Argyll’s Rural Schools Network (ARSN) deeply regrets that the council’s proposals over school closures were approved for consultation on Thursday (25th November 2010) and that more Councillors didn’t take the opportunity to vote against consultation and force their officials to come back with more sensible and proportionate plans.
Over the three weeks prior to the vote, communities across Argyll & Bute have provided the council with a huge amount of evidence that these proposals are hastily conceived, unsound and riddled with inaccuracies.
ARSN believes it is this evidence which ensured the ruling coalition’s majority was so slim.
ARSN therefore raises the following four questions in public:
- In the light of the recent Scottish Budget, why is the Education service being asked to find such savings in the first place?
- Why are closures being considered before management and administrative savings?
- Why has the Council claimed that 60% of its schools are ‘less than half full’ when it has openly admitted that its capacity figures use an outdated method to calculate school capacity devised by Strathclyde Regional Council, an organisation that ceased to exist 15 years ago?
- Why does the Council claim these proposals will save money on under-used buildings when in fact their figures show the cuts are all in front-line teaching posts?
ARSN believes that the council – and therefore the Councillors who voted for the consultation – should have ready, credible answers to these questions.
Now that these proposals have been approved by the council, ARSN welcomes the opportunity to expose them for the catalogue of errors, omissions and misinformation they represent. ARSN is confident of its ability to do this and to do it quickly.
Murdo MacDonald, Chair, ARSN, says: ‘We look forward to working with the councillors to achieve the best education available for Argyll’s children’.
” Why does the Council claim these proposals will save money on under-used buildings when in fact their figures show the cuts are all in front-line teaching posts?”. Obviously if oyu don’t need so many teachers then savings will be made – but surely if a school does close then the Council will save on heating, maintenance etc and in fact will probably end up selling the school. That would be a saving – or have I missed something here?
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“Why has the Council claimed that 60% of its schools are ‘less than half full’ when it has openly admitted that its capacity figures use an outdated method to calculate school capacity devised by Strathclyde Regional Council, an organisation that ceased to exist 15 years ago?”
Surely the only question here is not whether something is outmoded or not rather is the method of measuring capacity valid or not? If the Scottish Governemtn accept it then it’s valid.
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Simon – what you have missed is that the savings on property costs (heating, rates, water, janitorial costs, etc.) are almost wiped out by the additional costs of transporting the children to the receiving schools. The small net saving that does result is then more than wiped out by loss of the additional funding that the council receives under the GAE formula for small schools. The final result is that in order to save £1.9m overall, the council has to cut teaching posts by £2.1m (Source: Appendix 2, Financial Impact Paper presented to councillors for 25th November meeting)
Note that I have prudently assumed in the above that the Council’s GAE calculations are correct – it seems likely that they will be proved not so in due course, which will further erode any savings.
They may be able to sell some of the school buildings and thus raise a one-off capital sum, but some of these schools don’t actually belong to them, and some others have lease agreements which prevent their sale as anything other than a school building.
You may still argue that a saving of £2.2m in teaching posts is worthwhile, but if so, that’s how the council should be portraying this exercise. Instead their documentation paints a picture of a crumbling and wasteful set of half-empty buildings which need to be rationalised, which is clearly disingenuous. Another document published earlier this year by the council shows that the standard of its primary school buildings across the board has improved dramatically over the past 4 years and is now better than the Scottish average. This includes the vast majority of the schools now proposed for closure.
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Crumbs Simon, do you REALLY believe Everything that the Council or the Government tell you?
I would not believe that you are so naive.
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If the Council closed all the schools, which I presume goes against the recent budget announcements, what will happen. They make £2 million in savings but would they lose the additional £6 million that would of been provided by the Scottish Exec for agreeing to there conditions.
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For Alasdair: Absolutely. That’s the point. But is was still OK to send these proposals for consultation.
In our view, this betrays a sadistic lack of concern for the impact on communities forced to defend hard against a failed case but where the undeclared aggressor behind the proposals is the settled intent of the Council to close the schools – regardless of the strength of the case.
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I have a great idea! They can keep the additional £6 mil from the Scottish Office and make almost everyone happy!
Withdraw all the proposals to be looked at next year (and hopefully assessed properly before putting them forward). They get the extra dosh and don’t end up out of pocket.
Then they turn the hatchet on management and admin, making the savings from there instead. Then they will be loaded! The council will be happy, the parents and communities will be happy and the Scottish Office will be happy.
Brilliant! Oops except for manangement and admin, some of them will be at the Job Centre instead of the teachers. Meh?
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Tim/Linnhe/Alasdair, that there is fierce disagreement as to the accuracy or otherwise of the figures is quite clear. That to me is exactly what the consultation opportunity is all about. Everyone no whas the chance to oresent their figures, have their voices heard and we will then be in a better position to ascertain whose figures are right and whose are wrong.
I do not accept that Coucillors faced with the most severe cuts in public spending should or could simply have accepted without scrutiny the assurance from Sandy Longmuir and others that their figures were correct and the Council’s wrong. Again I would remind people that the SRSN said the same thing in the case of Crossroads (Ayr) that both the process and the figures were flawed. That school was shut and with the agreement of the SNP government.
Is anyone actually accusing the SNP government maladmistration? If they are then please go through the proper channels and submit a complaint to the Ombudsman. Otherwise please, enough of the innuendo, hysteria and name-calling and let’s go to consultation and find out whose figures are right and whose are wrong.
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Thank you newsroom. If this is the case I would be interested to hear from people on here who are ‘pro council’ to explain why they believe this is acceptable. We need to listen to all the arguments but I struggle to understand this one and how it can be defended.
We save £2m in schools which would leave us £4m in the red. Therefore all other Council departments would be required to make even further cuts over and above any already proposed. I would be interested to know why people think this is a logical and sensible proposition.
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Thank you Alasdair. Newsroom – could you please clarify the conditions the SNP government have attached to their offer of the additional £6 million so that everyone can see them.
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Simon – Hmm, I was trying very hard in my earlier post to avoid innuendo, hysteria and name calling – so, sorry if I offended anyone by simply using the figures and statistics that the council themselves have provided to make mince of their own rhetoric.
We don’t even have to wait until the detailed arguments are all over, there’s enough self-contradictory nonsense in these proposals as they stand. Even you have to admit that.
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Simon – I have followed your posts with interest as you make some valid points. However you now appear to be intentionally posting misleading information. SRSN have previously replied to you about this. Although the school did close, the GAE figure originally proposed by the Council was proven to be inaccurate by SRSN, which was subsequently accepted by all parties. Yes the school did close, but SRSN were right about flawed calculations. Support and argue your case, please do not intentionally mislead.
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Alasdair, my understanding is that the parents, SRNS and For Argyll all agree both the process and the figures used in the final closure document were flawed as well the original figures. This is an extract of the letter fromthe SNP government to the Council*
‘After carefully considering both the information provided by those requesting the call in of the decision and the information provided by your council, ministers concluded that East Ayrshire Council has fulfilled its obligations under the Schools (Consultation) (Scotland) Act 2010 and therefore do not intend to issue a call in notice in respect of the decision. East Ayrshire Council may therefore now implement the proposal to close Crossroads Primary School with immediate effect.”
So, if people are claiming that figures or process were wrong then they can as I’ve said elsewhere take foward a complaint of maladmisitration against the government.
* taken from the Ayrshire newspaper.
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Is East Ayrshire Council, where Crossroads school was shut, SNP controlled?
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For Simon: Yes, it is. That was part of the narraitve of the piece we published on this case.
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Alasdair, here is my reason for saying that the that parents, for argyll and srns said the figures used in the final document were flawed. This quote is taken from Newsroom on 3oth Nov at 4.22 in their Lib Dem Dirty Tricks piece
“For Simon: Indeed. Both the parents and the SRSN not only ‘said’ but proved that the Crossroads proposals were flawed. And they were. And the Scottish Government did not call in those proposals and saw a perfectly viable and good school close. We are on the record as saying that this action was unjustifiable and we hold to that”.
I trust you can see now I was not trying to intentionally mislead.
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hmm – Simon really does not seem to be interested in the schools at all, not sure even if there is interest shown in Argyll communities.
We are seeing only political point scoring – no reasonable debate about the schools is visible, just government lap dancing and party political politics.
The children of our communities are far more important than this, it is gratifying to see that there are plenty of people prepared to fight for them, and keep a broader perspective.
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Simon, I was actually refering to the reply given by Mr Sandy Longmuir on Nov 26th @ 11.44 pm
‘One of the flaws in East Ayrshire’s proposals was the calculation of GAE. Far from SRSN being proved wrong on this, the Council had to retract the paper and issue a correction to the financial argument. This correction was to the tune of £252,000 and was entirely due to a lack of understanding of how GAE was calculated. The text in the revised paper reads… “These changes to the Net Present Values of Options 4 and 5 reflect information which has been received in relation to the treatment of Grant Aided Expenditure (GAE) and the resulting impact on grant. Officers of the Council used the information submitted by a respondent (SRSN) to re-visit the actual financial effect in consultation with Scottish Government officers. The impact of this revision has been to change the reduction in the Council’s entitlement to GAE which in turn affects the level of government grant support for small schools as a result of either closing Crossroads Primary School or moving it to Galston Primary School as a separate entity.”
I do not know which side of the argument is right in relation to GAE. And I would agree that it would seem like political madness not to have the figures scrupulously checked, however from the research that I have carried out the SRSN appears too of been proven correct in relation to their calculations on GAE each and everytime.
This alone give’s me cause for concern, as they may well be right. If any other organisation had a similar success rate, you would have to give credence and respect to it’s opinion.
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Hi Alasdair, like you I don’t which side of the argument is right in relation to GAE. That is why I comnsider the consultation process to be so important.
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For Simon: Hardly the process by which the Crown Prosecution Service have to operate: ‘God knows what the evidence is but we’ll prosecute anyway and leave it to judge and jury to sort out’?
And don’t forget that in this case the judge and jury are councillors who cannot – or cannot be bothered to – interrogate the evidence. Where is the justice in this?
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Hi Simon,
It’s nice that you admit that you don’t know which side of the argument is right but consider this.
SRSN people are volunteers who give their time and expertise freely to defend something they see as having value in both educational and rural development scenarios. They have worked hard and proved their case in court.
Council officials are paid a great deal of money, don’t have other jobs to attend to, are employed to do their specific jobs well and should be expected to ensure that where there is a challenge, they do their research properly and get it right. GAE is complex and no-one was making a terrible fuss about the initial mistake, but to come back with the same “John aged 5″ mistake on the second round of proposals betrays an unwillingness to listen or to do the job properly. That’s culpable.
If we’re going to pay those high salaries, it should be to people who want to do something more than manage decline. We need a council with a passion for preserving and promoting Argyll & Bute and its assets. What we’re currently lumbered with are people who have more of an interest in believing themselves to be clever than they do in steering Argyll & Bute to be the thriving community it should be.
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Hi Trying to find a Email list of all the Scottish education departments as I want to ask a question on traveling times. Has anyone got one ?
Thanks Mark
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For Mark: Contact the Scottish Rural Schools Network team – they will have this information. We can tell you that Highland Council – an admitted benchmark for the Argyll and Bute proposals, uses a 30 minute maximum.
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There was never any need to go to consultation using figures in dispute. I telephoned Argyll & Bute Council on the 1st November expressing my concerns about the accuracy of the GAE calculation. I asked for a list of their assumptions in order that I could get back to them with a full analysis. I was told on the phone that I would have them later that day – a few hours later I was emailed to say I would get them but it would not be that day. Later that night it transpired that they had decided to delay the vote on going to consultation in order to check the papers and supply more information to Councillors.
They then had three weeks to get back to me with the details of their calculations and if they had done so we would have supplied an analysis of any errors we found. This would have resulted in accurate proposals being produced for last Thursday’s vote. Argyll & Bute Council chose not to share that information with SRSN before the vote last week and, as I have said many times, we could not produce any analysis without seeing their workings.
I find it remarkable that an organisation such as ours, with the track record we have on the subject, being ignored when we say there is a problem. It is entirely indicative of the way Councils conduct their business. On their own heads be it.
SRSN now have a copy of the Council’s workings and we are now doing the analysis that we could have done three weeks ago. This is not the appropriate venue to release the preliminary results but suffice to tell Simon that I never gamble. I have never been in a bookies, never bought a lottery ticket and only once in my adult life put money in a slot machine. I would, however, still like to raise some money for under-privileged children.
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How many admin/management posts are going to be evaluated for efficiences. Surely there will be a proportionate knock on effect, should there be closures. ??
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Mr Longmuir, I appreciate that you may not wish to share your initial findings on this forum, however from your comments you appear to be indicating that you believe there may indeed be mistakes in the Council calculations of GAE. Are you able to indicate at this time whether you and your organisation feel this is the case.
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Alisdair, Yes we have found errors – some which we have never come across before and we need to put more work into but also a significant one for which there are already precedents.
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Sandy, we await the results of your analyses of the GAE with considerable interest. If the results do indeed show that the Council’s figures for GAE have underestimated the loss of GAE support to the extent that your preliminary analysis had suggested then I would hope that the Council would have the grace to apologise to SRSN and to the people of Argyll (though I won’t hold my breath). It is clear from the timeline that the Council had the opportunity to ensure the GAE figures were correct before issuing them in the Council’s flawed and irresponsible closure proposals (and I am not just referring to the GAE calculations there).
Can I just take this opportunity to thank you Sandy for all of the efforts you and the small team at SRSN have been putting in to help the people of Argyll cut through the difficult complexities of these proposals. I would hope that everyone, regardless of their actual views on these closures or political hue will recognise the selfless dedication of SRSN which enriches us all. Sadly civic honours tend to be in the gift of Councils so we may have to find some other token of our appreciation after this is all over!
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What is GAE please?
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For phill: GAE is Grant Aided Expenditure – a financial formula by which the Scottish Government pays an annual per capita grant to local authorities for every child in a small rural school – meaning one with fewer than 70 pupils.
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I continue to struggle with the argument that the consultation process gives everyone the opportunity to agree/disagree with the figures. This simply should not be the case, the figures should of been accurate at the time of submission. I accept that you can not get everything right first time, but to have a second ‘bite of the cherry’ and still get them wrong would seem to be bordering on incompetence.
I genuinely do not understand why the Council did not approach SRSN in the first place to help them with their calculations. If you are having a major review of this nature it is only commonsense to use all the resources at your disposal, especially if they are offered free.
I also struggle to understand why certain members of the public are so against the SRSN when they simply appear to be an independant organisation with a wealth of knowledge in this area.
It appears to becoming more and more evident that the Council have got this seriously wrong in many, many areas. How could they of let this happen, any credibility that they may of had will simply evaporate.
Individuals have been making the argument that money will be saved by not using the buildings, yet even with just a cursory glance at the figures, it is clearly evident that these savings are negated by the increase in travel costs. I also find it slightly ironic that the Council are using this argument as they have many under utilised offices all over the county.
Frontline staff need to be protected at all costs whether it is teachers, social workers, home helps etc. Yes of course we should cut waste but teachers etc should be the last to go not the first.
Mrs Louden initially had my support when she came into post. To have a restructuring which went from the top down was, I thought, imminently sensible, but why miss out the part where the most savings could of been made i.e. middle management and administration.
I thought, I accept naively now, that she could of made a real change in Argyll and Bute and would of allowed our communities, big and small, to grow and develop to ensure we attracted more families and businesses to the area. Sadly it appears that the only thing that has been achieved is to make us the laughing stock of the entire country.
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Thanks for the info, ‘newsroom’. I understand the importance of gae now.
Re alasdair – Mrs Louden simply has not got the (in practice) power to shake up middle management. They are, well, kind of indestructable. Its a massive task, but one that most definately needs to be sorted out, whether in HQ or the 4 main satelite areas, where you have maagers, assistant managers, technical support officers, dog wardens, litter wardens, and a vast range of well paid/under worked, clerical back up.
Those entrenched in this system know it and caqn have no complaints. You could fairly cut 1 out of 3 in this area, and nobody would notice, I can assure you. Lets fix it, Mrs Louden and lead by example.
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Failed SNP council candidate Anne Baird on the Southend School Facebook page states that she blames the Conservative/Liberal coalition Government for the possible closure of Southend Primary School .
Can Ms Baird explain why in this era of devolution , with a SNP Government in Edinburgh responsible for Scottish Education and with a local council run in coalition (till they Flip Flopped) by the SNP how the threat to Southend school can be blamed on others ?
Also , is the campaign to save Southend school a political front for failed Nationalists and Scottish Socialists?
If it is not she should keep her own prejudicies out of the campaign .
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when are the posters here going to remember that this is affecting children?
real children – the ones who live in our communities, and the ones who will make our future communities
not the ones ( who have been out of nappies for decades ) who are playing playground politics for their own egos.
shame on you.
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