Around 100 small schools threatened with closure because they have fewer than 23 pupils will be allowed to stay open after all, junior education minister Sander Dekker said on Friday.

Falling pupil numbers mean many schools, particularly in rural areas, do not have enough pupils but some will now be reprieved because they are the only school of their type within a five kilometre radius.

Many of the schools under threat offer formal Protestant education, news agency ANP says.

The planned closures were a side effect of the minister’s plan to make it easier to open schools based on different educational theories rather than on a religious basis.

‘We had many complaints about the unwanted side effect of the new law on small schools,’ Dekker said.

Figures published last year show around one in four Dutch villages have no school. The problem is most acute in the northern province of Friesland, where 185 villages have no educational facilities.

The average distance from home to primary school used to be just under one kilometre but has now stretched to 3.4 kilometres, meaning young children can no longer cycle on their own.