LETTERS
Shellingford School
Sir: At this moment, it is to be hoped, the Secretary of State for Education is wonder- ing whether to overrule an Oxfordshire county council decision to withdraw finan- cial support from our indisputably excel- lent, much loved and well attended Church of England voluntary-aided school.
At Shellingford, religious and moral teaching is not confined to particular les- sons but is a part of everyday activity and is fostered by two committed Christian teachers; by the involvement of two clergy- men, the governors, lay members of the Church and, particularly, by the parents who took the conscious decision to place their children in such an environment. Anglicans, Baptists and Catholics from a wide area are united in the prayer that Mr Baker will exercise his wisdom to save this institution of quality from destruction.
The main argument in favour of a last-minute reprieve is that of parental choice. The importance of Shellingford School is not merely that it provides an unusually high standard of education but that it is the only voluntary-aided school (which in layman's language in our case means the only one offering a specifically Christian-based education) in an area of a hundred square miles around the market town of Faringdon. The area without such a school is, in fact, much larger, but I have assumed that few parents are likely to be able to bring children more than five miles to school.
In the course of a systematic review of the county's primary schools last year, the county council's own all-party education provision working party recommended that Shellingford be retained and the gov- ernors were informed that 'members were impressed by what they find goes on at Shellingford'. With such an endorsement of the school, why did the county council overrule the recommendation of their own working party and vote for closure?
We are the victims of a hung council. As there is no consensus on educational policy among the parties we have seen a series of decisions, particularly on closures, that are inconsistent and unintelligible. The Labour Party fight for money that the Tories will not — or cannot — give them for the inner cities. At least three among them deliber- ately absented themselves from the critical vote and it is possible that we have underestimated the pressure that was put upon them. Tragically five of the Tory councillors were too busy harvesting on the only sunny day in weeks to turn out for the decisive vote. It is decent of me to bother to mention the Independent candidate. She was so independent that she changed her views by the hour. The closing of our school on the basis of saving money is hardly worthy of consid- eration. Historically Shellingford has al- ways fallen into the lowest unit-cost group in the county. Expense of maintaining the building is not borne by the LEA but, almost entirely, by the Church. If the school closes, the capital asset of the building and the site are lost to the county and revert to a village trust.
Not long after the working party came out against closure for Shellingford, one of the Labour councillors — James Howard Johnston — re-raised the matter with the education sub-committee. He then deli- vered an impassioned speech at Shelling- ford School — rooting for our demise. We were 'elitist': victims of our own excell- ence.
Soon after Mr Howard Johnston's un- welcome visit to Shellingford, it was announced that he had 'bowed to pressure from his wife' and that he intended to resign as a Labour councillor. A family decision had been made to send the cou- ple's daughter to a fee-paying school. There was time, however, between Mr Howard Johnston's resignation and his departure from office, to vote against Shellingford School at our neck-and-neck finish (25-27 votes against us).
We submit to Mr Baker that the closure of a centre of educational excellence in the circumstances that I have outlined is not the exercise of democracy and deserves sensitive review.
Susanna Johnston
Governor, Shellingford School, Shellingford, Faringdon, Oxfordshire
Previous page
