Council’s ca canny approach to school review
The school review in Caithness has created controversy.
THE Highland Council’s review of the school estate in the county has unleashed a storm of speculation. At the meeting in Glenurquhart Road, Inverness, on May 19 of the education, culture and sport (ECS) committee, Wick councillor Gail Ross (SNP) described the unrest.
“There is rumour and counter-rumour that decisions have already been made, that head teachers have been gagged and are not allowed to speak about it,” she told the chamber.
Fellow Wick councillor Bill Fernie (ind) replied as chairman of the ECS committee. “No head teachers have been gagged. I am aware that is circulating as a rumour but that is all it is. In fact, head teachers are heavily involved in the process and, as you know, there was a two-day workshop with the head teachers that forms part of the process. Whether or not there will be new schools is among the options coming forward but no decisions have been made one way or the other. Nothing has been ruled out, nothing has been ruled in.”
“There has been no attempt by anybody to gag anyone in Caithness,” confirmed Ron Mackenzie, the head of the council’s education support services.
“People are worried as well that their school is going to close,” continued Mrs Ross. “I would just like to ask how the wider public are being kept informed about it, not just the parent groups... Can you give assurances that the review is 100 per cent education driven and that there will be no budget implications in this?”
The review process will take longer than first planned. The many options for the future of Caithness schools have forced this change to the timetable. Ca canny and be sure is the council motto now, after the brou-ha-ha over the selection of the site for the new high school in Wick.
“It became apparent during the pre-proposal identification period that there were numerous permutations in relation to future educational provision that merited detailed consideration and, as a result, the proposals for statutory consultation will not be available until the August ECS committee,” said Mr Mackenzie, in admirable council-speak.
The listing of all the options will take seven months, and the statutory consultation another three, making 10 months in all.
“In regard to preparing the ground for the consultation, it is a chance to nip any uncertainties in the bud,” said David Bremner (Independent Members’ Group, Landward Caithness). “The last thing that parents wanting to enrol their children need is unnecessary uncertainty.”
Mr Bremner went on to ask about the effect of the review on the CEYAC (Caithness Early Years Autism Centre) facility currently based at Pulteneytown Academy. “It is a very important and rightly highly regarded service,” he said.
Mr Mackenzie confirmed accommodation would be provided for CEYAC but, depending on the final outcome of the review, it may eventually be in a different location.
GRAEME Smith (Independent Members’ Group, Wick) said he was particularly happy to see the shift of the statutory consultation period from May to August.
“I think that’s quite realistic and it may give the more reflective people in Caithness time to analyse what is being consulted about,” he said. “I share Councillor Ross’s concern about the restlessness caused in Caithness, a lot of it possibly because of the way we handled the Wick High School proposal, when we gave the rumour mill the opportunity to occupy the central ground. I have to say I’m very positive about this review, I think it’s well overdue.”
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“We need to take the time to do this because it’s extremely important,” said Mr Fernie. “We are betwixt and between – if we do it too quickly we are accused of rushing it through and hiding something, if we take longer people say we are stretching it out for some other reason.”
The options for the future school estate thrown up in the workshops are indeed several and varied, and offer plenty of ammunition for acrimonious debate. They are all in the report available on the council website. I hasten to add these are options, and they have not yet gone out to consultation.
I had a look at the options listed for my own alma mater, Keiss Primary School. They are: upgrade the school where it is, or amalgamate it with Hillhead and North school on the North school site in either extensions to the existing buildings or a new building altogether. Although I appreciate the need for the council to respond to falling school rolls, it will be a sore day for Keiss if it loses its school.
Caithness has seen a lot of schools come and go – but mostly go – in the last 50 or so years. The countryside is dotted with schools that no longer exist, recognisable today by the style of architecture used when they were all built in the 1870s. Think of Auckengill, Lyth, Dunnet and Greenland. There are many more. The rural population was much higher then and transport was limited to feet or bike.
There is an irony, too, arising from the first debate over the creation of Wick High School as a community school. This clearly recognises schools are about community as well as education – the concepts of education and community are part and parcel of the same thing – but the closure of a school can cut the heart from a community.
‘ONSHORE visioning” was a new bit of jargon to me when I saw it in the agenda for the council’s planning, environment and development (PED) committee last week. I suspect we may all hear it a lot in the near future. What it means is – what impact will all the offshore renewable energy things have on the land?
Some folk have been thinking about this in two workshops held at the Castle of Mey in August last year and last February under the aegis of the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment, or PFBE for short.
According to the council papers, a wide range of stakeholders – including some councillors from Highland and Orkney, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the Scottish Government – were invited to attend. Not much came my way about the workshops at the time but the outcome of the deliberations have now been presented to PED.
The outcome includes an action plan. The first item in the action plan – to be carried out this summer – is a survey of relevant business and industrial sites in Caithness and North Sutherland.
Apart from Wick and Scrabster as obvious candidates for strategic roles in the offshore energy sector, the report mentions Castletown, Gills Bay, Wester, Dounreay and Georgemas as sites with particular potential for energy related developments.
On the other hand, the workshoppers – is there such a word? – considered Groats to be better left to tourism and its harbour “reserved for ferries and fishing boats”, but it may be a “suitable location for a renewable energy interpretation centre”.
There was a day when interpretation centres sprang up where industry had failed. Now, the interpretation centres are coming along simultaneously. Is this far-sighted or pessimistic? Or an attempt to integrate things in a rounded approach to development?
The visioning exercise at the castle foresees connections from the offshore generating devices coming ashore at Scrabster, Gills and Wick. The landing at Gills will need high voltage lines strung across the country to connect at Spittal to the existing lines running south from Dounreay.
Robert Coghill (ind, Landward Caithness) was one of the councillors at the castle workshops.
“They were very, very useful,” he said to the PED meeting. “I think we were all shocked at the level of investment that is planned for the next five or six years. I think I am correct in saying a billion pounds is the amount to provide infrastructure, grid connections, converter hubs and what-not.”
“One of the disappointing things is that we haven’t had the skill base to help with construction,” continued Mr Coghill. “The chap from Scottish and Southern [said] they were importing a lot of employees because they just did not have the skill base. That was the only disappointing thing.”
There are echoes here of the 1950s and Dounreay. When that project began no-one would have claimed Caithness had a skill base in nuclear engineering but through immigration and education the county transformed itself. Are we going to see a similar scenario unfold in the near future?