Victory in battle to retain community school provision

Swanage First, the community school in Dorset threatened with closure, now looks set to remain open as a Primary School.

The National Secular Society became involved when the school was initially earmarked for closure by Dorset County Council in a shakeup of its education provision. Swanage First is the only community school in a 14 mile radius, and its closure would have left parents with no realistic option but to send their children to faith schools. In June 2009 the National Secular Society instructed solicitors to write to Dorset County Council, pointing out the legal implications of reducing diversity of provision and denying parents the choice to send their children to a non-faith school.

The presence of diocesan representatives, in mufti and anxious not to be identified, at a school reorganisation meeting suggest that the Church of England played a significant role behind the scenes in the County’s plans to eliminate community primary provision in the area. And doubtless this is not the only place where such pernicious plans have been hatched. Fortunately, this time, they have been thwarted because of an effective local campaign for which the organisers deserve credit, which was given further weight by active intervention at national level by the NSS. This is but one local example of the churches’ massive and privileged influence built into our education system, which they do not hesitate to wield, although generally well out of sight. If you see symptoms of this, do bring it to our attention – as did members in Swanage.

Stephen Evans from the National Secular Society said: “We are of course extremely pleased that Swanage First Community School looks set to remain open. The closure of this school would have been hugely detrimental to the many non-religious in the local area, so we are thankful to Dorset County Council for now recognising this and changing their plans to protect community school provision. There are however many other parts of the country where non-religious parents are unable to find primary school places for their children, due to the prominence of faith schools, many of which discriminate on religious grounds.”