“Shropshire Council also voted not to allow two primary schools facing closure – Maesbury, near Oswestry, and Stiperstones, near Shrewsbury – extra time to formulate plans to federate with other primaries”.
What excuse do they have for this ??? spin to follow in about 48 hours.

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I must say I have to agree with Pete and Port Hill Boy here, the statutory time limit has been set and seems to have been adhered to, end of argument.
I heard someone on the radio the other day saying that the council weren’t listening, what they meant to say was that they had spoken to the council and their views were dismissed, that does not mean that they are/were not listening.
The schools were asked to come up with viable alternatives, they obviously haven’t, again, end of argument.
I applaud anyone who puts energy into a venture, this however seems to becoming an adventure where the taxpayer (that includes people with no connection to the schools) are asked to provide funds to keep say 10 schools open and fully staffed where there are only enough pupils to fill 9. In any other walk of life we expect efficiency that means 100% not 90%.
We have other services crying out for funds but there are not enough to go around, that means everyone of them will take a hit somewhere along the line.
Figures keep being bandied about be they from the council side or the schools, I don’t know who to trust, and one thing’s for certain they never will add up.
I just wish that the vigilante comments of ‘name and shame’ etc cut no ice with me; I look at the whole picture with both eyes wide open, not with a monopic tunnel view, and shall vote accordingly, that is what democracy is about, your vote may cancel or add to mine.

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Because of the nature of our political system with its short term target driven mindset, we change what happens in education only superficially. Usually so it can be measured with in the life time of a government. Endlessly jiggle the system and call it reform… I think we have to go back to the child. Back to basics and I do not mean the 3 R`s, although they are important of course. I mean something very different. At the heart of every child, newborn is a unique genius and personality. What we SHOULD be doing is to allow the spark of that genius to catch fire, burn brightly and shine. What we seem to be doing with so many of our children is to corral them stifle them and construct a world where success and failure is all that counts. A fear of failure is what does the most damage. Back to stories again, to Dickens, to Mr Gradgrind and hard times, whose notion of education was to ram facts down children’s throats. We may not beat children anymore, and that’s progress of course but at times I’m not sure how far we`ve moved on since Gradgrind or since I was at school myself in the 1950`s. We still have classes that are twice the size of what they should be; far too big for teachers to have those vital relationships with children that are so important particularly those children who are already disengaged and alienated… And we still have a society where although some schools are wonderfully successful others remain mired in poverty and failure in a situation that continues to wreck the lives of so many of our children and exacerbate the divisions in our national life. It is those schools and those children we are not reaching and rights we are denying. As Michael Gove, The education secretary has recently said; and he is right about some things [...] We must remember that we are preparing children, not simply for employment although that is important, nor for the contribution they can make to the common good [..] But for the difficult decisions they will have to make in their personal lives, those moments where they have to take responsibility for themselves and for others. When they decide whether or not to have sex with someone new, tempted in to drugs, carrying a knife, throw a brick through a window, in those critical moments the decisions they make the choices they make rely so much on the relationships they have when they`re young, with their parents, with their teachers and on their self worth and self confidence. There is no league table for relationships [..]

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