Comment

with Patrick O'Brien

CAPEL SEION has neither pub, shop nor post-office. It does, however, have a vibrant school, colourful, warm and lively, which binds together in the way such places do what would otherwise be a community without a discernible heart. Wrongly, the county council wants to close the school.

It wants to shut it for the flimsiest of reasons. Currently, the school has only 14 children, which happens to be a mere two pupils short of the 16 which the council, with an arbitrariness which it has never explained, decrees is necessary for two teachers to be employed.

Two teachers are needed for any school which may have children ranging in age from four to 11, it argues. That may be reasonable and realistic, so the money must be found to enable Capel Seion to continue to have two teachers. What is not reasonable is to seek to shut down for the want of two more pupils a school of a kind which excels not only educationally but which should be regarded as a model for the future in terms of social and environmental sustainability.

Research, surveys and inspections support the case for small schools. Estyn, the education and training inspectorate, says more small schools reach the Assembly’s target that 95 per cent or more of classes should have at least satisfactory standards. And children in small schools achieve higher standards in key skills, generally doing better in speaking and listening, reading and in using information and communications technology.

In small schools, Estyn points out, children stay in the same class with the same teacher for several years, giving the teacher “more time to give individual attention to pupils”.

In schools of fewer than 30 children, the quality and extent of parents’ contribution to school life is consistently good, the inspectorate has found, and “a special closeness and working relationship develops between the smallest schools, parents and the community…”

In England, Ofsted concluded after an exhaustive survey that the quality of teaching in small schools was “generally better than in larger schools”, and that their “positive ethos” and “important place in the community” meant there was “a good case” for small schools, which had a positive ethos that fostered “a family atmosphere”, “good standards of behaviour” and “close links with parents and the community”.

In the face of such evidence, how can the county council expect to be other than fiercely criticised – as it is currently by parents, governors and the wider local community - when it seeks to close a successful school which has, in all likelihood temporarily, at the moment got 14 rather than 16 children?

Has it even considered the wider arguments in favour of keeping this school open? Such as the social cohesion that closure could jeopardise. Such as recognising, with a true and ringing comprehension and commitment, the fact that Ceredigion is mostly a rural county, and that rural crucially means supporting and strengthening rural communities, not weakening them by, as in the case of Capel Seion, snipping through the last visible thread of community.

Such as recognising that key to environmental and social sustainability is a true and ringing commitment to strengthening and popularising rural schools, not jumping in to shut them when the numerical argument tips minutely in favour of an arbitrarily-founded closure policy.

So why, apart from all this, is the council wrong to want to close this school? Because parents and governors have been led up the garden path by the council. Capel Seion was first placed “under review” in 2007, and the following year, when Jane Lloyd Jones, headteacher for the previous 34 years retired, parents and governors were told they could no longer afford their own head and that federation with another local school or schools was the only viable option.

Capel Seion duly joined a federation with Capel Bangor and Ponterwyd schools, and governors were led to believe by the council’s “sales pitch” that this loose amalgamation was delivered with the assurance of three years free from the threat of closure, three years during which they would have the chance to make the federation work and to fulfill its potential. Instead, the council twice went on to raise the spectre of closure – in May and September 2009.

The result was attrition. Support for the school among some parents wavered because of the insecurity. Others who currently take their children to schools in Aberystwyth agonised over what to do, wanting to back the local school for any number of reasons but afraid to do so because of the atmosphere of uncertainty. Federation, held out by the council as the key to the future, was undermined by the authority’s continuing threats of closure. Instead, the council’s subsequent actions appeared designed to blight the school’s chances of survival.

Meanwhile, there is external evidence in favour of saving and strengthening this school. Twenty-nine planning applications for houses in and around Capel Seion are currently in the pipeline. Four new homes are about to be occupied. The council must shed its blindfold and prejudice over possible future numbers at the school.

The Assembly government meanwhile must act on two particular recommendations by Estyn. One is that it should allocate to education authorities a grant specifically to support small schools; the second that it should promote the use of information technology via video links. Councils are also being urged to introduce video-conferencing or webcam links between small schools. This is the kind of positive action that is needed.

Essentially, the council must recognise that its rural schools policy as applied to Capel Seion is a dog-eared anachronism. The community will simply not stand for financial short-termism which brings with it eradication of a highly-prized education model and erosion of social cohesion.