PE1132, by Sharon Miller on behalf of the community of Sorn, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Government to consider whether it is satisfied that when local authorities are considering the closure of a rural school where there exists higher than average pupil attainment, attendance and capacity levels and lower than average cost per pupil, they give sufficient recognition to the adverse impact of the closure on rural sustainability and development and to the additional capital and other costs of transferring the pupils to another school, and whether the directions and guidance to local authorities fully reflect such circumstances.Additional information accompanies the petition, and the petitioners have previously been to Parliament. I welcome the constituency MSP Cathy Jamieson, the petitioner Sharon Miller and Melvin Bell. I know that you have been here since the beginning of the meeting, so you will know the format. You have three minutes to expand on the petition, and I will then invite questions from committee members.
Official Report · Committee
New Petitions
Rural Schools (Closures) (PE1132)
Speakers
Choose an MSP to read only their contributions- Frank McAveety Lab 7
- Cathy Jamieson Lab 2
- Robin Harper Green 2
- Melvin Bell 2
- Nigel Don SNP 2
- Sharon Miller 1
- Nanette Milne Con 1
- Bashir Ahmad SNP 1
- John Wilson SNP 1
The record
19 contributionsThank you for the opportunity to present further evidence on the petition to save Sorn primary school.In November, East Ayrshire Council began a consultation on the closure of four high-performing rural primary schools: Sorn, Littlemill, Crossroads and St Xavier's. Parents from all four schools are vehemently opposed to closure and have been running a vocal campaign. The decision will be made tomorrow at a cabinet meeting.In making our case to oppose closure, we have addressed a number of issues. The key points have been provided in the information supporting our petition. In short, we have been unable to find any evidence of revenue saving, educational benefits or school roll decline. Capital investment is required in all the buildings, but that is largely due to the neglect of routine maintenance in the past few years.The guidance on school closure reissued by Fiona Hyslop in October 2007 clearly sets out recommendations of factors that local authorities should consider. Although comprehensive, the guidance allows a great deal of room for manoeuvre. For example, in our neighbouring authorities of North Ayrshire and South Ayrshire, our case would have been referred to the minister because our school roll has been at more than 80 per cent capacity in the past 10 years. East Ayrshire Council has said that we do not qualify for a ministerial referral.Reading the guidance in detail, I find it hard to see why our school was ever considered for closure. The building is usefully occupied at no less than 78 per cent capacity, regardless of which definition is used; we have excellent attainment results and Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education reports; the cost of educating a child at our school is about £1,000 cheaper than at the alternative schools proposed by East Ayrshire; and attendance is above the regional average.Ms Hyslop states that authorities should demonstrate the educational advantages for the pupils directly affected by closures. East Ayrshire Council has been unable to do that. The guidance urges authorities to consider, among other factors, the impact on rural sustainability and development. East Ayrshire's consultation completely fails to address that issue.The authority has claimed that it has an overprovision of primary places, but it has recently exacerbated the situation by extending the schools at Galston and Mauchline. Furthermore, if the overriding aim was to tackle that, one would assume that the authority would have targeted other schools in its area where occupation is at only 50 per cent or below.The guidance states that the process should be transparent and that justice should not only be done but be seen to be done, but East Ayrshire Council has withheld information from the campaigners and presented figures in a far from transparent fashion. In producing its recommendations, it added large amounts of new data to bolster its case, which had not been consulted on and were not made available to the public until two working days before the decision. Sandy Longmuir from the national rural schools network has dealt with local authority school closures all over the country. He assures me that East Ayrshire is not alone in those practices.The strict criteria for ministerial referrals mean that there is no higher authority to which we can report East Ayrshire's conduct. If the decision goes against the school, the only mechanism to appeal is judicial review, which is costly and time consuming. It does not seem just that democracy should depend on the ability to meet legal costs.The upheaval created by the proposed closures cannot be overstated. The process is highly disruptive and distressing for pupils, parents and staff, especially when, as in this case, it is timed for over the Christmas period. I urge the committee to call on the Scottish Government to tighten the criteria for schools recommended for closure, to ensure greater consistency of implementation of ministerial guidance throughout the country and to introduce a mechanism to appeal decisions. Finally, I ask that the Scottish Government offer some protection to the small schools that are the heart of our fragile rural communities.
Thank you, Sharon. I invite Cathy Jamieson, as constituency member, to add a few comments, although I am conscious of the time.
I will be brief, because Sharon Miller has presented an excellent case in relation to not only Sorn primary school but some of the wider issues that require to be addressed. In my view, if East Ayrshire Council had embarked upon the consultation process saying that it was about costs or school places, there might have been some argument for that, but it has tried to suggest that the school closures will go ahead on educational grounds. I do not believe that that stacks up, and I have a number of answers from the Minister for Schools and Skills that would seem to back up my position.One difficulty is that there is no definition of what constitutes a rural school. The reality is that a number of different definitions of rurality are used in respect of what is remote rural, accessible rural and so on. There is no definition that authorities can easily apply when they conduct consultations.It would have been possible for East Ayrshire Council to consult in a different manner, which would have given all the parents and the communities the information that they required. One of the problems in East Ayrshire is that the authority has gone straight to proposing schools for closure and views the consultation as a statutory one. Instead, it could have followed a different model by taking an overview of what is required of the whole school estate and engaging and consulting parents on that. The neighbouring authority in South Ayrshire is now doing that. I do not accept that there was no other way for East Ayrshire Council to conduct the consultation.A number of issues require to be examined. I appreciate that the committee may not feel able to intervene in a decision about a specific school, but the case highlights areas in which the Government could usefully examine the definitions and look again at the guidance that is issued to local authorities.
I commend the petitioner for submitting the petition. I am sure that I am not the only committee member who has been in a similar situation. I have fought against school closures in Aberdeenshire and also one or two in Morayshire. The arguments that Sharon Miller put forward are ones that I have heard before. She has a very reasonable case.I do not have any questions but I point out that, as you will know, one of my colleagues, Murdo Fraser, has a member's bill that would introduce a presumption against the closure of rural schools. I do not know whether he has yet had a meeting with the minister and, if so, what the outcome was, but I know that he was to meet the minister to discuss the matter. I hope that the Parliament will eventually take the line that there should be a presumption against closing rural schools. Not only do many such schools provide a very good education but, as Sharon Miller said, they are the hub of the community and everything else happens in them. Therefore, if the community loses the school, it has serious consequences. Good luck.
I suppose that this is as much a question as a statement. Phrases such as overprovision seem to be subjective. It would be possible for an authority to add a couple of classrooms and then find that it did not have pupils in them. It is a distortion of reality to call that overprovision. If a perfectly good school nearby is operating well and is 80 per cent occupied, there is not overprovision; there is just an extra classroom.
One of our frustrations is that it seems that a council can decide which figure it uses in its guidance. A good example is the difference between planning capacity, working capacity and the school roll, which can be significant. For example, at Sorn we have a pupil roll of 72 and a capped capacity of 75. In essence, our numbers should be the right proportion, but the working capacity is classed at 92 and the planning capacity is classed at 101. Even if we found 32 extra pupils, we could never actually have them in the school because one part of the legislation says that we can take no more than 75. Planning, however, is based on 101 pupils.As members of the community, we feel disfranchised because we are excluded from using a mechanism that was put in place to provide oversight and governance—the 80 per cent rule—because we can never attain that level because our capacity is capped at 75. The oversight feels distant, which is frustrating. We feel as if we are losing something without our voice being heard.
That situation, although distressing, sounds incredibly familiar. This is actually very simple. As I am sure the petitioners realise, we cannot interfere with the local council—that is beyond our gift. However, we should write to the Government to point out the dilemma that Mr Bell has outlined and the fact that the numbers seem to be as manipulable as many accounting numbers are. They clearly do not provide the defence mechanism that I am sure ministers assume they do. I hope that we can at least bring that to their attention.
That is a useful suggestion. I think that the broad view of the committee would be to support raising that matter.Do members want to ask any other questions?
The first thing that the previous Government and Prime Minister Tony Blair wanted to do was to educate the nation—we remember his slogan, "Education, education, education." This Government undoubtedly supports education, so I do not understand why the authority is doing what it is doing.
Ultimately, that is the issue that the petitioners will confront tomorrow as the process at the local level is gone through. As one or two committee members have said, although we can be sympathetic about their plight, we do not have any direct influence on that decision-making process. They will articulate a powerful argument to the council committee, but they are obviously looking for the framework made by legislators in Parliament to be much more effectively interpreted than seems to be the case. That is the issue.We need to pull those comments together into one or two positive suggestions. Nigel Don has made the good suggestion of raising the matter directly with the Government. Cathy, do you have a further suggestion?
I want simply to return to the points made by Sharon Miller and Melvin Bell in their presentation, in which there were a number of suggestions on what could usefully be done.Nigel Don's suggestion is helpful, but we need to ask the Government what constitutes a rural school. There is an issue about the numbers, as has been mentioned, and there is also an issue about the appeals process. I draw the committee's attention to the process adopted in East Ayrshire, which initially meant that the petitioners were not allowed to present their case at the council cabinet. That decision has been overturned, but still only cabinet members in East Ayrshire Council will take the decision; the local councillors for the areas where the schools are situated will not have a vote. That prompts some questions of natural justice, and the petitioners have made the sensible suggestion that we need to consider having an appeals process for similar situations that is not a judicial review which, as the committee will appreciate, is both complex and costly.
Are there any other suggestions from members?
What Cathy Jamieson has just said suggests to me that there may be a lack of democracy at the local authority level. We cannot wave a magic wand at that, but it suggests that we should ask the appropriate part of Government how it feels about local issues being dealt with centrally in a local authority, apparently without local input. Whether that has actually been the case is another matter—I do not want to get into a dispute about the facts—but there seems to be a principle that we might want to ask the Government about.
John Wilson looks quizzical.
Yes, convener. One of the difficulties that I have is that a number of decisions have been taken recently by local authorities at a localised level that have then been countermanded at a higher level by the local authority in question. The issue is getting the checks and balances in local authorities right.I am particularly concerned about decisions on rural schools. A number of people have clearly outlined the problem for such schools. We need to get a definition of rural schools and consider their success and their school rolls. We should highlight to the Government the issues that are involved to try to ensure that local authorities are aware of the pressures and demands that exist in communities, particularly rural communities. A very successful school has been described to us. The school roll is high—the school is almost at its maximum capacity—but local authority officials have presented it for closure for no rhyme or reason. That ties in with issues to do with the decision-making process in the local authority, the level at which such decisions are taken and whether the local authority education committee or its policy and resources committee should make the final decision.There must be a role for Government ministers in overseeing what happens in local authorities throughout Scotland at whatever level. We have been given a good example of a rural school that could be closed although it ticks all the right boxes in respect of its good educational provision. We must try to ensure that that does not happen. There will be cases in which reasons may exist for closing schools to achieve economies of scale, but it is clear that no such reasons exist in this case. The committee must take the issue to Scottish Government ministers and, in particular, to local authorities. We must tell them that we want to monitor what they are doing about rural school closures, because we want to ensure that every child in Scotland, whether they live in an urban or a rural area, has the best educational opportunities—Bashir Ahmad mentioned that. We must ensure that well-maintained and well-used schools are preserved in order to continue to provide such opportunities.
We must remember that article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which this country has signed up to, states that the views of children should be heard and they should be consulted on decisions that intimately concern their wellbeing and their future. We are discussing a situation about which children's views should certainly be heard and on which they should be consulted. I wonder how much they have been heard and consulted.
I appreciate the comments that have been made and, obviously, I accept that we must consider the wider issue rather than the specific case. However, there is another important aspect that we have mentioned. Schools and other services in rural communities perhaps have a higher impact on their communities than schools and other services in other areas have. We can see that in Sorn in particular. We wonder how much emphasis is put on other values to the community when decisions are being taken to close schools on financial or other grounds. For example, four years ago, our community set up after-school care, which the community pays for. We employ three full-time staff to look after the children from 3 o'clock until 6 o'clock every school day. That has meant that more than 28 families in a small rural community have been able to go back to work or full-time education, to retrain and so on. That initiative is not given any weight within the process because it is not seen, although it has an impact. The community is 735-strong or so and 28 families in it are doing something different with their lives and are promoting the area's prosperity are sustaining the rural economy. It is important for them to be able to bring their children up in that environment. The consultation process does not consider that. Surely some weight must be given to the wider impact of school closures.
We have had a good question-and-answer session that has focused on the issues that are of concern to the petitioners. Members have made two or three substantial suggestions, and we have made a note of those so that we can take them forward: one is about definition; the second is about the wider impact and the much more central position of schools in some parts of Scotland because of the economic and social interrelationships that they have with the community; and the third is about what is expected of the education department and about guidance and how it is interpreted locally. I am sure that the petitioners will articulate their concerns very strongly tomorrow at what will, I hope, be a constructive meeting with the local authority.One or two other suggestions have been made and we have a note of them. If there are no other comments or observations from the committee, I have two things to say.First, the meeting tomorrow is critical because the council will make a decision. I hope that the decision can be delayed or the position reviewed, as a different model of consultation might allow local authority members to arrive at a different conclusion than the apocalyptic one that the petitioners have been confronted with. Secondly, we will raise the guidance issue with the Scottish Government and other local authorities through the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. We will also have to take on board what might be contained in the proposed member's bill on rural school closures and the presumptions behind any decisions on closure.I hope that that is helpful for the petitioners. Obviously your minds will now be on tomorrow and you have the good will of the committee that you will present your case effectively and that the local authority will consider making the decision that you are looking for. I hope that today has been helpful and we will keep you posted. We are now finished with the oral presentations for this afternoon. Next we have a series of petitions on which we have received correspondence and papers. We have a lot of material to get through so I hope that we can make progress.
In this meeting
Everything on 18 Mar 2008 →- Scottish Parliament Public Petitions Committee Tuesday 18 March 2008 Petitions · 1
- New Petitions Petitions · 1
- New Petitions Petitions · 53
- New Petitions Petitions · 49
- New Petitions Petitions · 19
- New Petitions Petitions · 14
- New Petitions Petitions · 3
- New Petitions Petitions · 7
- New Petitions Petitions · 6
- Current Petitions Petitions · 12
- Current Petitions Petitions · 5
- Current Petitions Petitions · 5
- Current Petitions Petitions · 3
- Current Petitions Petitions · 5
- Current Petitions Petitions · 5
- Current Petitions Petitions · 1
- Current Petitions Petitions · 3
- Current Petitions Petitions · 1
- Current Petitions Petitions · 3
- Current Petitions Petitions · 3
- Current Petitions Petitions · 9
- Current Petitions Petitions · 6
- Current Petitions Petitions · 8
- New Petitions (Notification) Petitions · 2
The type of each item (debate, statement, questions, members’ business and so on) and the times shown are worked out by this site from headings, the chair’s opening words and the Official Report’s running timestamps. They are not the Parliament’s own classification. Text: the Scottish Parliament Official Report.