by Jemima Myrddin-Evans, Llanfair Kilgeddin, Monmouthshire

It was just after Easter in 2009 that the headteacher called an ad hoc meeting to tell parents that the council was threatening our tiny school with closure. We were shocked. The school is much loved - it's at full capacity with 39 on the roll, class sizes are small and every child's individual needs are catered for.

Everyone wanted the school to stay open.We formed a working party of eight and it quickly turned into a full-on campaign. We downloaded the council's documentation, giving its reasons for wanting to shut the school down, and soon realised that we could refute all of them. It was quite a political thing; small schools are perceived as expensive and it's often just simpler financially and logistically for councils to plonk kids into one great big school.

We were lucky to have an incredibly multi-talented group. Jobs were divvied up according to aptitude. I was the co-ordinator, another parent looked at the council's financial arguments, someone else kept local newspapers informed, a lawyer advised on the relevant legislation and anyone who had contacts in the council rang them up to make our case.

Though we were allowed to attend, we couldn't speak at the council's cabinet meeting where the decision would be made to go to full consultation, so we drew up a list of arguments and attached all our evidence and letters of support.

We could hardly contain our excitement when they threw out the plan, and made sure to write a press release straightaway so the decision would be published the next day and they couldn't go back on it! In the end, we know that the main reason we were kept open was because it's the only Church of England voluntary aided school in north Monmouthshire, and we focused in on the principle of parental choice.

If it had closed we'd all have been hugely upset, because it's a major part of village life.

Reproduced with permission from the Countryfile website
Fiona Cowan
5 March 2010