupils, because they spend less time travelling and in any case their school is closely integrated into the same framework as the their homes. The children mature more easily, and socialise more readilt, because the numbers are less daunting. In most rural schools they also benefit because any adults in the community who have something to offer, offer it. I myself do a little bit of field geology with the older pupils. I only wish that the students I used to interview as an admissions tutor at UCL had been able to express themselves half as well as these 10 and 11 year olds. And although small schools may be a bit more expensive to run, the also benefit financially from their community, in a way in which larger schools find it hard to do.

In sum, a small rural village school offers a primary school child an exceptional imitial educational experience. Don’t close them, support them.

Yours sincerely

John Milsom