Northumberland is the most sparsely populated English local authority, its communities scattered on farmsteads and in hamlets over vast tracts of rugged land. From the former mining communities of Ashington in the south-east to the borders west of Berwick, its population has dwindled because of changes in farming and industry.
Many of its schools have surplus places; some are only half full. The county has 7,000 and is among the top10 per cent of local authorities with surplus primary places; it has the second highest number of secondaries with surplus places, running at more than 25 per cent. And it has a large number of small schools; the 20 least-populated first schools educate 430 pupils. Last month, the county council agreed to support recommendations to reduce the number of schools and surplus places to 10 per cent, in line with government targets. At present, surplus places are 12.6 per cent of the total, predicted to rise to 17.5 per cent by 2007.
The county council is between a rock and a hard place in having to decide where to make cuts. But any talk of school closures sets hackles rising, particularly in communities where the next school is a long bus ride away. A school for two children on Holy Island would be difficult to close as tides prevent them being educated on the mainland unless they board. And closure of schools on the Scottish border is tricky as the nearest alternatives come under a separate education system. In 1995, 10 schools were earmarked for closure; community pressure has kept them all open.
Michael Morpurgo, a former teacher, now a children’s author and farmer, is one of those who argue that small schools are the lifeblood of rural development. “If you take the schools away, young families will not come, and those communities will die,” he says. “Small schools are considered expensive, but that’s to do with our culture that doesn’t see the worth of the investment.”
Government inspectors accept that small schools offer high-quality education. In its 1999 report on Northumberland LEA, Ofsted said that the county had a sizeable core of very good schools, that there were few signs of complacency and that it made good use of low levels of funding. It reported that at key stage 1 a significantly higher proportion of pupils attained level 2 than the national average.
An unpublished paper by Ofsted’s primary division says that, “higher unit costs notwithstanding”, a good case emerges for small schools “when the quality of their educational performance is added to the broader contribution they make to their communities”.
National Small Schools Week begins on June 24. For more information go to the National Small Schools Forum website: www.nssf.co.uk or email its chairman mike.brogden@virgin.net
