Small rural schools have been commended across many countries for offering advantageous educational features, briefly summarised as maintaining community links; providing a family ethos; responding effectively to the individual needs of pupils and being conveniently located (Anderson, 2010). At the same time, their continued existence is questioned regarding their contributions to rural settings and their provision is often contested in the face of powerful arguments for consolidation and merger of small establishments on grounds of their questionable efficiency and quality (Roberts, 2022). While outward facing aspects of the small rural school have been extensively documented, in a range of contexts, their internal practices, including teaching and learning, that contribute to the abovementioned advantageous features, e.g. meeting the needs of pupils, have been less so. Against this backdrop, the foundational question posed by Hargreaves (2009) remains: How can, or do, teachers capitalise on the inherent advantages of the small and rural schools, or having small and/or multi-age classes? This draws attention to issues such as the recruitment of pre-service teachers for these small establishments that can fall outside of anticipated norms in terms of organisation and practices. The contribution of this paper is a report on small rural schools that have close ties with the Church of England (CoE).

In the centuries leading up to state provision of secular welfare across the UK, in each rural or urban settlement, the parish offered basic education and moral guidance to local peoples. Owing to this legacy, the CoE remains closely linked with rural schools, many of which are very small, having fewer than 110 pupils (very small rural n= 1264) (CoE, 2018). Budgetary constraints reflecting national school funding that operates on a per-pupil basis and its concomitant challenges e.g. staffing, have motivated the CoE to engage in alliances to enhance small schools. The Rural Teacher Partnership (Teach First, n.d.) is a collaboration established in England between the CoE, Teach First and Chartered College of Teachers that supports pre-service teachers on clinical placement, acknowledging their work in small classes and/or one class schools. While the stated aim of the CoE initiative is to build a fair education for all pupils in rural communities, significant challenges can stand in the way of the benefits that potentially emerge from such collaborations. We investigate the nature of the environment within small schools in order to further our understanding of their inherent advantages and to shed light on approaches adopted towards specific practices such as teaching in multi-grade classes and/or in a school with one class.

This study comprises two stages: a desk-based review of extant literature on the focal issue and primary data collection through interviewing key advisors in the sector. The overarching purpose for undertaking the scoping review is to elicit the nature of the teaching and learning environment in small (rural) schools. The scoping of the international literature is helpful for identifying the ubiquity of small schools and, within this field, practices such as multi-age/stage classes and pre-service teacher preparation. Sources for the review comprise peer-reviewed journal articles, policy documents, books/book chapters meeting the following criteria: written in English, published between 2015 and 2022 and, presenting a review of research based in one of the following territories: West/East Europe, Australasia, North America. Online library databases are used to search for the relevant sources, starting with: JSTOR, Education Research Complete, Routledge Handbooks Online, and Google Scholar. For gathering information from the academic and ‘grey’ literatures, certain search terminologies are likely to be pertinent to small rural schools: multi-grade/year/age pedagogies (approaches, strategies, teacher professional development), education inequality and inclusion. The literature is mapped and coded to gain insights to the international contexts in which different practices take place. The emergent themes are then available to take forward to fieldwork with key informants in England, specifically those familiar with the CoE initiative and the preparation of pre-service teachers for work in small schools.. Fieldwork following a semi-structured interview format can bring to the fore some of the themes of the scoping review. Interviewing is consistent with eliciting the key informants’ beliefs and experiences concerning the nature of learning environments in small rural schools. The interviews (approximately n=5) are recorded, transcribed and analysed thematically through a deductive lens (Braun & Clarke, 2006).

The UN SDG 4.7 promotes education for all members of the community. Nonetheless, provision in peripheral regions across range of countries has shown poor outcomes for pupils for a number of reasons. To counter the deficit discourse that prevails around such ‘left-behind’ rural/remote communities and to offer a counter narrative, we will use our study of small rural schools to move the debate on. By taking a deep dive into the learning environment we will see how staff in engage with teaching and working with individual pupils in small rural schools’ communities. The scoping review of the international literature is expected to develop a comparison of the policy and stakeholder stances towards small schools. Interviewing to explore the case study of the CoE Rural Teacher Partnership provides some practical and theoretical insights to the English situation. That is, the day to day challenges of pre-service teacher clinical placements in certain settings and orientations and commitments towards supporting the small school will be discussed.

Anderson, M. (2010). Size Matters. In eds. Anderson, M., Davis, M., Douglas, P., Lloyd, D. and Niven, B. A collective act: Leading a small school (Vol. 3). Australian Council for Ed Research. pp3-11. Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2006). Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), pp.77–101. Church of England. (2018). Embracing Change: Rural and Small Schools. The National Society (Church of England and Church in Wales) for the Promotion of Education. Education Office. Hargreaves, L.M. (2009). Respect and responsibility: Review of research on small rural schools in England. International Journal of Educational Research, 48(2), pp117-128. Roberts, J. (2022). Ofsted: Small primaries five times more likely to be ‘inadequate’. Available at: https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/primary/ofsted-small-primaries-five-times-more-likely-be-inadequate. Accessed 6 January 2023 Teach First. (n.d.). Rural Teacher Partnership. Available at: https://www.teachfirst.org.uk/rural-teaching-partnership. Accessed 6 January 2023