SEVERAL people have commiserated with parents at St Paul's School, Ramsbottom, believing that it has lost its campaign and that the school will consequently close in 2003. Closure notices have been posted . . . but closure is only a proposal.

The body which makes the final decision on any school closure proposal is the schools organisation committee, not Bury Council.

Ours committee asks anyone who objects to the St Paul's closure proposal to write, in the next two months, to the Pupil and Planning Co-ordinator, Education Services, Athenaeum House, Market Street, Bury BL9 OBN.

We will be mounting a massive campaign to swamp them with our town's opinions about the council's short-sighted, and in our view, under-handed plan to close our school.

The schools organisation committee comprises five representative groups, including the Church of England and Roman Catholic communities, and councillors from all three parties. I has existed only since 1999, and has yet to make a decision in any contentious closure case.

Prior to that, LEA school closure proposals were referred to the Secretary of State. Now, at least, the decision is made locally, and the committee will listen to our detailed arguments. These are so compelling that when we present them fully, we find the council has had to retreat into generalisations.

And that is what happened on May 8, when we mistakenly believed that the reservations of the education scrutiny committee were to be publicly debated in full by the council's executive. No amount of exposure to classic episodes of Yes Minister, or Fawlty Towers, could have prepared us for the farce presided over by council leader, John "Fishwife" Byrne. We were inducted into the subtleties of Bury's 2001 innovation of "Cabinet" government in the town hall, and we came away unconvinced.

On May 8, we watched in disbelief as the recommendations of the all-party education scrutiny panel, arrived at after hours of taking evidence and discussion, were elbowed aside so perfunctorily that the chairman of that committee who, rather pointlessly, had been invited to explain its recommendations to the executive, sat with his head in his hands, sharing, one assumes, our amazement.

The bald fact is that members of the executive had neither the knowledge nor the intellect to deal with the arguments. They are Old Labour dinosaurs, steam-rollering opposition arguments with a "we know best" manipulation of procedure.

They kicked this closure issue into the long grass by referring it to the scrutiny panel the week before the local elections, then packed off their recommendations in minutes a week after the votes were in, cynically allowing no one to comment on what they had decided.

But we at St Paul's will not let this issue be kicked into the long grass. We will continue bombarding executive members with questions until the facts emerge. And we will be around long after they and their political species are extinct.

ANDREW TODD,

Bolton Street,

Ramsbottom.