VILLAGE SCHOOLS
Sut,—Proposals from the Education Author;ties are being put before Council and Church School Managers with regard to centralising educa- tion in towns and closing up mar y village schools. Admittedly there are advantages, but the other side of the picture is a disaster. The school in most villages is the mainspring of the place, and though the buildings are not so good outside, the standard of teaching inside is high, as the high percentage of scholarships shows. Moreover, in villages the parents are in intimate touch with the teachers, a human element which helps everyone concerned. We',want to keep people in the rural districts, and then we propose to counteract this by sending the young away duritg their most malleable years! Besides all this, there are transport difficulties, and the parents of children already under the scheme find that coughs and colds and infectious complaints are greatly increased by waiting about at bus-stops and concentrating children in large schools. But the crux is that for many villages a light will go out
if their schools are closed.—Yours faithfully, ELEANOR ADLARD: Martens, Winehcombe, nr. Cheltenham.
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