Trying to Destroy a Jewel

With Combs Fun Day behind us, let's return to the serious business of keeping Combs School, Village Hall and Chapel open, with another excerpt from a letter sent to DCC. This time it's from a concerned grandparent, who is also a long-time governor at another school.

I write in support of maintaining Combs Infant School as a valuable cog in DCC's educational wheel.

There are many arguments in favour, not least the need to continue to attract younger families to the village, thus ensuring that the community remains viable and well balanced in socio-economic terms. The school, and its associations with the chapel and the village hall as a homogenous unit and focal point for village life, is vital to the well-being of Combs.

Starting full-time school is no hurdle for very young children if they feel part of an extended family in familiar local surroundings. Throw them in at the deep end of a large county primary and they can founder and some will drown. Educationally, Combs is not about drowning (see the most recent Ofsted report) although DCC is currently proposing to push this successful school's head under water.

The decision to consider the closure of a successful and much-acclaimed village school further demonstrates that in the drive for bureaucratic correctness and budgetary 'efficiency', the human factor is very low on your list of priorities. I do urge you to think long and hard before destroying what ought to be one of the jewels in the crown of the Derbyshire Education Authority.

If you haven't already made your feelings known to DCC, find out who to write to.