IF ST ANDREW’S SCHOOL closes, former pupil Gladys Robert, 97, will lose the best part of her day.

Every afternoon, after her lunchtime nap, the great-grandmother (pictured) sits in her cottage window looking out over the valley and as each child walks past she waves to them and remembers her days there as a schoolgirl.

‘They all wave back to me, too. It makes me so happy to be alive. I loved St Andrew’s School and I still do,’ she said. ‘It’s one of the secrets of my old age.

‘If they go, I won’t have anything so nice to look at – it’s something to look forward to every day.’

Maxine Batiste often brings daughters Annie, 9, and Lucy, 7, to talk to Mrs Robert about their day at the school she first attended in 1916, following in the footsteps of her two older siblings.

‘We used to walk all the way there, come rain or shine, from out past where the airport is now. You would never hear us saying we didn’t want to go to school for this, that or the other reason – it’s such a happy place.’