Those of us fighting against the closure of Cradoc Primary School received some bad news last week, the courts have decided to refuse the judicial review we had asked for to reverse the decision made to close our school.
This is a significant blow for parents, children, teachers, and staff at Cradoc Primary School. We truly believed Powys County Council had breached parts of Welsh Government’s School Organisation Code, by not considering all options to keep our school open, and that the Council should have treated Cradoc school, as a rural school, differently to both Mount Street urban schools. The Judge considering this review concluded that our reliance on the procedural presumption against closure of a rural school, contained on the School Organisation Code, is misplaced. In the words of our solicitors, neither the code nor the extra presumption against rural school closures, added by the previous Education Minister Kirsty Williams, is worth the paper it’s written on. Our solicitors even suggested an appeal against the decision would be a waste of time and money. The ramifications following this decision are enormous for Welsh rural primary schools. Local authorities only have to show they have considered the code, which puts every single Welsh Primary school under the threat of closure by Council's trying to save money due to Welsh Government underfunding.
I have written to the current Welsh Education Minister, Jeremy Miles MS, asking for a meeting to discuss the journey we have all been on and ask him if he thinks the Education Department at Powys County Council have adhered to the spirit and principles of the code. I will also request that the code is rewritten, to prevent further ambiguous interpretation by Welsh local authorities. The fight to save our school will continue and I thank everyone who has helped so far.
Our children deserve better than this.”
