The challenges facing rural schools

Rural schools make up more than 20 per cent of the schools in England, yet there’s little real acknowledgement of the array of unique challenges they face, and scant focused support for them.

A report, published on Friday (October 12), from The Key highlights that many leaders of these, often small, village schools feel that “nobody’s interested in us unless we’re closing down”.

We hear much about how schools’ budgets are shrinking across the board, but for rural schools these financial pains can be even more acute – 44 per cent of rural headteachers interviewed chose funding as their most difficult challenge. An already depleting pot of money is put under extra strain by problems unique to school life in a rural setting – not least, low pupil numbers, high transportation costs caused by pupils travelling long distances to get to school, parental incomes dangling just above the threshold for free school meals, and a never-ending battle to attract NQTs to remote areas. With pressures on budgets and wider socio-economic and infrastructural issues at play, stretched rural headteachers are having to become increasingly more creative to ensure their schools remain viable.