PARENTS from Harthill Primary School have been continuing their fight against closure.

Harthill is facing the axe under proposals from Cheshire County Council and last week supporters of the school met with Eddisbury MP Stephen O'Brien to discuss campaign tactics.

Speaking before the meeting, he said: 'The closure proposals, although at an early stage, would be deeply damaging to the interests of the children, staff, parents and the wider community in a rural area such as Harthill.

'The school is one of the few remaining community assets and I will be joining local people at the meeting not just to demonstrate my own support for the school and community, but also to establish the strength of local feeling and whether there is support for a vigorous campaign to save the

school.

'That many parents choose Harthill from well outside the catchment area,

is surely proof that it is a school of excellence, with a skilled and dedicated headteacher and her staff, demonstrated by its good official reports, its Eco achievements and its commitment to special needs.'

Vince Tether's son Ashley, 10, is a pupil at the school and helped produce a poster to support the campaign.

'The children who attend Harthill School are not gifted or talented by right,' Mr Tether said.

'Exceptional talent is developed not just in one or two children but in every single pupil. It is this unique quality that makes Harthill so special.'

The shake up of junior provision is an attempt to slash surplus places which, the council said, directs money away from children and into unnecessary building maintenance.

School could admit junior pupils

PUPILS at two Chester schools may have to get used to changes.

Cheshire County Council's Executive agreed last Wednesday to publish statutory notices proposing to alter a Chester infant school making it a primary school.

The proposals were put forward by governing bodies and notices will be published providing an opportunity for local people to object or to write in support of the proposals in the New Year.

From September 2008, Belgrave Infant School, Chester, could admit junior pupils making it a primary school.

In order to accommodate displaced pupils from Belgrave, Overleigh St Mary's CE Primary School would admit more reception children at age four plus but eventually cease to admit children aged seven.