Parish council submits plan to save Harrogate village school from closure

A parish council has called on North Yorkshire Council to use recent government guidance to save a primary school in a Harrogate district village.

Skelton cum Newby Parish Council has submitted an action plan, developed by a group including several headteachers, to restore classes at Skelton Newby Hall Primary School, between Boroughbridge and Ripon, in response to the authority’s consultation on the closure of the school.

While the parish council is just the latest of numerous group to attempt to halt the closure of a rural primary school in the county, is understood to be the first to argue there is a lack of primary school capacity in the surrounding area.

The council has rejected numerous accusations in recent years over “distant decision-making”, particularly in regard to the closure of small, rural schools, which its leadership underlined last month was completely contrary to its ambitions.

Nevertheless, in a report to North Yorkshire Council’s executive last month, officers said the school’s governing body had “been active in their collective efforts to raise numbers at the school through many initiatives over recent years”, but pupil numbers had fallen to one.

The report stated although Skelton had been designated a service village in the Harrogate district Local Plan 2014-35, there was no new housing planned in the Skelton Newby Hall’s catchment area.

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Officers said across the local area a potential 188 additional pupils were expected to join across the five nearby schools until 2027/28 and there was potential to provide additional capacity at Boroughbridge Community Primary School.

Although the parish council said it had been left in the dark until proposals to close the school were under way, officers said the move had been “unanimously” instigated locally, by the school’s governors, and was supported by the falling roll and the need to provide quality and breadth of education.

The officers’ report stated the council also believes there is sufficient capacity in the area to meet both the current and future primary school capacity requirements.

However, in its response to the closure consultation, the parish council has highlighted statutory guidance issued by the Department of Education in January that all decision-makers were expected “to adopt a presumption against the closure of rural schools”.

The DfE spokesman added: 

“This does not mean that a rural school will never close, but that the case for closure should be strong and clearly in the best interests of educational provision in the area.”

In its response to the consultation, the parish council said the community does not believe that the proposal to close the school had met the DfE threshold for closure, claiming there is not sufficient pupil capacity in the area and as a standalone school it could be strong and viable.

The parish council document states: 

“We have identified there is already a shortage of capacity in the area with more demand to be met from the new housing developments which are still being built, as well as further developments with planning.”

The parish council said while the authority had pointed towards capacity at Boroughbridge Community Primary School the “reality is quite different” with that school being close to its 230 capacity.

It added: 

“We are confident that with the committed support from the local community and the new North Yorkshire Council, this school, with its ambition and leadership restored, can once again provide a valuable contribution to the education provision in the area.

“We can only achieve this by working in partnership with North Yorkshire Council. The new unitary council has a clear stated aim: ‘Local at its heart … We will work closely with town and parish councils … to ensure that local priorities drive locally led decision-making and local action.’”

County council rejects claim it is watching on as small schools close

Senior county councillors have rejected accusations that the authority is failing to prevent classroom closures as it pushed forward moves to axe two village primaries.

A meeting of North Yorkshire County Council’s executive saw members express sympathy with those wanting to maintain Skelton Newby Hall, near Boroughbridge, and Hovingham, near York.

But they said extremely low school rolls had left them with few options.

The accusations levelled by Skelton Cum Newby Parish Council’s chairman Guy Critchlow follow those from numerous other community leaders, including Hovingham, as a succession of small rural schools across North Yorkshire have been closed in recent years.

They include Kell Bank Church of England Primary School near Masham.

Urging the council to consider alternatives to simply closing the school, Cllr Critchlow said the school was “viable and valuable to the surrounding areas” and the fact that pupil numbers had fallen to a single child was “not organically driven”.

He said a policy was developing “on the side of closing small schools”.

Cllr Critchlow said while Skelton Newby Hall school had been failed by its federation with Sharow school, while it had been run by the council it not been marketed appropriately to attract new pupils.

He added: 

“The community feel this was a consultation in name only. We are a canary in the mine for the very essence of rural communities in North Yorkshire and for the new North Yorkshire Council.”

The meeting heard despite parents of children attending Skelton school being advised to find places for their children elsewhere several months before a consultation to close it, neither the Sharow school or the county council had discussed the matter with the Skelton community.

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Cllr Nick Brown, a Conservative representing Wathvale and Bishop Monkton division, said: 

“I would like to think in future that whenever a school is in danger of closing, because of the pattern of warning signs from falling school numbers, then this information should be shared with North Yorkshire councillors and parish and town councils, much much earlier, so they can help with any ideas that would help prevent closure.”

However, the meeting heard “sharing early information” about school concerns on other occasions had seen parents vote with their feet.

‘Stark reality’

Cllr Janet Sanderson, executive member for children and families, said the council was frustrated with the small school closures situation and the restrictions of the closure process that had been handed down to it by government.

Cllr Annabel Wilkinson, executive member for education, said no applications had been received for pupils wanting to attend Hovingham as their first choice school from September, and that as a long-standing institution in the village near Malton it would be greatly missed.

She said North Yorkshire had about 50 schools and academies with fewer than 50 pupils, which was a sign of the council’s commitment to provide education in deeply rural communities.

Cllr Wilkinson said:

“The stark reality is that many of our schools, particularly those in rural areas, are seeing pupil numbers reduce year on year.

“Low numbers not only make the school unviable to keep running, but it is not always possible to provide children with a broad curriculum and high quality education.”