Educational Reasons
1. The Governors are committed to ensuring that the School will
provide each child with an education that is more than equal to any other local school,
and are putting measure in place to this end.
2. A village School provides an unique education
‘with no unnatural segregation of the age groups as in large schools, but a
sense of belonging to a family unit, where older children care for the younger ones
and infants learn from the example of the older ones. They are busy, enthusiastic
and well mannered, but above all they are happy and in consequence learn quickly.’
(Letter from Mrs.M.Bates, former teacher at Barnwell and Head of Aldwinkle for nine
years.)
3. An excellent staff to pupil ratio ensures that each child receives
a large proportion of their education at an individual level, hence they achieve much
more than their peers in larger schools.
Social Reasons
1. Social Identity
‘Children growing up in a village are aware that they are part of a small community
and find their own identity in it. If you send them away to school they may lose their
sense of identity, as they become neither town nor village.’
(Letter from HRH the Duke of Gloucester)
2. Rural Depression
Villages at the periphery of the County receive a raw deal from the authorities and
closing the school is one more example of this. Many villages without schools have
become retirement/commuter settlements as young families move out and new families
reject the village in favour of those with a school.
Historical Reasons
Right to Education
Education for village children within their own environment was considered so important
that in 1603 the first school was endowed in Barnwell. Now, four hundred years later,
despite Government promises that village schools would be treated as special cases
to regenerate the villages, Local Government officials are counting it as ‘nothing
worth’ and totally ignoring the wishes of the community by depriving them of
their historical right.
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