Raft of school closures on the horizon 27/10/09
Western Isles Council has taken the next step towards a possible wholesale closure of island schools.
But the angry response and distrust from the public when it pushed ahead with shutting seven rural secondary schools last year is still fresh in councillors’ minds.
In Spring the Scottish Government also upset its plans by ordering it to retain four
secondary schools -
It is understood that the council has made an uneasy peace with the Scottish Government over the closure issues with its current wider engagement exercise.
This afternoon some councillors argued speeding up the process while urged a more cautionary speed.
But all agreed that this time they need to “take the community with us” as the time to take crunch decision looms.
Any formal consultation could take place within months councillors were told.
Councillors repeatedly stress that the review of 36 primary schools has greater consequences than simply the education remit alone.
The islands soaring aging population stretches the authority’s money while school rolls have plummeted from 6315 in 1975 to just 3678 today.
Small schools are extremely expensive to run and many school buildings are crumbling. But cash from central government is tighter while the council faces spending more money on education.
The authority is also looking to make cuts to help pay to build five modern centralised schools.
Councillors agreed to hold an internal seminar over defining their strategy for the future of pupils’ education.
A leaflet will be distribute to all island communities and informal meeting will take place with individual schools.
But only handfuls of people turned up to community information workshops held in
summer -
Two years ago councillors refused to support SNP councillor Donald Manford’s bid to fully engage with the community over the way ahead for both primary and secondary education instead of its piecemeal strategy.
Today he was happy to see his colleagues appearing to back his view.
He said: “I urge we don’t undermine this process and we involve the community well beyond the statutory requirement.”
Cllr Donald Nicolson was disappointed in the extremely poor turnout at the public workshops and stressed the need to get a proper strategy in place.
Archie Campbell pointed out: “The problems is too many (school) buildings for too few people.
He highlighted the dramatic demographic issues of “a rising population of elderly people and smaller population of younger people.”
He added: “This is not a simple issue just for parents who currently have children in school. It is much wider than that.”
Cllr Angus McCormack said: “We, as an authority, are putting many millions (of pounds) more into schools than we receive.”
“The more we put it off the worse the situation becomes.
“I don’t like closing schools but I recognise if we don’t have (enough) pupils we can’t keep schools going.”