THE headteacher of Hannah Ball Infant School, Maggie Moore, is calling a parents meeting on April 4, to fight threats to the future of the school.

The school, in Philip Road, High Wycombe, was named in a report as one of three in the area which should close. It could become part of a combined school, taking children from three to 11 on the site of the present Beachview Junior School.

The report was prepared by the Wycombe Commission, set up to look at Hatters Lane upper school and the whole school set-up in that part of High Wycombe.

Mrs Moore, her staff and governors say it would be wrong to close the school.

The head has prepared her own evidence arguing that Hannah Ball should itself become a combined school, with nursery attached.

She says if her school closes children will have nowhere close to attend and will have to go by car. She also points out that it has plenty of space to expand, that it is doing very well and provides a centre for other activities, including a playgroup, an after school club and classes teaching adults English as a second language.

Sixty-eight per cent of the children are from ethnic minority families, 42 per cent have English as a second language, 57 per cent are on the special needs register and 54 per cent qualify for free school meals. But in spite of these figures, which are used as a measure of disadvantage, the school is in the top 40 per cent of similar schools nationally, and its test results have risen for five years.

Mrs Moore criticises Commission members for not visiting the schools concerned, the only member who did was Buckinghamshire county councillor, Mike Appleyard, the cabinet member for schools.

The Commission held public meetings which parents did not attend as they thought they were only about the future of Hatters Lane School. Also, no consultation questionnaires sent to parents.

Cllr Appleyard, who has to decide what happens next, said the Commission's recommendations were just that and nothing would be decided until he had gathered all the evidence.

"If anyone is saying they are going to close they are mistaken. It's just that Hannah Ball has been mentioned in dispatches."

County policy is to create combined schools from small first and junior schools but Cllr Appleyard said: "What I can say is that I want to put a school or schools where the centres of population are. It would be silly in the extreme to close a school in the middle of a centre of population and open another one somewhere else."