THE hard work put in over the past 12 months by both students and teachers at the Small School, Hartland, has brought an amazing 100% A* to C pass rate in this year’s GCSE exams.

This incredible achievement builds on the school’s 84% A* to C grade passes in 2015 and comes in a year when the national average for students obtaining five or more passes at grade C and above has actually dropped.

Mary Billson, chair of trustees, said: “We are immensely proud of our students and hope they will stay in touch to share their future successes with us.”

These results are particularly rewarding for the school as they come just a year after a disappointing report from Ofsted and after a lot of hard work has been done to bring the school into line with their national standards.

Mary added: “It is gratifying to be able to prove that our established ethos of holistic and personalised learning still works, even within the current climate of tighter regulation and growing constraints.”

So it is with huge sadness that the decision has been taken by the trustees to close the school at the end of the 2016-17 school year.

For the past five years it has cost more to run the school than they been able to fundraise and financial reserves have been dwindling year on year.

The old building is expensive to maintain, wages have risen significantly and parents have been less and less able to commit their time to helping with the running of the school.

Faced with falling student numbers, a building needing a huge amount of repair work and very little cash left in the bank, the school’s trustees have decided to devote what funds they have left to fulfil the obligation to existing GCSE students and allow them to complete their secondary education.

But the school hopes to go out with a bang rather than a whimper.

Trustee, Frances Stuart, said: “We’ll be striving to make next year our hat-trick of GCSE successes but would very much like to celebrate the full 35 years of the Small School’s history, not just the more recent past. So we’ve earmarked Friday, June 30, to Sunday, July 2, of next year for a sort of ‘Festival of Smallness’.

“The school would like students, parents, guardians and anyone with an involvement with The Small School since its founding in 1982, to be part of this celebration.”

Anyone who would like to get involved, is invited to email [email protected].