Pershore Education Planning Area Review 2024

Consultation Period: 2nd September - 29th September 2024

Changes to schools in the Pershore education planning area over several years have led to uncertainty and concerns about the sustainability of some schools across the education planning area.

From 2020 to 2021, Worcestershire Children First facilitated engagement with education stakeholders including all schools in the pyramid, Multi-Academy Trusts, the Department for Education’s Regions Group and the Dioceses to find agreed solutions to manage this risk within the education planning area.

In July 2021 all of the schools’ governing bodies and Multi-Academy Trusts confirmed their agreement / intentions to consult on the proposed change to a two-tier Education Planning area, to seek changes of age range (where necessary) and, for the Middle Schools, to amalgamate with the First Schools.

In April 2022, Worcestershire County Council’s Cabinet agreed a commitment to support a collective change of age range to align schools in the Pershore education planning area to a single two-tier (primary and secondary) system of education, subject to confirmation of the funding necessary to expand Pershore High School Year 7 places. 

The reason for the refreshed consultation is to ensure that all current interested parties get an opportunity to provide feedback on the changes now being proposed. 

Three years on from the first consultation, there will be parties who will now be affected by the changes that wouldn’t have been previously, and their views are important to schools.

The consultation provides stakeholders with an opportunity to share their views about what is important about the age ranges of schools and transitions from one school to the next. The schools involved are keen to receive responses from all stakeholder groups, including parent carers, school staff, pupils, governing boards, local residents, other local schools and any other interested parties about the changes proposed for each school. 

An area-wide transition would require changes to schools to be coordinated to ensure the changes are made in line with other schools, so that pupil journeys would not be detrimentally impacted.  The proposals involve all First and/or Middle schools changing to Primary schools and the High School becoming a Secondary school for all the Year 7 pupils in the Pershore area. The proposals being consulted on include the following DoWMAT schools:

• Crowle CE First School: Change of age range from age 5-9 to 5-11 (RSC approval of change already sought).

• Pinvin CE Academy School: Conversion to a primary school with change of age range from First & Middle to Primary (3-12 to 3-11).

• St Barnabas CE First & Middle School: Conversion to a primary school, incorporating a pre-school age children as pupils and change of age range from First to Primary (from 4-12 to 2-11) ​(RSC decision).​​​​​​​

Have Your Say

It is very important that all those involved or have an interest have a say, we welcome your views.

All of the information available is accessible from this Worcestershire County Council Pershore Review webpage or the individual schools’ websites:

Crowle CE First School

Pinvin CE Academy

St Barnabas CE First and Middle School

The four-week consultation period commences on Monday 2nd September 2024 and closes at noon on Sunday 29th September 2024.

Individual schools are holding consultation events to allow stakeholders to learn more about the proposals and give the opportunity to provide feedback. Details are provided in each school’s consultation document:

Consultation Response Form

To request a paper or electronic copy of the consultation response form, please contact your school office.