01 Dec 09

Hello everyone,

Tonight at a meeting in St Mabyn, Mike Peters (Head of Service – Children, Schools and Families) confirmed that the schools would remain in their villages.  The plans for Longstone have been completely dropped and no other sites, remote or otherwise, are being looked into.  No Statutory Consultation will be entered into for an amalgamated school.

The Council and Diocese are reviewing St Tudy’s original funding guidance to see how it can be best used to support the situation in St Tudy only – none of this money will be used in St Mabyn.  They have categorically stated on record that the schools will not be amalgamated.  Nothing is going to the cabinet meeting on the 16th of December and things are to remain as they are in St Mabyn as they look into local options for improvement at St Tudy.

We are of course delighted with this news but are under no illusion that this is completely over.  Our Action Group will still meet with cabinet members before Christmas and will still keep a close eye on the situation.  We are also submitting two of our members as parent governors onto the newly federated body which we hope parents will support.

We have asked the Council to submit a press release making it very clear as to the situation which they have agreed to do.

Our Action Group is still going to continue supporting both schools and our job moves from active campaigning to observation and holding ongoing discussions with the council over the future of education in our communities.

This is a great result but we are not assuming the problem has gone away.

We did raise why this message wasn’t clearly presented at the St Tudy meeting yesterday to which they could only say it was their fault they didn’t present it accurately enough, although we suspect the result of the referendum in-between both meetings had some bearing on their stance.

What has been noted by the Council and Diocese is the immense support that both communities have shown and what a singularly powerful voice we have had in this process.  We now need to use this voice to support both schools becoming a successful federation.

A massive thank you to all that have supported our campaign and we hope we can count on your continued support to maintain both schools in St Mabyn and St Tudy.

All the best,
Matthew Slater
Chair, St Tudy and St Mabyn Community Action Group