The case for developing both St John's and Bollington Cross schools has been elequently put by Heidi Reid ...
I've been reading the 'either, or' blurb on the Happy Valley website, and would just like to move to address one issue....
Falling numbers of infant children in the town means that we have four primary schools, each with many empty seats. Inevitably this leads to an unsustainable cost per child and the time has come to rationalise - one school needs to close and the children redistributed around the others.
I would like to challenge that assertion as being factually incorrect.
According to Jim Knight, Government Schools Minister, and Nick Gibb, Shadow Schools Minister, both speaking on national radio stations in the last month regarding St John's school, the drop in the no's of primary aged children across the country has been a temporary blip, with no's set to rise again as of 2009.
Add to that the fact that Bollington is due to see it's planning moratorium lifted in the very near future, with plans already in the pipeline to develop Ingersley Vale, thus attracting more families into the area, then there will be an increase in children in Bollington, seeking primary school places in the village.
Cheshire County Council's current plans to close one of Bollington's schools is a nonsense. To shut one of our successful primary schools (all Bollington's schools achieve above national average SATS reults, and have done for at least 3 consecutive years) will be to force some parents to have to seek school places from outside the town.
On current pupil projections, instead of a surplus, by 2010, there will be a deficit of places.
Furthermore, Jim Knight has also issued a directive to Local Authorities in January of this year, quite clearly outlining the "presumption against closure of successful rural schools". Both Bollington Cross and Bollington St John's are designated by the government as rural schools. He also states that he has provided an extra £188 million to local authorities to help support surplus school places in rural areas, and that the government will be offering increased funding per pupil over the next three years up to £4,900 (Bollington schools currently cost approx £3,000 per child) - see the attached letter from Jim Kinght [PDF 900k] that covers these issues.
In the light of this, we shouldn't be discussing which of Bollington's schools should close, neither should we be accepting the directives of the 'big men' at County Hall as a done deal. We owe it to our kids, and the future of education in Bollington, not to mention the safe-guarding of community buildings in the village (surely we've lost enough of those to date) to kick against these proposals, to insist that we need all four of our schools, and to do as other communities have done across the country and tell Cheshire County Council that they can close one of our schools "over our dead bodies"! We should be mounting a campaign along the lines of "Save Jodrell Bank", "Save Our Maternity Services".
Incidentally, Sir Nicholas Winterton is championing the cause to maintain both Bollington Cross and St John's schools, as is Councillor Graham Evans.
St John's school have also received coverage of their campaign to overturn proposals to discuss closure from BBC Radio Manchester, BBC Radio 5 Live, The Sunday Express, Silk FM, and The Macc Express....watch this space!
Heidi Reid.
. 
The original school is a delightful stone building mostly dating back to the 19th century. It has been extended in recent years with new accommodation to replace several temporary classrooms which doubled the covered space. 
