Ampfield CE Primary School has been saved.

In an extraordinary about-turn Hampshire County councillors today voted to overturn last year's decision to close the school.

Jubilant campaigners, some of whom are pictured above, said the shackles had been lifted from their 108-year-old village school, near Romsey.

It took just minutes at Hampshire County Council Cabinet meeting for eight councillors to unanimously vote to save the school.

Council leader Ken Thornber said: "The recommendation has been approved that Ampfield school remains open."

Parents and governors shed tears of joy after the decision.

Parent governor Charlie Allen, who attended the school as a youngster, added: "I am absolutely elated I just can't believe it."

It was in October that the late education boss Don Allen decided to close Ampfield as part of a shake-up of Romsey schools.

The decision was made after it was revealed that pupil numbers had fallen drastically to just 23.

However, governors launched a campaign to save the school, collecting hundreds of signatures on a petition and received 45 pledges from parents prepared to send their children to the school.

Last week an independent school adjudicator met with parents as part of a review of the decision. At that meeting they were told that Councillor Thornber had decided to call in the decision again.

Today Hampshire's education boss councillor David Kirk said the governors had presented new information about how the school was used by the community outside class hours.

He said: "I felt the arguments were compelling enough to look at it again. We looked at it in the round and this was absolutely the right result."

He added: "My predecessor had made the right educational decision with the information available to him. But when we take these decisions we need to sometimes look at them not in purely educational terms."