C.L.A.R.E. – THE 2010 CHALLENGE
Our objective from day one has been the retention of secondary education in Clare. We formed to reverse the Suffolk County Council’s (SCC) decision under their Schools Organisation Review (SOR) to close Clare Middle School (CMS) and concentrate secondary education in large schools in Haverhill and Sudbury.
C.L.A.R.E. is a non-political organisation with no affiliation whatever to any political party. However, we have to be in close touch with whoever runs SCC and whichever party is in Central Government to secure satisfactory funding and operate within the state mainstream education system in Suffolk and England.
At the heart of our strategy is the need to retain and build on the excellent ethos, teaching staff and educational results that CMS provides to our children. Our detailed proposal for a secondary school in the Stour Valley for 11 to 16 year olds on the CMS site, was presented to SCC ( a Council with Conservative control) and to the Minister of State for Schools in the present Labour Government. The latter declined to consider our proposal without support from SCC and, to date unfortunately, SCC has refused to change course and support us.
Consequently, having reached stalemate with SCC and the Government and as we need to cover all eventualities, we turned our attention to both the Conservative and Liberal Democrats Parties whose education policies seem to match the parent promoted rural secondary school concept that C.L.A.R.E. are fighting for with their SVCC proposal. C.L.A.R.E has now met with the current Conservative Shadow Minister for Schools who confirmed this and that, if should the be elected to govern in the next general election latest June 2010, they would support the retention of secondary education in Clare in a school promoted and managed by the parents/community and directly funded by Government. We are actively working on a detailed proposal that would meet with the criteria of any of the possible new administrations policies.
We will continue the dialogue with SCC and the Westminster parties to achieve our objective as we are convinced that the game is not yet lost and can still be won because nothing is set in stone.
One of the key ingredients we need is the continuing overwhelming support for the retention of secondary education in Clare from the Governors, Head Teachers, Teachers and Parents of CMS and all the Primary Schools that do/will feed pupils into SVCC. As indicated in this weekend’s appearance on BBC 1’s Politics Show, we are endeavouring to formalise this support. We also hope to hold a Public Meeting in the near future to bring all interested parties up-to-date with our progress and invite comment.
