THE primary school at Pyworthy, which has just seven pupils, is set to close.

Devon County Council's Cabinet last week approved a recommendation for the closure of the school with effect from December 31.

A report from the head of planning, transportation and environment, stated the school, which is in the Holsworthy Federation, 'has just seven pupils on roll and numbers are not forecast to improve. Admissions for September 2015 total two. The school has a net capacity of 42 places'.

Conservative county councillor for Holsworthy Rural Barry Parsons said at the meeting: "My heart tells me one thing and my head another.

"We are between a rock and a hard place with something like this I'm afraid."

Cllr Parsons later told the Post there is a 'call-in' period of five working days following cabinet decisions, adding that he imagined formal notification would follow that period.

He said the cabinet's closure decision followed an Ofsted judgement that described the school as 'inadequate', the fact that there were only seven pupils, 'the need for the local authority to give priority to the best interests of the child, and the impact of teaching and learning and future educational sustainability of the school'.

"It is a decision which is very sad as well and hard to accept, especially when you have witnessed some of the very good work that goes on.

"Devon is a rural county and there is no more rural a setting than the county ward of Holsworthy Rural, of which Pyworthy is very much an integral part.

"As much as anywhere Pyworthy will feel this loss of its school. How one measures the extent of that loss is unclear. There is a lot of mixed evidence about the effects of school closures in rural areas . . . some commonly held assumptions about rural schools and their place in the community — and the validity of such assumptions that need to be critically assessed, as part of the process of determining the impact of rural school closure. Nationally, I believe this is something we need to address.

"It is my belief that such decisions which often afford little, if any, option for the county council, cumulatively, and in line with other factors like rural transport and hospital bed closures relate strongly to those who wish to see a 'city-centric' bias of support.

"Traditionally, and, presently this is not the Devon way and I have asked Cllr Andrew Moulding, who is chair of Place Scrutiny at Devon County Council, to consider examining the cumulative effects of such withdrawals in rural areas.

"The whole future of rural communities is dependent upon finding a very real, positive and speedy response. We only have to look at the imbalance of rural-urban funding from central government for evidence of disproportionate funding."

For the full report, and a round-up of the area news and sport, see this week's edition of the Post.