The new Cabinet Member for Education, Pat Arculus, came to visit the school on Thursday 1st May. Pat was very impressed with the school and its facilities and expressed her support for small rural schools. Many positive things were said by Pat in the meeting, making us all feel very positive.

We understand that the decision, to be made by Pat, will now take place towards the end of May. As soon as we hear anything we will let you know, but if you have any questions in the meantime, please feel free to get in touch.

The response of the Rogate School Governors is now available. Please visit the Downloads page on this website. You will need Adobe Acrobat reader to open the document.

A big thank you to everyone who helped pull the document together. It will be presented to Colin James at County Hall at 4:30pm on Monday 7th April.

We will let you know as soon as we know anything and I will put a quick update on this web site next week.

Thanks for all your support folks. Let's go and try and lead a normal life again and keep everything crossed for our lovely little school!

Okay. So, we have all realised this is now a numbers game. Well, here are some more numbers for you. Whilst 'digesting' this, please remember that Rogate is a village of 500 houses with a school of 41 children:

- 1310 people signed our petition that was placed in various local outlets.

- Our website has had over 15,000 hits from 14 different countries.

- Nearly 300 people signed the online petition at No 10 Downing St.

- We have received 127 individual letters of support from places as far afield as Spain and North America.

- Our response document has: 91 pages, 26,669 words and we estimated would have cost WSCC upwards of £100,000 to produce if they had commissioned it.

- We estimate that over 100 man days of effort has been put in to the production of our counter-proposal, probably a couple more than WSCC put in to their 'proposal'.

- The 'Guinness world record' for 'the number of people who have stayed up to 4:30am writing a counter-proposal against the closure of a primary school' has been smashed by: Stewart Wilson, Fi Dix, Sasha & Tom Boam, Andy & Sharon Coleman' - well done guys!

44 Hours to go.

- The counter-proposal is now complete.

- We have, what some have described as a magnificent response.

- 23 people have worked on producing it, including 2 PHDs

- The document presents what we think is a solid case for keeping Rogate School open

- One of the most interesting facts is the projected birth rates in the area:

Ouch! I think we need some schools!

I received this really great email tonight from one of the campaign team that really sums up the past 6 weeks:

"It really is quite amazing, when you think about it, how far it has all come. Did you ever think, that hideous day back in Feb, that you would be speaking at Public Meetings, lobbying the Council, being interviewed by the media, thrusting yourself at little old ladies, spending the night with people you had barely said two words to before, organising an army of volunteers, counting babies, being filmed, recorded, etc. It might have been awful at times, soul destroying, tiring to the point of dropping, lonely, nerve wracking - but - Hey, what a journey!"

By the way, I didn't conciously 'thrust' myself at old ladies. It was the way I sat in my chair at one of the public meetings!

A big Thank You from all at Rogate School goes out to Mark. We really appreciate you coming to see us today and see for yourself what a great asset to WSCC Rogate School is.

We hope you enjoyed your visit, the children certainly did, especially the young Class 1 gentleman who greeted you!

We tried to show Mark the school as it is, with no ceremony (we didn't tell anyone he was coming).

A good article and video from the M&P Observer - Thanks!

There will also be coverage in Thursday's newspaper.

The core campaign team met for the last time tonight. The main focus for the next few days is finalising the response. We will be in the school over the weekend finishing off the analysis and response document at the following times:

Please feel free to drop in if you are in the area.

The final response document will be handed over to Colin James at 4:30pm on Monday afernoon by Paul Hardwick.

Those on the core campaign team and members of the Governing Body received the first draft of the response document today. We have prepared the document in advance of Monday's governors meeting and at the moment we believe it is almost complete.

The key factor is that the document puts forward a strong case for keeping the school open, with the preferred configuration of an amalgamation with South Harting.

The document will be made available to the general public once the governing body have agreed on the preferred (or other) option.

Jenny Chapman, Sasha Boam and Paul Hardwick met with Mark Dunn and Colin James at County Hall today. We all felt it was a really positive meeting and Mark seemed very enthused by some of the arguments we were putting forward. Particular interest was expressed in the locating of a pre-school nursery on the school site and the options we are considering for the future of the school.

A really positive meeting all round and he has asked to meet once more before the 8th April closing date.

Over 85 people turned out for our 2nd main public consultation meeting tonight. We presented the 3 options for the future of the school and the attendees cast their vote at the end of the meeting. The outcome was:

So, in summary, Rogate village prefer an amalgamation with South Harting over any other options (We did ask if there were other options that we had missed).

This will now be presented to the Governing Body on Monday 31/3 for approval and onward submission (if successful) to WSCC as our preferred option.

The presentation is available here.

A major boost to the campaign with Andrew Tyrie MP's letter to Robert Back! Thank You Andrew!!

Also, William Mason has expressed his views in a letter to Mark Dunn.

We have included on our Pictures Page, the artwork of our pupils, saying why they want the school to stay open!

We continue to receive excellent coverage from the local and wider press. The BBC covered us last week:

For more press links, please visit our press page.

The campaign team have been quiet over Easter as we have been busy preparing our counter proposal.

We will be presenting the options and many of the facts at the meeting on the 27th at 7:30pm at the school.

Please come along to the meeting as we need your input and to understand what you think is the right way forward for the school.

Okay. The campaign has been live for two and a half weeks now, so please let us share some numbers with you:

- Website has had over 4,000 hits from 250 unique users

- Number 10 Downing Street petition has over 200 signatures

- We have the next BIG public meeting on 27th March - please come and see what our proposed options are for Rogate School

- The team were in Petersfield today and got hundreds of signatures and many parents saying they would send their children to Rogate if we had a Year 6.

- We had over 200 people at our public meeting

- The fifth highest users of our Web site are employees of West Sussex County Council - welcome to you all in County Hall!

Keep it coming folks, this is the start of the road to keep our school going!

We had a well attended second meeting at the school tonight, thanks for all that attended. Some really useful information came out of the meeting, including ideas for our proposed 'New Rogate School'.

The main themes were on: Year 6, community links, extended services, out of school activities etc etc.

The core campaign team are working up the options we want to present back to WSCC and will use all of the input of these meetings to help strengthen our case - Thank you everyone!

Next Public Meeting 20th March, 7:30pm.

Rogate & Rake Parish Council held an extra-ordinary general meeting tonight and pledged their support for Rogate School - thanks to you all!