Small Rural Primary Schools in the UK

Abstract

There are small rural primary schools in the United Kingdom - that is to say schools with as few as twenty pupils and with as many as a hundred pupils where the principal has a fairly full teaching commitment. Many of these small primary schools are in the "shire" countries - the South-West and Northern Ireland. In the South-West about a third of the primary (5-11) schools have less than lOO pupils on roll. The distance to an alternative school may be as little as three miles: it is unlikely that the distance (by road) will be greater than twenty miles.