A meeting for parents to discuss a proposal to axe a middle school was scrapped last night after only one turned up.

Two separate meetings — one for teachers and another for parents — were planned to discuss the future of TN Tatem Middle School.

Lisa Smith, the interim director of the Board of Education, led the closed-doors meeting with teachers at Bermuda College.

About two dozen teachers turned up for the event.

Several teachers, who all asked not to be named, spoke to The Royal Gazette after the meeting. One woman said that teachers at the Warwick public school wanted it to remain open.

She added: “We need to get together and put together a proposal that makes sense.”

But the woman, who highlighted the Government’s plan to phase out middle schools altogether, said that she was not optimistic it would be reopened.

She added that the education of pupils from TN Tatem who are now at other schools had suffered.

The woman explained: “It’s overwhelming for one school or even two schools to accommodate all the students.”

Another teacher questioned if the views of teachers would be considered by the Government or if the consultation was only about “going through the motions”.

The Ministry of Education announced last week that a consultation process would be carried out to determine the future of TN Tatem, which was shut in April due to mould problems.

A ministry spokeswoman that meetings would be held with “critical stakeholders” before public consultation.

She said: “The purpose of this pre-consultation period is to share information and obtain valuable feedback from parents, staff, principals, union representatives, boards of governors, and students, where possible.”

She added that information gathered this month would be used to help steer the formal consultation process, which is expected to start next month. Diallo Rabain, the Minister of Education, announced in May that the school would be closed for this academic year.

He said at the time that work to tackle mould and other problems would take at least ten months to complete and would cost $3 million.