Buildwas Primary School looks forward to bright future
This time last year, the future was looking bleak for Buildwas Primary School.
In special measures, with just over 50 pupils, and earmarked for closure by the local authority, the chances of it surviving beyond the end of the school year looked slim indeed.
Parents, staff and pupils mobilised, launching a Save Our School campaign, but the future looked bleak.
But 12 months on, the school is alive and kicking – and changing attitudes at government level may also offer hope to other small rural schools in Shropshire that might otherwise be vulnerable now have hope of a secure future.
Buildwas acting headmaster Tom Plim says there is a positive feel around the school as it holds an open day.
Now an academy operating in partnership with Priorslee Academy in Telford, Mr Plim says the school is now looking forward.
The academy model is the vision that the Government is hoping will finally win parents over to its controversial plans to force all schools to become academies by 2020.
Tory backbenchers, including Steve Brine, a parliamentary aide to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, have voiced concerns over the plans since they were announced in the Budget.
And former education secretary Lord Baker has said schools should be allowed take on more autonomy at their own pace rather than be pressured into it by government.
But the Government is hoping its expansion of academies will win support if, in return, it provides a promise of explicit protection of rural schools, possibly with extra funding. That is good news for parents living in sparsely populated areas like much of Shropshire who value schooling on their doorstep.
Mr Plim believes the policy may offer a lifeline to many small rural schools which might otherwise struggle for survival.
"If we had not been able to find an academy sponsor, this school would not be open now," he says.
"Small rural schools give another option for parents that they are not going to get with the urban or suburban primaries.
"Some children thrive on a smaller site with a smaller staff, we can become far more pastoral in terms of our support."
Mr Plim says that working as part of the same trust as the much larger, urban-based Priorslee Academy in Telford allows both schools to share ideas and learn from each other.
"When the local authority runs a school, it top-slices a portion of the school budget to pool with other schools, but being an academy, the school gets the chance to decide how to spend all of its own budget."
Education Secretary Nicky Morgan is now canvassing MPs in a fresh attempt to explain the benefits of schools becoming academies.
She will also make a speech on the role of parents in schools after concerns were voiced about ending the requirement for school governing bodies to have parents sitting on them.
Mrs Morgan will reassure parents that parents with the appropriate skills would still be appointed as governors.
But a source at the Department For Education said there was no question of the plan to turn all schools into academies being dropped.
