The Schools Minister has intervened in a last-ditch attempt to save hundreds of village schools from closure.

Campaigners have given warning that 300 schools in England and Wales, some with fewer than 50 pupils, face the threat of closure because falling rolls mean they are simply too expensive to run.

Jim Knight, the Minister for Schools, has called on local authorities to reconsider more creative alternatives to closure such as forming federations with other schools to share specialist teachers or sharing their premises with outside bodies.

Mr Knight said he would to write to all local authorities to remind them that they were now under a statutory requirement to protect education in the countryside.

“Where school rolls are falling local authorities should consider, for example, if they could share their premises with an Early Years centre or the NHS,” a spokesman for Mr Knight said.

An alternative would be to follow the example of Armathwaite school in Cumbria, which has 42 pupils and two and a half permanent staff, but which shares peripatetic specialist teachers with a number of nearby schools.

Campaigners today welcomed Mr Knight's intervention but cautioned that it may not be sufficient to save many of the schools threatened with closure.

Last week there were major protests in Shropshire after the county council announced radical plans to close 22 primary schools and merge 16 more. Pupils, parents and teachers are holding a demonstration against the closures in Shrewsbury today.

Hereford Council has withdrawn plans to close or merge 37 schools in the face of stiff local opposition but says it will put forward new proposals in September.

Other local authorities are now watching developments before publishing their plans, which are being drawn up in response to government requirements to reduce surplus school places, currently running at 10 per cent nationally.

Gwynedd and the Isle of Wight are among a dozen said to be considering closing primaries in rural areas.

Primary pupil numbers have fallen by approximately 10 per cent since 1999 because of a demographic shift and declining birth rate.

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