The damning assessment of the potential impact of Suffolk County Council’s favoured option to close Clare Middle School, and not create a secondary school in its place, was made during a meeting at the town’s Baptist Church last Wednesday.

The meeting was called by action group CLARE (Clare and Local Area for Rural Education) to give people from the town and surrounding villages more detail of the effects of the proposals by the county council’s schools organisation review (SOR).

Facing the public were SOR members Frank Stockley and Joy Stoddard, senior education officers from the county council and Dave Groves, an education consultant employed by the local authority.

Clare parish councillor Keith Haisman questioned whether the council had considered the effect on Clare of not supporting the creation of a secondary school on the site of the set-to-close middle school.

He said: “You yourself said that the school is the heart of the community and you are proposing to rip it out.

“That means Clare will be less attractive for people to move to if they have older children.

“Have you got an economic impact analysis on your proposals?”

Although admitting, ‘we have looked at a broad range of issues including economic and social issues on communities’, Mr Stockley was unable to give specifics for Clare.

Rosemary Warmington, a former Suffolk county councillor for Clare, accused the council of not properly thinking through the financial impact of all its proposals and questioned the motives.

She said: “I want to know it’s not being done because of finances and not education.”

Mr Groves admitted that its three options for restructuring schools in the Clare and Haverhill area had ‘not had full architectural costings’.

Pressed by CLARE member Diana Sharp whether Clare children would be asked to go to Castle Manor or Samuel Ward college when changes are implemented, Mr Stockley answered: “I’m not going to give any cast iron guarantees at a public meeting.”

steve.barton@haverhillecho.com