IT was cold, it was wet, but it was bigger than anyone had expected. Well over 300 people of differing backgrounds and political allegiances united and took to the streets of Cinderford to march together in demonstration to send an unequivocal message to the leadership in Shire Hall – "We don't trust or want what you are offering and saying."
The only certain action from Shire Hall that parents in the Forest have witnessed is the nailing of closure notices to the two school gates and a digger in Dean Hall checking for foundations.
Other than that the scant and ambiguous information that parents have had made available, makes only one thing clear – that the views parents and children had clearly expressed, to retain the existing schools, has been completely ignored by a Cabinet determined to impose their own dogma.
Instead of evolving and developing the two existing excellent schools, they are choosing to close them and fob everyone off with only half of a provision on an unsuitable site. With all the subtlety of a hand grenade, their chosen method of encouraging and promoting inclusion is to close special schools and force special needs children into mainstream schools or social isolation on home tuition.
Previously described by the Cabinet as "a vocal minority" this show of unity must surely end forever this derogatory presumption. The parents, children and friends of Oakdene and Dean Hall special schools are not to be ignored, they will not, nor should they, sit back to be insulted and ignored.
It is their money which pays for these schools; it is their children that want to go to them. They have every right to say how and where they want them. – Graham Barton, parent and chair, Gloucestershire Special Schools Protection League.