Staff at an under-threat primary school near Oswestry will never know why their bid for academy status was rejected – because the Department for Education is refusing to tell them, it has been claimed.

Only six out of 226 schools in Shropshire have applied for academy status, government education officials said today.

Campaigners today said a bid for academy status for Shropshire’s Ifton Heath Primary School was now the ‘only option left’ to save it.

Education chiefs today recommended plans to push ahead with the closure of a Shropshire village school despite opposition from staff, parents and pupils.

Council bosses have received only five representations from people about controversial plans to close a village school near Oswestry. Parents have been urged to have their say before the consultation ends on Friday.

Supply teacher spending through agencies has more than doubled in north Shropshire over the past two years, new figures say.

Worried parents have been urged to bombard council chiefs with their objections to a plan to close a Shropshire village school.

A Shropshire primary school threatened with closure is to make official complaints about the way Shropshire Council conducted its cabinet meeting when decisions about its future were made.

Campaigners fighting to save several county schools backed for closure by councillors today claimed their elected officials had let them down.

Shropshire councillors today agreed to close five primary schools.

THREE CLOSURE-THREATENED Shropshire primary schools today vowed that their battle to stay open would go on.

Hundreds of parents will stage a protest walk in a Shropshire village on Wednesday in a bid to prove their claims that a school merger plan is unworkable and unsafe.

Unfortunately, the lack of parents at the open evening at Rhyn Park School was not a surprise to me.

Governors at two Shropshire schools being considered for merger plans under an education shake-up in the county have voted against becoming a combined body.