On Tuesday the Government was forced by the furore in Shropshire, Herefordshire and elsewhere, reflected in the national media, to remind local education authorities that it is not government policy to close village schools.
By Wednesday morning the County Council had scrapped plans to close these schools. On Wednesday night the Schools Minister had promised to help Shropshire access funds in his departmental budgets towards bridging the funding gap.
On Thursday the Government announced it would review the way it allocates funding per pupil across England.
I have not seen such swift political change since becoming your MP. It is a credit to those who pointed out the damage to our local communities; particularly to the hundreds of parents, governors, staff and pupils from many schools threatened with closure, and resisting proposed amalgamation, whom I joined on Wednesday morning outside Shirehall.
Enterprising Headteachers had signed many children on to a field trip last Wednesday to see local government in action, as part of the good citizenship agenda. What an excellent lesson it was.
I also want to pay credit to the councillors who had the courage to listen to the people, not just the bureaucrats from Whitehall and Shirehall. The Cabinet were right to cancel the consultation and deserve some recognition for doing so.
Some others are claiming this is merely a temporary deferral and parents need to be on their guard. This is dangerous talk. We have already seen how rumours and worries about the threat of closure can lead to self-fulfilling decline of a school roll. The County Council needs to let parents know their school is now safe. There is nothing more corrosive for continued health of a school than for parents and potential parents to fear it may not be there to educate their child.
So while the County Council needs to get its primary school policy into shape by June to secure the capital funds available from central government, it also needs to reassure those schools on the closure list that they are safe.
