Currently, statutory guidance on closing rural schools dictates that “the likely effect of the closure of the school on the local community” must be taken into account when making a decision.
The C of E provides more than 70 per cent of the country’s very small schools in rural areas (less than 110 pupils), and said it must look at the challenge of providing quality education within small communities.
Nigel Genders, the CofE’s chief education officer said in a recent blog post that the Church is rising to the challenge in a number of ways.
“Most importantly, we are committed to putting children’s education first, and ensuring every child in our care can achieve their potential,” he said.
“To do this effectively, we need to reimagine what outstanding education looks like in small schools and rural, often isolated, villages, and to be aware that the data we use to measure the quality of a larger setting may not be appropriate for the smaller cohorts of children in a rural school.”
He said the Church is also helping small schools share resources “such as Head teachers or business managers”.
Genders told Tes (Times Educational Supplement) that he believes the Department for Education was “very open” to the change.
“Too often in the debate we put [educational quality] as a subsidiary question and say, ‘We don’t want to see the school lost because…
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