Stewartby school site 'must be used for educational purposes' if it closes amid proposed changes

Stewartby’s Marston Vale School site “must be used for educational purposes for the village of Stewartby” if it closes following proposed school changes, a meeting heard.

A non-statutory consultation on changing schools in the Wootton/ Stewartby/Cranfield cluster from a three tier to a two tier education system started this week.

Chris Morris, Bedford Borough Council’s acting chief officer for education, gave the Children’s Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee (Monday, October 31) a brief overview of the proposals for the four schools in Wootton and Stewartby.

“Wootton Lower School and Broadmead Lower School would be converted from lower schools to primary schools,” he said.

“Wootton Upper School would extend its age range to admit children at age 11 in year 7 and become a secondary school.

“Unfortunately, discussions with the academy trust [Chiltern Learning Trust] that runs Marston Vale has said that actually there aren’t enough pupils to make Marston Vale a viable primary school or a secondary school.

“So in the current proposals Marston Vale Middle School would close in 2026 and an alternative educational use may be found for its site and buildings,” he said.

Councillor Jane Walker (Conservative, Clapham), asked: “Have you got any idea what that school might become?”

Mr Morris explained that there is a covenant on the Marston Vale School site which states that it “must be used for educational purposes for the village of Stewartby”.

“When an academy closes down, the site is returned to the Department for Education, who are then likely to return it to the local authority, especially with that covenant on it,” he said.

“Then we would be looking at what the alternative uses can be.

“The reason why the language is slightly woolly with [what will happen] is because, obviously, it’s not our land and it’s not [currently] our school.

“We don’t want to make false promises.

“That site covenant does say that it must be used for educational purposes so we can quite safely assume that the land will be returned back to us to then seek alternative educational provisions for that site,” he said.