SEFTON Council’s education chief has denied the closure of a primary school that shed 185 pupils will be the first of many closures.
Governors at Thornton Primary School took the “regrettable” decision to close the school to avoid plunging into debt.
The Daily Post revealed in September that the borough had lost more than 1,100 pupils from its primary and secondary schools in just one year. Merseyside shed a total of 8,731 pupils across all the boroughs.
Parents of children at Thornton school are being consulted before it finally shuts its doors at the end of the 2009/10 academic year.
Cllr Peter Dowd, Sefton’s cabinet member for childrens services, said there were no other plans to close more schools.
But he admitted “almost all schools” have falling pupil numbers.
He added: “We have got £10m recently for remodelling of schools, but that doesn’t identify any others for closure. There’s currently no plans in that regard.”
Cllr Dowd said Thornton Primary’s dwindling roll call was first highlighted during a review of primaries four years ago.
He continued: “We had a lot of schools that were in the batting order, so to speak.
“There’s a potential issue there in relation to a number of other schools, as there are all over the place. How they bear up and how they change is impossible to tell. Some of the schools around and about, they have almost all got falling numbers, the question is, have they reached a point where they are not viable in the long term?
“There are none known to me that are not viable.”
Parents at Thornton Primary, which is on Edge Lane, Thornton, reacted angrily to the news of the closure.
Claire Turner, who has an eight-year-old daughter at the school, said: “I thought it was disgusting when I heard.
“I don’t want it to close. I want it to stay open.”
The school saw its pupil numbers fall from 295 in 1998 to 110 this year. It will cost £117,500 more to run the school than it receives in funding, which will wipe out its reserves and leave it £37,000 in the red.
It also faced losing more pupils in September, with the planned intake for the new year less than the number of Year Six pupils who will leave over the summer.
Sefton is still planning to merge three primary schools in Bootle. William Gladstone School, Thomson Road, and Beach Road School have already merged.
