May I first convey my congratulations to the hon. Member for East Ham, North (Mr. Prentice) on his appointment, and also say how glad I am to have the opportunity of raising this matter on the Adjournment.

I fully realise that the Tresmeer primary school closed some time ago, but its closure is a symptom of the difficulties that occur in rural areas. There has been difficulty for some time about the closure of schools, and particularly primary schools, in sparsely-populated areas such as Cornwall. Over past years the local education authority in Cornwall has done remarkably well. It has done away with all-age schools, and there are no primary schools in Cornwall that has any pupil beyond the age of the 11-plus.

Nevertheless, there is a difficulty at the moment in that the local education authority has recently decided to cut down the number of primary schools which exist in the County of Cornwall. This is happening not only in Cornwall but throughout the rest of rural England. When these closures take place, plans have to be drawn up to take account of what is in the best interests of the children educationally, on the one hand, and, on the other, of the wishes of the parents and the difficulties which the closure of the school in the heart of a rural area causes—and not only to that rural community. We must remember that the school, with the church and the chapel, are the centre of the rural life of that community. These are factors which have to be weighed up.

I am sure that hon. Members have read the papers about the school in Tresmeer which is being closed. This has a long history, and much correspondence has taken place about it. May I briefly recap? This is a school in a very remote country area with a very scattered and small agricultural population. The catchment area for the school extends for several miles. The local education authority proposed the closure last year in accordance with the plan which it had drawn up for the development of education within the County of Cornwall. This plan was to concentrate the number of primary schools and to do away with several of them in order to ease the position in respect of staffing by teachers. It was also hoped to save money and, I must add, it had the purpose of giving the children a better education. The authority believed that the larger the primary school, the more streams there were in it, the better the education which was afforded to the child. This may be right, and I do not quarrel with the general principle which the local education authority of Cornwall has been following in that purely educational field.

But there are other factors which have to be taken into account, and one of them is the Education Act, 1944, which says, quite rightly, that the wishes of the parents must be taken into account when matters of this importance are considered—such matters as the closing of a school, which deprives the children of an area of the opportunity to go to that school. The wishes and views of the parents must be taken fully into account.

Another factor which has to be taken into account when the county council draws up these plans is the distance which children have to travel once the closure has taken place—the distance from their homes to the new school to which it is proposed that they should go. The authority must also consider the time these very small children are away from home. They may have to leave home early in the morning and they may not get back home until night. This time must not be excessive.

Let us take those two points in relation to this school at Tresmeer. I am sure that the hon. Member realises that regulations exist concerning the distance which a child has to walk before transport is made available. Up to a certain age he is expected to walk two miles and beyond that, from the age of 11, it is three miles before he gets public transport provided at the expense of the local authority to take him to school.

In many cases that is all right, but in Cornwall, and particularly in this area—and in other parts of my Constituency— parents object to small children between the ages of five and eleven having to walk one-and-a-half, one-and-three-quarters and sometimes two to three miles, which is the distance entailed in going from their homes to the schools, because roads in this part of the world are small and narrow and often are side lanes. We have a heavy tourist industry—we are glad to have it—which causes added hazards and complications to children in these areas. I am certain that this applies not only to my constituency but to many other similar places in the south-west of England and probably elsewhere.

Parents also object in this instance to the length of time that the children have to be away from home. I do not think it right that very small children between the ages of five and seven, and even children up to eleven, should have to leave home as early as 8.5 a.m. or 8.10 a.m. and should not get back home until 4.45 p.m. Yet this can happen, and indeed does happen in this case. Some of these children leave home extremely early in the morning and have to walk perhaps half-a-mile or a mile before they are picked up by transport.

It is right that I should point out that in this instance the local education authority made an appalling mess over the problem of transport. Not only was the ground, so to speak, inadequately prepared before the closure of this school took place, but misleading information on which proper transport plans could be worked out was made available and to my knowledge the plans had to be changed two or three times.

It is a pity that the original correct information was not available and that the necessary trouble or care was not taken to go into the details of such things as where the children lived and which schools their parents preferred them to attend when it was found that the school had to be closed. Why were all the difficulties concerning the transport facilities not gone into beforehand, particularly on this question of very small children having to leave early in the morning to attend school and arrive home late in the evening?

It was found after the initial list of the proposed transport arrangements was published—I have the complete list with me but I will not weary the House with its details—that many of the children had moved, some even a year before, were now living in different parts of the area and that this would necessitate them having to travel perhaps three miles to school. It was only reasonable, therefore, that many parents should prefer their children to go to a different school.

It should be realised that the transport available consisted of one motor car—and then the gentleman driving it was liable to sickness, so that even the transport provided was unrealistic through no fault on the part of the driver.

These are some of the difficulties which have arisen in this case and which have caused considerable bitterness between parents and the local education authority. The Minister must be aware that the local parents went on strike for a considerable time and refused to send their children to any school. They demanded that the existing school be repaired and re-opened—the figure of £1,500 has been mentioned for repairs— and new teachers installed. The parents and I felt that their children had had a raw deal from the local education authority, which, they claimed, had not studied the problems properly and had not put forward a possible alternative plan for transporting their children to school.

As well as complaining that the authority's plan was bad for their children, the parents objected to the length of time it would take children to arrive home after school and how early they would have to leave to get to school in the morning. I am glad to say that the parents' strike has now been resolved and the information I was given yesterday, when in my constituency, was that all the children are now attending school.

Problems still exist over the transportation of the children. The parents, through their association, are extremely anxious that adequate transport arrangements be provided and that the present arrangements be reviewed at the earliest possible opportunity. They are still anxious about children who come within the two to three mile limit and who must walk to school along the lanes I have described.

Leaving aside the question of the Minister's ability to revoke the decision to close this school, how far does he think a child should be expected to walk to school, how early in the morning a child should be expected to leave home and how late it should be expected to arrive home at night? Will he, as a father, tell me what answers he would give to these questions when considering the schooling of a child aged, say, five or six?

I appreciate that certain savings are to be achieved by closures such as this. It is obvious that by not carrying out the repairs necessary to reopen this school—and £1,500 has been mentioned—there are obvious savings, along with the authority not having to pay the two teachers, who have been either dismissed or absorbed elsewhere. An additional amount is needed for transport. In Cornwall the bill for transport of children is something like £203,000—a fairly large sum. Transport arrangements are woefully inadequate, not only for Tresmeer, but elsewhere. A great deal more will have to be spent.

There has been a proposal that Lewannick Primary School should also be closed. The hon. Gentleman's predecessor refused to close it. Will the present Parliamentary Secretary say if it is to be closed? The Rural District Council of Launceston wrote to the Ministry of Education on, I think 14th October, requesting that a public inquiry should be held into some of the points I have enumerated—the difficulties and anxieties felt by parents and the local education authority expressed constantly over the months. It has not received an answer and has had no indication of what the Minister thinks about this matter. I hope that he will look into it. If the Parliamentary Secretary finds it possible this evening, I hope he will say if the Minister is prepared to hold an inquiry.