DILWYN school has been given its chance of survival as one of the smallest academies in the country.

The village’s spirited last stand to save its tiny primary school – detailed by the Hereford Times two weeks ago – won over Whitehall, which this week said it can stay open.

Work now starts on getting the school set up in time for the new term, with volunteer talent from the village playing a big part.

Already, about 24 pupils are known to be coming back, with the hope of a few more to make 30.

An experienced former headteacher living in the village has agreed to take charge of administration and, for the time being, parents and friends will help two returning teachers widen the curriculum.

Governors’ chairman John Spackman said getting the school up and running as an academy, then marketing it, was the priority for the first few months.

“We had to keep this school going as we’ve lost almost everything else,”

said Mr Spackman.

“Our stand has shown the Government just how important schools like ours still are to the communities they serve and the Government seems to have recognised that.”

There were salutes too for those parents who signed pupils up to the school despite the threat to its future and the pressure to place their children elsewhere.

“They showed they weren’t going to be intimidated out of what they believed in and thought was best,” said Mr Spackman.

Whitehall’s ruling is a big blow to Herefordshire Council which, for the best part of a year, has kept up a case for shutting a school it says is not cost effective to run at the expense of others.

Dilwyn was just one of the county’s smaller village schools facing closure or merger over the coming months given huge pressures on the education budget.

All now have the inspiration to fight for survival, a fight the council doesn’t want and can’t afford.

When its cabinet rubberstamped what it thought would be Dilwyn’s closure back in December, members were told that about £100,000 would be needed over the next five years alone to keep Dilwyn open, when millions of pounds were being lost to the schools budget overall.

Dilwyn has always disputed the council’s figures saying that, with the school free from fears over its future, pupil numbers could be pushed up to between 40-50 over that same five-year time frame.

As an academy – probably the smallest of its kind in the country – Dilwyn is largely free of council control and publicly funded by central government.