COUNCILLORS have hammered another nail into the coffin of Tosside Primary School by agreeing it should be closed.

Lancashire County Council's education and cultural services committee met on Tuesday to discuss the future of the small rural school.

But to the dismay of the Support Tosside School campaigners who attended the meeting, members agreed with a recommendation for closure.

That recommendation will now be discussed by the full council and ultimately the Secretary of State.

School governor James Waddington, who has two children at the school, said: "It was a decision we have been expecting. It means that the matter will go to a full council meeting on October 2. Here it's a Labour controlled council and we expect a similar decision again. It'll then go to the Secretary of State and that's where we have got quite a good case.

"We are a remote village and the distance of taking children to other schools is unacceptable."

Parents have been fighting to keep the school open since council chiefs released a consultation document saying it was considering closure because of the high costs of running the school. It said that for the current year the cost per child was £9,730 compared to a county average of £1,600.

But the battle to keep the school open has been going on for years.

In 1981 the school, which then taught around 26 children, was given a reprieve after a hard-fought battle against the authorities was won by parents and governors.

Almost straight away the school began to grow and at one time upwards of 50 pupils were on the register.

The hamlet itself had just a couple of houses, a garage, pub, old rectory and institute, but a further 12 homes were built, two privately and 10 by Sanctuary Housing Association.

These homes tempted new people into the village, but numbers at the school have continued to decline. In 1990 there were again 26 children on the register, but this number has steadily fallen to its present count of nine.

The consultation document highlighted these points, stating that the school had a capacity for 42 children, meaning 33 places were unfilled.

School governors responded to the document with their own detailed summary of objections to the closure plan, which were forwarded to the council during the consultation period.

This period ran out in July 30 and a report was then sent to the county's schools and general purposes sub-committee on September 7. This was followed by a further report to the latest meeting of the education and cultural services committee on Tuesday.

Members considered all the views submitted, and despite their decision no change has been proposed for the school before September 2000.

The proposal to close the school must be announced in public notices which have to be displayed for two months so objections can be made.

The final decision under current legislation will be made by the Secretary of State, although these powers are to be transferred to the independent School Organisation Committee in the near future.

Governor James Waddington added: "Our campaign group will now meet again this week and put forward plans and formulate a response to the chairman of the county council meeting.

"So far a lot of points have not been discussed at committee level, such as what impact the closure of the school will have on the community. Up until now they've basically said they're not interested in the community.

"We're determined to fight this decision all the way though and it's certainly not all over yet. We've had these first nails in the coffin and I can almost predict the next one. We're well aware we're going to have to take this one all the way to the Secretary of State."

Mr Waddington added: "All the information gathered in the consultation period was put before the council in a totally biased way towards the closure of the school.

"They had to go through a consultation exercise, but I'm very cynical about how this has been done and they haven't taken on board what the community is saying. The amount of money that they'll save by closing the school is trivial. They'll save less than £50,000, which is nothing when you consider that last year they underspent by £2.6 million.

"I think it's amazing that this year they sent all the school governors a filofax instead of the usual diary. It's of absolutely no use at all and we've worked out it must have been posted to about 9,000 school governors in the area.

"Just think of all that money wasted on buying them and the postage it cost to send them out. It's just a ridiculous waste of money that could be better spent and it makes you see red!"

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.