So us urbanites want to shut your little rural schools do we?

When one is engaged in a political contest (see the blog 'war on terr...ible LibDems below) you have to be very careful what you say. Who knows who you might upset. And tinternet, as my son calls it, encourages you to be free with your opinions when your party doesn't and your opponent may be looking for slip-ups. So I'm safe ground here: I don't care about small rural schools being shut. Oh bother, that's not true, I do. Why?

You may have noticed a bit of a thing about the proposed closure of some small rural schools in Shropshire. Five primary schools were closed in Hull in July 2006. I spent a lot of my employers time arguing that this was a very bad thing to be doing. It got me into a lot of trouble (not with my employer).

Anyway, as you know, Hull is well known for being rural. No. But it did have a problem with little schools. You see we all have comparators - things supposedly like us we are judged against. Compared to Hull's comparator places, the average size of our primary schools was too small. The answer: shut some! What does that do? Precisely what those rural whingers say is happening to them; destroys communities doesn't it.

North Bransholme where I live is a community under threat. Take a detour, use the excuse that you want to sample the wonderful squiggly road between it, past Wawne (with it's little rural school not a mile away from ours) and out to Routh. If you do you will see the evidence. The school closure didn't cause the problem, but a local school would have been an important part of the solution. The Dales Primary was the school at the top end where we live. Both my children went there for their whole primary careers. It was far from perfect. But so are they (actually). But they were pretty darned good for eachother. It was one of the six that got shut. It was too small at 205 with a capacity of 280. There were smaller ones but that's another story. Ofsted preferred standard-for-Hull size was 323 and the actual average was 278. You wouldn't expect the world to end over that would you.

Some time soon I'll have a web-site with a few longer documents a 'what i wrote' over the last few years. This is a boiled down argument of the ones about primary schools closures: schools are really important to fringe and at risk communities (where they are usually small) and small ones are especially good for small people with socialisation and educational 'issues'. There's loads of evidence about this, though unfortunately it's almost all done in the USA.

But aside from the particular advantages in particular circumstances, what human beings need, that's rural humans or urban humans, is human scale institutions, especially when we are at our most vulnerable.

Local authorities shut schools because of money trouble and/or pressure from Ofsted. I will join a campaign in the East Riding when someone comes for their schools, its just a shame they wouldn't do the same for Hull.