Worried parents at a school which faces losing its governing body claim education chiefs are failing to communicate with them.

The parent-teacher association at St. George's Preparatory School handed a long list of detailed questions to Education Minister Randy Horton on May 13 but had still not received any answers by yesterday.

PTA treasurer Kate Lantagne told The Royal Gazette that letters to the Ministry of Education asking for more information about a controversial plan to get rid of aided school's trustee boards and create "clusters" of schools under one governing body have also been ignored.

"Nothing has come back to anybody who has written to the Ministry," she said. "People are asking: what are they up to? St. George's Prep has a great legacy. People want to know what's happening."

Mr. Horton announced the cluster proposal in May to an outcry from St. George's Prep. It is based on a recommendation in last year's Hopkins report on public schools which said: "The review favours the appointment of boards, filled largely by election, to run schools or federations of schools, building on the current example of aided schools."

Professor David Hopkins and his team also said the Ministry needed to vastly improve communication with education stakeholders.

The questions parents are asking the Ministry include:

• Why it wants to "collapse" the successful aided school system when it was praised in the Hopkins report?

• Where else the cluster model has been introduced and whether it has been successful?

• Who will be on the cluster boards and when will they be in place?

• How will the success or shortfalls of the boards be measured and what will be put in place to correct shortfalls?

• Whether Government has reviewed other options, such as combining two schools under one board?

• Whether parents will be able to appeal if teachers are moved to other schools?

• What will happen to the St. George's school building if the board of trustees, which owns it, is collapsed?

Ms Lantagne said the school's board of trustees had been in place since the school was established and were a huge part of the St. George's Prep success story.

"It is of grave concern to us that they could be introducing a model that hasn't been tested anywhere else and removing a structure that has been working for 133 years," she said.

More than 400 signatures have so far been collected on a petition opposing the plan and the PTA is also handing out bright yellow campaign badges to supporters.

Ms Lantagne said: "There is a lot of resentment out in St. George's towards the current lack of consultation. We verbally put a lot of questions to the Minister and he didn't answer them specifically.

"We understand the Government's concerns with the state of education. We are all parents and we all want our kids to succeed. But we are looking to being able to talk to the Ministry. We want to have open lines of communication, we want to discuss it with them."

The Ministry of Education did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

• Copies of the petition are available at Rock Island Cafe in Hamilton and Robertson's Drugstore in St. George.