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14
Oct 2021
Call for government to reconsider Harrogate district school closure
Senior North Yorkshire county councillors have urged Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi to reconsider a decision to close a Harrogate district primary school.
North Yorkshire County Council’s executive has agreed to appeal to Mr Zahawi to give Baldersby St James Primary School, between Ripon and Thirsk, a 12-month stay of execution just three years after it became an academy and five years after the authority spent £400,000 of taxpayers’ money creating new classrooms.
A meeting of the council’s executive heard the Hope Sentamu Learning Trust had successfully applied to close the school next August. Councillors were told if the closure goes ahead the school would become the first academy in the county to close.
A spokesman for the trust said low pupil numbers “show no prospect of improving for many years ahead”, with predictions for demand for school places showing a steady decline until 2031/32.
The trust has said the reason for its decision was that the school currently had 22 pupils in two classes, one for key stage one and the other for key stage two. Some year groups have just one student
Helen Winn, chief executive of the trust, has said potential options, including speaking to other local multi-academy trusts, had been examined, but none were practically viable.
She said:
Read more:
- Parents and staff object to closure of Harrogate district school
- Kell Bank School pupils bid farewell with a final lap of the playground
- Harrogate district school to close due to low pupil numbers
The announcement comes just months after the North Yorkshire Rural Commission called for action to halt rural school closures, highlighting that children who attend small rural schools achieve better educational outcomes than urban children.
The meeting was told only nine children from the school’s catchment area were attending Baldersby St James, and numerous parents had taken their children elsewhere for many years, so the prospect of closure was “a consequence of parental choice”.
Parents campaign to save school
However, some parents and residents are battling the move, saying the school is a crucial community asset and that the decision was made behind closed doors before the school’s viability could be publicly examined.
Senior councillors said they felt it would be “very premature” to close the school given the exhaustive lengths the authority had recently gone to in an attempt to keep village schools open.
They highlighted how the school’s financial situation remained unclear as it was an academy, and said a lot of consultation should be undertaken before the doors of the grade II listed Victorian building close for a final time.
They agreed the closure should be delayed for 12 months to enable a credible business plan to be established.
The authority’s leader, Cllr Carl Les, said it seemed “perverse” that the council was being asked to endorse the closure of a school that it would not have considered for closure as it was already maintaining village schools with fewer pupils.
Cllr Patrick Mulligan, the council’s education executive member, said the council was powerless to stop the closure as the decision would ultimately be made by the Schools Commissioner and Mr Zahawi.
He said there were sufficient school places in the area for Baldersby St James pupils to go elsewhere should the school close.
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