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Parents demand scrapping of Little Flower closure plan

Little Flower Girls School in North Belfast. Picture by Hugh Russell
Little Flower Girls School in North Belfast. Picture by Hugh Russell Little Flower Girls School in North Belfast. Picture by Hugh Russell

PARENTS are demanding education chiefs scrap a plan to shut a successful girls school saying the "case for change" is flawed.

Two girls' schools and two boys' schools are involved in one of the largest re-organisations ever undertaken in the north.

Teachers and parents are concerned about numerous aspects of the plan, which, if approved, will mean children in north Belfast can only win places at single sex schools in the Catholic sector if they pass the 11-plus.

The proposals involve four non-grammar schools - Little Flower and Mercy for girls and St Patrick's, Bearnageeha and Edmund Rice College for boys. Two other Catholic schools have been shut down in the area in recent years - St Gemma's and St Gabriel's in Ardoyne.

Both Little Flower and Bearnageeha will be "discontinued" with a view to facilitating the establishment of a new Catholic 11-19 co-educational post-primary school. The new school, which is likely to operate across a split site initially, will have an enrolment number of 1,300 including 325 sixth form places.

Edmund Rice and Mercy Colleges will both expand and become co-educational.

Parents of current and potential future Little Flower pupils have been fighting the plans.

They have now raised a series of questions about a document from the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS) which considered the case for bringing Little Flower and St Partick's together.

They said they only obtained a copy of the document, which was dated September 2015, in recent days. They added that they were alarmed by numerous aspects.

The report includes examination achievements going back to 2010/11 but more up-to-date figures, which show significant improvement, have been left out.

Little Flower is shown to be in a sound financial position according to the CCMS report, but the figures for its surplus differ from those in the school's own development plan. The CCMS report predicts the school will have a £9,000 carry over by 2017. A figure of almost £70,000 appears in the development plan.

Enrolment is described in the CCMS report as "fairly stable".

"In fact it has been very stable. In 2015/16, the school was oversubscribed in Year 8 - 91 applicants put Little Flower as their first choice, while 112 applications were received in total," one parent said.

"It looks like this could be another bumper year for Little Flower. Parents are obviously aware of the improvements and are voting with their feet.

"This report is very dated and one-sided. It looks like it's been written to prove something that no longer exists. The enrolment falls predicted have never come to fruition, indeed the opposite is true."

The CCMS has yet to respond.