Monthly Archives: November 2010

Members and queries: Argyll and Bute Council Executive Committee

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The current members (2010) of Argyll and Bute Council’s Executive Committee are as follows:

Councillors (given in alphabetical order of group or party)

  • Vivian Dance, Alliance of Independents, Helensburgh Central
  • George Freeman, Alliance of Independents, Lonond North
  • Duncan Macintyre, Alliance of Independents, Oban North and Lorn
  • Donald MacMillan, Allliance of Independents, Mid Argyll
  • Elaine Robertson, Alliance of Independents, Oban North and Lorn
  • Len Scoullar, Alliance of Independents, Isle of Bute
  • Dick Walsh, Alliance of Independents, Dunoon (Council Leader)
  • Donald Macdonald, SNP, Oban North and Lorn
  • Robert Macintyre, SNP, Isle of Bute (Depute Council Leader)
  • Donald McIntosh, SNP, Oban South and the Isles
  • John Semple, SNP, South Kintyre
  • Isobel Strong, SNP, Isle of Bute
  • Robin Currie LibDem, Kintyre and the Isles
  • Alison Hay, LibDem, Mid Argyll
  • Ellen Morton, LibDem, Helensburgh and Lomond South
  • Gary Mulvaney Conservative, Helensburgh Central

Unelected external others (Representing education and religion and only voting on these matters)

  • Maureen Arthur
  • William Dalby
  • David McEwan
  • Alison Palmer

Secretary to the Executive

  • Fiona McCallum (sec)

Questions on the role and voting rights of some of the ‘Others’.

There are two issues we would raise over the position of the outsiders in the Executive.

The first is on the grounds of the logic of the inclusion of those representing ‘education’.

The Council has its own Education Spokesperson, Councillor Isobel Strong, from Bute. It has a Spokesperson for Social Services – as it has spokespersons for each ares of council concern. Spokespersons are members of the Executive.

So why is it necessary for ‘education’ to have additional votes on the executive where, say, social services does not?

Our second concern is whether or not these unelected representatives on the Executive Committee – who have a vote on these issues at the level of authoritative recommendation and who are therefore more powerful than the excluded elected Councillors – have already exercised their Executive vote on any aspect of the development of the school closure proposals and procedures?

School closures: matters arising of general importance

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Luss school closure meeting 1 November 2010 7

Several matters came up at the meeting in Luss on 12th November 2010 that are important to all communities campaigning to save their schools. We list them below and will add other lists from other meetings as this process goes on. This item will therefore be worth specific regular checking and you may wish to bookmark it.

Points from the Luss meeting on 12th November

  • Local knowledge – and at a practical level – is crucial in identifying operational flaws in the proposals.
  • Given the different geographical locales of Luss and Helensburgh, few Luss parents in rural Loch Lomondside have any local contacts in Helensburgh, Argyll’s largest town, over the hill and relatively far away on the Clyde. So if their child is sick or if the school needs to be closed in the case, say, of a power failure, who can they ring to pick up and look after the child until they get back from work? The Luss community will not be alone in this predicament.
  • While some schools could attempt to subvert council intentions by organising mass placing requests from parents, to send their children to an alternative receiving school, Jackie Baillie largely advised against such a tactic. A council can refuse such a request. It would be a waste of time and effort.
  • Council Area Committees have been instructed not to intervene in closure proposals, designated as Council business.
  • Figures given in the proposals for overall area spare capacity in school places are misleading. Council staff have been working to ‘planning capacity’ standards which are akin to working out how many kids you can fit in a phone box. The standards that apply are the ‘working capacity’ standards which seriously reduce the amount of claimed over-capacity.
  • The figure given in the proposals of £15,700, as the annual additional cost of travel associated with the proposals, has been widely challenged as unrealistically low. The basis for the figure is also unknown.
  • At the Luss meeting, Jackie Baille MSP advised parent groups to have safety assessments done on the travel routes that will apply if their schools close. Pick up points are of particular concern.
  • She also advised campaign teams to get accurate demographic statistics along with current local knowledge and paint the picture of their community. How many families live there, how many children, how many people altogether, the age range and the percentage of the total local population of each age group. We suggest keeping this simple in using three age groups: children to age 16; working age; beyond working age.
  • Where one or more schools are closed and their pupils transferred to another school, this is called amalgamation and the Head Teachers of each school involved apply to become the Head Teacher of the combined school. (RECRUITMENT PROCESS COST HERE.) One will win and the other one or two will, according to Councillor Morton, go onto what is called a ‘conserved salary’ for a period of three years, during which time they are free to apply for other jobs.
  • The council’s internal retrenchment process – known as ‘streamlining’ – is now moving into middle management, the area where the 5 or 6 unproductive but highly paid Quality Improvement Officers are located. At Luss, the universal feeling was that this is a parasitic role and they and their manager should go.
  • Jackie Baille MSP advised campaign teams that each person in the community should email their concerns, their objections and their case to each individual councillor, not just one collective statement and not just to their local councillors. As she said, one collective email is one collective email. A few hundred make an entirely different impact on the perceived strength of feeling and support involved.

School closures: the children and the Children’s Champion

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Luss school closure meeting 1 November 2010 12

At the Luss meeting on 12th November 2010, the primary school children were part of the debate. They asked central and poignant questions.

  • ‘Will we still be with our friends if we have to go to Helensburgh?’ The answer is no. In a small rural school, they work and play together. Hermitage Academy has 400 primary pupils, taught, of course, in fully staffed year groups. The Luss children will now be allocated to each of their specific year groups and will find themselves in a minority in strange circumstances.
  • ‘What will happen to our teachers if our school is closed?‘ Jackie Baillie asked: ‘Do you want them to stay with you?’Vigorous nod of assent. ‘What? All of them?’ Equally vigorous nod of assent.
  • ‘What will happen to the buildings if our school gets shut?’ Universal shrugs.

Many parents spoke of the real distress the children are suffering in all of this. Most young children assume certainty and continuity in their lives. The discovery that so fundamental an upheaval as removal from their school and their community is under discussion is demonstrably destabilising. The Luss children are said to be apprehensive and upset.

Councillor Morton has, as both a mother and a  former teacher, been through school closures and understands sharply what it means for all concerned. She talked of her real concern at the damage to young children in this process – as did Jackie Baillie in respect of her own children.

Has anyone consulted the children in all of this? This raises the issue of their role in the consultation process.

We have a suggestion to make here. Councillor Mary Jean Devon form Mull is he Council’s ‘Children’s Champion’.

If ever there were a need for a Children’s Champion in Argyll and Bute, it is now. She may not need to be empowered to engage that role in the school closure process but if she does, it should be done at once. She is their natural advocate.

School closures: Councillors will not always be your friend – interrogate claimed costs and savings privately

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Luss school closure meeting 1 November 2010 9

From the start, the supporting figures given by Argyll and Bute’s education department in its proposal papers to close the 26 schools have been flawed. Situations around the GAE per capita funding for small rural schools have been misunderstood and the calculations unstable. This was discovered and demonstrated by the Scottish Rural Schools Network, whose team is arguably the most knowledgeable in the country in dealing with this complex grant.

Aspects of costs and savings are also incompletely considered, leading to overstated savings and underestimated costs, arising from the proposals to close schools and relocate their pupils.

We do not intend to discuss the specifics announced at the Luss meeting on 12th November 2010. Their case looks lstrong but they need to play their cards carefully.

However, as an indication, the Luss campaign team believe that they have undermined the claimed savings in the closure proposal for  Luss school  and the amalgamation of its pupils with those at Helensburgh’s Hermitage Academy.

At the meeting, Councillors seemed impressed with the figures whose over-generous detail was  presented to them and to the meeting.

They asked for copies of the calculations and for updates during the working up of the case.

Before complying with this and similar requests elsewhere, each school needs to think further in to this process.

You may still end up on the list for closure and your case will go to consultation; to final decision by the Council; in some cases, to appeal; and, in some cases, to call-in by the Scottish Government.

Councillors are on your side at the moment but they are responsible for overseeing and approving a process leading to seriously deep cost savings.

There will be a time when your own Councillors will be forced to become your enemy. And they must then fight to win what will have become their case where, at present, it is the education department’s case. And they know that. And they will already be preparing the ground for that moment, as they must.

So – how much do you want them to know of the detail of your case just now? If your figures are correct and you let them have the detail of them before the 25th November – do you really think that they are not immediately going to go to the education and finance departments to have them checked out? (Few councillors are mathematicians or accountants.)

And, armed with this material, if your figures are right, do you seriously think that the education department will not either bedazzle the unwary councillors with mathematical formulae to blind them to your accuracy; and, to outflank you, will not neatly revise the nature of their own financial presentation in the final version of the proposals to go to statutory consultation, probably on 25th November? This is, after all, war.

We recommend a different course of action.

Costs and savings miscalulations should not be raised before 25th November

These are not matters to be disclosed by 25th November in an attempt to get a school taken off the list of recommended closures.

The single thing that can achieve removal from the list prior to consultation is the cast iron proof that the detail of practically achievable travel times to the newly designated receiving school is more than the maximum of 45 minutes chosen by the Council. (Highland has chosen a 30 minute maximum.)

Education Director, Cleland Sneddon gave a public commitment at the full Council meeting on 2nd November 2010 that a school whose pupils will  have more than a 45 minute journey to their replacement school will immediately come off the list.

Proving costs and savings wrong in the case of a single school  is centrally important – but will not alone save that school from an eventual Council closure decision. This would, though, come into play on appeal against closure or in the case of a call-in of that proposal by the Scottish Government.

It will  be important to establish the grounds for appeal. If they are based on the introduction of new evidence, it may be crucially important to get strategic advice on what not to disclose in the presentation of a school’s response to the closure proposal, submitted after the statutory consultation procedure.

The importance of collective challenge to the  claimed costs and savings

What is important here is for each school to work through the Scottish Rural Schools Network (SRSN) team and build a collective case that the entirety of the claimed costs and savings in the suite of closure proposals is wrong.

Within that, it would be important for the schools grouped together in one proposal paper of, say, two schools to be closed and one further school identified to receive their pupils – to show together that the costs and savings associated with that amalgamated proposal paper did not stack up.

The reason for the whole closure exercise is to achieve significant overall saving.

Together – and with the expert help of the SRSN team, the threatened schools need to see if they can show to a significant degree that the costs associated with the proposals are greater and the savings less than claimed.

If they can, what Councilors are going to put their electoral future on the line for less substantial savings and for a department whose own work has challenged its competence?

For now, let your Councillors know only the summary facts of your case for the moment: ‘We think the costs involved in this proposal are much greater than they say’. ‘We feel that the claimed savings are half what they say they will be’. ‘We are concerned that the GAE grant position is not what they say it is and the income will be less than claimed.’ etc

And, when the time comes, back up the detail presented in proving this position statement by getting your figures checked out and finally verified by the Scottish Rural Schools Network team. This will give them the weight of authoritative expertise.

And take the SRSN’s  advice on when and what to disclose to whom. They know the game.

This is an absolutely key defence against closure. Very importantly, it is the key for all of the schools acting in concert, if they can jointly demonstrate that the total anticipated overall saving is significantly overstated.

For this reason we cannot recommend strongly enough that every school should check with the Scottish Rural Schools Network team on the accuracy of their challenges to the costs and savings given in the closure proposal papers. The SRSN will check the figures and their underlying assumptions and underwrite agreed conclusions. They are experts in the field and this assurance is important to the credibility of financial arguments advanced.

School campaigns will need the authority of the Scottish Rural Schools Network (SRSN) verifying the numbers in their case – and they have offered their assistance. Never look a gift horse…

The political reality

The political reality is that closure proposals will go to statutory consultation, with the pre-ordained removal of a token couple of schools from the list at this stage.

And the political reality is that almost all of the closure proposals will be agreed by the Council after the consultation period -again probably with a managed reprieve.

Appeal and call-in will be critical.

So – demonstrating accurately that the initial proposals were fatally flawed undermined – rightly and usefully – their credibility.

But what goes to consultation is what will ultimately determine the Council’s success or failure in closing almost all of these schools.

Do you really want to help them, at this point – before the finalisation of those papers – to get them in to more competent shape and to make your own case for retention harder? Think on.

Update 15th November: Unfortunately our advice came too late. Luss had very promptly given their calculations to Councillors and had asked them to get additional information to help to build their case.

This procedure on its own is manageable. You need to ask your Councillor to get you specific information from council staff – but you are advised simply to describe what you want without saying what it relates to, what you intend to use it to do or that you consider it should have been provided in the first place.

After the 25th November, the closure proposal papers may go to statutory public consultation. At that stage they become the Council’s case, not the education department’s case and at that stage they are the formal and final basis for the Council’s case for closure.

Do not forget that the education department has been sent away to make the case watertight and to repair the profound flaws in the case by providing ‘additional information’.

When he received the request from Luss, Councillor Freeman did as we anticipated and was helpful to the community, asking the education department for the information Luss required – and neatly flagging  it up to them as ‘missing information’. (The education department is required at the moment to provide ‘additional information’.)

After the 25th November, it does not really matter how much information you give to Councillors and Council staff. Their proposals stand or fall on the calibre of the content of the papers sent out for statutory consultation.

Until then, any team engaged in trying to save its local school would be naive in the extreme to alert any part of the Council to potential flaws in the proposal documents.