Options for the future of Manners Sutton Primary School

Overview

Nottinghamshire County Council wishes to seek the views of interested parties regarding the future of Manners Sutton Primary School.

Background

Manners Sutton Primary School is a small school with a published admission number of eight serving the village of Averham in the Newark District. The school is maintained by Nottinghamshire County Council. The last Ofsted inspection of the school (January 2018) rated the school as ‘good’.

On 21 September 2020, Nottinghamshire County Council’s Children and Young People’s Committee approved the undertaking of an initial statutory consultation to explore options for Manners Sutton Primary School including possible closure.

In this regard Nottinghamshire County Council is following the prescribed process described in ‘Opening and closing maintained schools: Statutory guidance for proposers and decision-makers’ published by the Department for Education, November 2019.

According to the above, Stage One of the statutory process makes it a statutory requirement to consult any parties the Local Authority (LA) thinks appropriate before publishing proposals under section 3: Proposing to close (discontinue) a maintained school.

Manners Sutton Primary School is designated as a rural school, Nottinghamshire County Council will therefore follow the guidelines regarding the presumption against the closure of rural schools.

The Local Authority may use the consultation to consider a range of options for the future of a school (e.g. amalgamation, academisation, federation or closure). However, the proposer must then publish specific proposals according to Stage Two of the statutory process outlined at appendix one of the report below.