Community
The report from the Commission for Rural communities has been made available. You can read it in its entirety here (Pdf file, opens in a new tab/window). Below is an extract concerning our school.
Small school, big communities
Village schools and extended services
Longnor
Longnor is a hill-village in the Staffordshire part of the Peak District. It was once a thriving market town. Nowadays, two thirds of its residents commute to jobs outside. With a population of only 300 people, the village has a coffee shop, two stores, a fish and chip shop and three pubs, but no village hall.
St Bartholomew's Primary School is more than 100 years old. It has 30 children on roll, 2 full-time and 2 part-time teachers and a teaching assistant. Sue Evans is a teaching head teacher and she manages the Extended Services brief. She has been the head teacher for 14 years and involved with the Extended Services cluster programme since it started over 5 years ago.
The village residents are characterised as 'locals or incomers'. There is a small housing association development in the village; more expensive stone houses and surrounding isolated farmsteads, holiday cottages and renovated barns. There is a lack of things for children and teenagers to do. The youth bus visits once a week on a Monday evening.
There is just one child in her school receiving free school meals, but Sue feels this does not accurately reflect the struggle which other families have on very low incomes. She cited the costs of maintaining cars which, because of the weather need to have four wheel drives. In some areas there are no buses at all.
The resulting isolation has, she believes, an impact on language development and some families are known to not place much emphasis on education. Access to health services, including GP services, is difficult for some families because of the lack and cost of public transport.
The school offers a wide range of extended services, including a GP prescription collection point, a wide range of after-school clubs and a breakfast club; access to specialist services; a family support service; Sure Start play sessions; and a playgroup. The school also hosts keep-fit, Brownies, drama activities and a cycle club, among a long list of activities and pastimes.
Charges for sessions are accessible at just £3 and are subsidised through core funding from the cluster. Families are consulted about the services and the local village action group is also involved. They would like to provide adult learning opportunities and are working with the local college to see if this is possible.
Sue sees the main benefits of village schools as providing community cohesion : keeping children in the community and providing a focal point for the village; without the school, all the young mums would have a very lonely life and all the Sure Start activities would have nowhere to go.
Membership of the school cluster provides support, sustainability and access to a wider pool of expertise.
She felt that village schools and extended services made a contribution to tackling rural poverty.
They are flexible and intimate enough to provide services that really do meet the needs of families – for example, running a breakfast club to enable a family that doesn't have any local family network to get to work in the town on time; running after-school activities on days which allow a parent to finish studying at the local university.
The parents who were interviewed agreed. Small village schools gave children security and confidence. In other villages without schools, the streets were predominantly empty, with no real opportunities for families to meet.
A school in a village like this is the beating heart of the village – it gives the village a sense of being alive.