TWO primary schools will be expanded after Essex’s smallest school closed.

Governors closed St Andrew’s Primary, in Wormingford, in July after Essex County Council said it was costing taxpayers too much to run.

Now the council has submitted plans to build three extra classrooms at St Peter’s Primary School, in Boxted, and one at Fordham’s All Saints’ Primary in late October or early November.

Genette Flatman, whose son had to move from St Andrew’s to All Saints, said: “It doesn’t make sense if they closed the school and make the others bigger.

“But you just couldn’t get people to come to Wormingford. Maybe it was the location.”

Mrs Flatman said her son had previously been in a class of five pupils, but his new class in Fordham had about 30.

She said: “It is a shame the trend is for schools to be larger.

“In some ways it prepares them for secondary school, but for my son the education he had in one year at Wormingford was equivalent to probably three years at other schools.”

The county council was spending £13,774 on each pupil at St Andrew’s. Fordham will this year recieve £4,645 per pupil and Boxted £5,623.

Sally Dobson, another former parent at the school in Wormingford, said: “It is an enormous shame Wormingford school, which wasn’t failing anything, had a great Ofsted report and had state-of-the-art facilties, all paid for by the public purse and which are all sitting there empty, has closed “I struggle to see the sense of that when there will be children and staff disrupted by the building work.”

Essex County Council has consulted Colchester Council on the plans.

The county council has the final say on the application.