Longbarn Primary School

[Egbert]

I don't want to take sides in the dispute over whether Longbarn Primary School should close. But I see those campaigning to save the school, including the Warrington North MP, are talking about a "secret report" which they believe means the closure is a "done deal."

 

This secret report apparently says only one in three local parents send their children to the school, that the school requires long term subsidy if it is to provide a full curriculum, that it is a small school, that if it was closed, money saved would be available for other primary schools and that it would be vulnerable if saved because the nearby CE primary school would apply to increase its capacity.

 

All this is obviously not welcome information for people trying to save Longbarn. But unless I am very much mistaken, it is the very same information given publicly to the council when the proposal to close Longbarn was first put forward. So what is "secret" about it?

 

I can understand an ordinary parent perhaps not knowing this, but the school governors and the MP should, and probably do, know they are just raising a red herring

[Paul Kennedy]

If it was a secret report, which I doubt, it's certainly not a secret report anymore.

 

The Longbarn School matter is very simple to resolve, Warrington North's MP ( and a member of the Government) who I understand thinks that it should remain open, could ask her colleague Ed Balls -the Secretary of State, to give Warrington sufficient additional money to subsidise it. If she is unable to do that, then her becoming involved is all rather pointless I would have thought.