THE Steering Group for the campaign to save St Mary’s Primary School, Fivemiletown, from closure met twice this week to plan out how to garner as much support as possible from the community in just three weeks.

Last week representatives from the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS) told the school’s key stakeholders they had a month to respond to their proposal for closure by September 2016.

A consultation was launched, and the community in Fivemiletown is now being urged to respond with their feedback before the deadline of November 28.

Principal of the school, Marian Boyle says she fears the minority Catholic community in Fivemiletown could “dwindle away” if the school was to close.

And she adds that the school is confident it can count on the support of the non-Catholic community in its bid to retain Catholic maintained education in the area for generations to come.

“We feel it would be unreasonable to ask foundation and key stage one pupils to travel any further for their education,” she explained, “Our concern is that we are a minority Catholic community here. We feel if the school is gone the Catholic community here will eventually dwindle away and that is not what the Good Friday Agreement is all about.” Addressing the concern of potential parents wondering whether to enroll their children in the school next September, Mrs. Boyle said: “The closing date for enrolment is usually mid-January each year.

“I would encourage parents to bring their children here.

“I would say to parents: this is only a proposal. And one which we intend fighting to the bitter end. We hope this school will be here for years to come and I would encourage any parent to send their children here or else this proposal will just become a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Anyone wishing to feed into the consultation should email: consultation.stmarysps@ccmsschools.com.