For over 20 years, Springfield Infant School has been a high performing and highly valued community school in East Worthing. As part of a review into surplus primary school places by West Sussex County Council, it is proposed that our school is merged with two other local schools to create one large primary school over two separate sites.

We, the undersigned support the option for Springfield Infant School & Nursery to remain a separate school. We do not support the option to amalgamate Springfield with Lyndhurst and Chesswood schools as we do not consider the evidence presented shows this to be in the long term interest of pupils attending Springfield, now or in the future.

We consider including Springfield within the merger as an unnecessary and undesirable disruption to a high performing school, that does not address the issues that the WSCC Review is seeking to solve and we want to see this option removed. 

We love our school just the way it is and merging it into a larger primary will reduce parent's ability to choose the right setting for their children; it will remove our ability to govern our own school specifically in the best interests of children aged 4-7; it will no longer be the independent, nurturing Springfield we all know and love.

We object to the proposal because:

· Springfield has no surplus places issue to solve and is not likely to in the foreseeable future

· Springfield is a high performing school, reflected by Ofsted and WSCC inspections

· Springfield is financially stable and resilient

· Springfield provides parental choice of a nursery and infant school environment – merging it would remove parental choice and underestimates the value the community places on Springfield

· Split site schools are difficult to manage, especially when a Key Stage is split site as well

· Any benefits of all through primaries are not realised for Springfield through merging the three schools and would disrupt three schools when only two may warrant it

Only the option to retain Springfield as a separate school protects the future performance and stability of education on the Springfield site with any confidence. We believe the option to amalgamate the three schools presents far more risk than benefit and, on the evidence presented to date, we can only support the option to keep Springfield as the wonderful, inclusive infant setting that has been valued by our community for over twenty years.

Yours sincerely,

The Springfield Community