At Dartmoor Multi Academy Trust (DMAT), our smallest school has seven pupils. “How is that viable?” some of you may ask. Well, it is not viable through an economic lens, but it is by the fact that it is one of the last aspects of civic structure left in the village that it serves.
The post office is long gone, the pub opens infrequently and there are no shops now.
As the Confederation of School Trusts’ CEO, Leora Cruddas, advocates, schools are “anchor institutions” for their communities and this important civic asset must be maintained.
There is also a real joy in having a small, rural school at the heart of a community - the depth and interconnectedness of relationships is profound and it is not uncommon for parents and grandparents who drop pupils off to have attended the school, too.
Will small, rural schools survive?
This picture of a rural idyll, though, can hide some real issues that these schools and their communities face.
The first is the high level of deprivation, which is often masked or understated. We have got to the point where families who were just about managing a few years ago no longer are.
Even though distances on a map can look relatively small, the patchwork of roads in the South West (and don’t get me started on the potholes) means that journeys can take a long time and, crucially, require a lot of fuel.
In the cost-of-living crisis, we know of numerous instances where children and families have been absent and the honest reason is fuel poverty. Of course, we try to help but such profound barriers to access are real and, as yet, completely unaddressed.
The journey distances and the isolation of a school also lead to issue number two: the challenge to recruit and retain staff with the relevant qualifications and experiences.
This has proved more challenging in the past few years, especially with regard to teaching assistants and support staff, who can earn more in other sectors, such as retail and tourism.
The third issue, which I admit I hadn’t even considered until I moved to Devon, concerns the vital and important role of farming. There are huge benefits for our schools and communities from having agricultural families engaging with and supporting them.
But the reality for our farmers is that life has been extremely tough over the past few years: a diminishing available workforce, increased costs and weather challenges that have destroyed whole years’ worth of crops.
This means that young people from farming families are often needed to keep farms going, and this can affect attendance and wider engagement. The importance of education can be diminished.
These young people are, of course, hugely lucky to have what I believe is a different and rich form of education in land management and stewardship. But this cannot be at the cost of universal education provision.
Falling pupil rolls
All of this is bad enough, but the fact that due to shifts in demographics fewer children will be entering into primary schools in the years ahead is a real concern.
Last year approximately 10,000 pupils left primary to begin their secondary education and just 4,000 arrived to take up nursery places.
We have not yet reached a race to the bottom with schools competing for children at the expense of each other, but the lack of strategic planning means that this could become a reality for headteachers struggling to balance the books after years of real-terms cuts.
If this is not addressed, rural schools could disappear entirely. And if they do, I fear they won’t come back - depriving many villages and small towns of their last and most important asset. We take these schools for granted at our peril.
Overall, we have lacked a focus on rural schools and their communities for far too long and they still don’t seem to be high up on any party’s agenda for the coming Parliament.
Years ago we were promised levelling up and there are some projects achieving elements of this, albeit on a small scale. But the truth is that most rural communities do not feel they have benefitted at all from recent policies and changes.
Our rural areas cannot be forgotten any longer - they are the bedrock of a healthy society in so many ways. Let’s hope the next government recognises this and supports schools working in this area to survive and thrive long into the future.
Dan Morrow is CEO of Dartmoor Multi Academy Trust
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