Award nomination for St Mary’s PS campaign

THE campaign to save a Fivemiletown primary school has seen those behind it nominated for a prestigious UK-wide award.

St Mary’s PS in Fivemiletown started the ‘Save St Mary’s’ campaign after the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS) deemed the school ‘unsustainable’.

The campaign, which successfully prevented the closure of the school, has been shortlisted in the ‘best community campaign’ category at the annual Sheila McKechnie (SMK) Campaigner awards.

With only 42 children in the school, the Save St Mary’s campaign knew they faced a significant challenge.

They started by drawing media attention to flawed evidence in the closure proposal, which laid the groundwork for continuous regional and local coverage throughout the campaign.

Building support across the local community, they engaged with businesses, sporting clubs, neighbouring schools, and community organisations to encourage them to oppose the closure. A team of volunteers spent several weekends travelling around the locality, eventually gathering a petition with almost 10,000 signatures.

Hundreds of people marched through the streets in protest against the proposal. Extensive policy submissions and testimonies from families and children about the impact the school closure would have on them were prepared, and focused briefings, regular engagement, and ‘good old persuasion’ was used to secure cross-community political support for the school.

Using Freedom of Information requests, they undertook a forensic analysis of the decision-making processes, and they believe that uncovering an unmanaged conflict of interest was another factor that eventually forced the managing authority to withdraw the proposal to close the school.

At the start of this year, the school’s board of governors learned the closure application had finally been withdrawn.

Chairwoman of the board of governors, Mairaid Kelly, said, “For our small rural campaign to be finalists in these awards is absolutely incredible.

“It is testament to the amazing support we received to save our school from closure.

“We have shown that small rural schools are the lifeblood of communities like this, and when we work together we really are undefeatable.”

She added, “As the only finalists from Northern Ireland, we’re delighted to be representing a positive example of cross-community campaigning.”