Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Education – in the Senedd at 1:45 pm on 19 September 2018.
Well, David, you will be aware that the regulations and the code set out a very stringent set of criteria that local authorities must apply when looking to close any school. It was important to me, and I feel it is important to many rural communities given the nature of rural life, that an added protection is made available to schools that serve a rural community. If we're to have a presumption against the closure of those schools then we have to have a list and we have to have an honest and open, transparent criteria as to how a school gets on the list. We have used, as you stated, the Office for National Statistics urban/rural classification to do that. As a result of the consultation, we have expanded the categories of schools that will be covered by the rural list to include more schools than were initially envisaged by this Government. But when considering the future of any school, the rest of the code applies and my expectation is that any local authority would apply that code rigorously, which looks at the community impact any school closure may have, whether that school closure be in a rural or in a more urban area.