The Arbroath Schools review: the scandal of the public opinion surveys

Angus Council consulted the public through two surveys, each consisting of a set of questionnaires in both paper and online formats. In both cases these forms could be completed anonymously.

Not every school community was asked the same questions. For example only the parents and community at the first two urban schools to be merged were asked if they agreed that a new school in their area should be built.

Alarm bells were ringing in parents who had been over the course with this Council before and representations were made to Mr Myles, questioning several aspects of the proposals.

Genuine concerns about the process (and many other matters) were being expressed to Mr Myles as the questionnaire based surveys were concluded.

His response to those concerns was that the people of Arbroath had been asked what they wanted and that they had spoken. They wanted the new schools and that was what his administration was going to give them.

Soon after this statement from the leader of Angus Council, the results of the surveys on the Arbroath Schools Project were sent out to Parent Councils and all councillors.

The results were remarkable and came with a covering letter from a senior education official in which he declared: ‘From my perspective I was encouraged by both the volume of responses and the thoughtful and considered comments submitted.

‘I trust you will find the data informative and you may wish to discuss this at a forthcoming Parent Council meeting and/or share the information with the wider parental community.’

The ‘informative data’ was a stunning endorsement of the Council’s preferred options.

In the case of the three rural schools there were 877 responses. Of these, 685 (78%) wanted two of the schools to merge together.

For the two town schools scheduled to move into the first new school, 792 out of 857 responses (92%), wanted the new school and 681 (79%) opted for the same specific site for the new build.

Councillor Myles’ comment that he was giving the people of Arbroath what they wanted looked utterly defensible.

Then, a member of the public was sent the analysis of the survey results by one of the opposition councillors – and instantly saw something amiss with the results. He could not believe that Council officials had not picked up on the obvious anomalies.

The local press got on to this situation. Eyebrows were raised. FOI requests went in.

And FOI was to play a crucial role in what followed.

 The FOI revelations

An FOI request was issued for a breakdown of the survey results and – although this had just been concluded and the results published, it took almost a year and an appeal to the Information Commissioner for a clearer picture to emerge.

 Survey of the three rural schools

It emerged that, in this survey, the online questionnaire had been used 695 times, 692 of them anonymously – a smidgeon short of 100%.

399 (57.4%) of these had come from the same IP address, effectively the same computer and most likely the same individual.

There were also several other multiple responses from a handful of IP addresses.

In the comments section of these responses, many were blank but a considerable number raised quite personal objections to certain members of the rural communities.

Others did not mention the project but simply praised the two councillors driving the project.

So much for the statement in the letter sent out to parent councils ‘I was encouraged by both the volume of responses and the thoughtful and considered comments submitted’.

If the anonymous multiple responses from single sources were to be discounted, the three rural communities were overwhelmingly in favour of retaining their existing school provision.

Survey of two town schools to be merged in new school

In the case of the new build proposal, it transpired that there were 767 occasions where the online questionnaires were used and on 731 occasions (95.3%) this was done anonymously.

713 of the 767 (93%) came from just 4 computers with one computer accessing the forms on no fewer than 634 occasions – 89% of the total online responses. In a remarkable coincidence, that IP address was the same one that was responsible for 57% of the rural survey.

In common with the rural school survey, the majority of the resulting responses had blank comments sections.

Those with comments commonly praised the same two councillors as had been singled out in the rural schools survey too.

One response – curiously from the computer singly responsible for 89% of the online responses, asked for the new school to be named after one of these councillors, Peter Nield. Mr Nield happens to be Angus Council’s spokesperson for Education and the driver of this scheme. (See comments in the section below on the political situation at Angus Council.)

Discounting the anonymous multiple responses indicated a very poor response to the survey by genuine consultees – and that those who did respond had serious concerns about road safety and would prefer their own schools to be refurbished, rather than seeing a transfer to a new build in the proposed location.

These unarguably genuine results of the survey painted a very different picture to the one Councillor Myles was trying to portray in saying he was giving the people of Arbroath ‘what they said they wanted’.

The reality is that his intention is to give them what he and his colleagues want to give them.

The mysterious IP addresses

Eventually the IP addresses of the main offenders were released under an FOI ruling from the Information Commissioner.

It turned out that the two main offenders were BT addresses, one of which was a static address. This means that the identity of the perpetrator is discoverable.

However, BT needs a court order or a request from the police in order to release that information.

This has not been done but it means that should this matter come to law or this proposal be taken to a judicial review, the legal means to identify one of the people who submitted large numbers of online responses exists and will be used.

We understand that the static IP address in question was the one submitting 89% of the online responses to the survey on the merger of the two urban schools into the proposed new school – and the one asking for the new school to be named after Peter Nield, the Education spokesperson responsible for the scheme.

One of the IP addresses, responsible for one of the smaller number of multiple hits, turned out to be behind Angus Council’s own firewall. Despite requests Angus Council are adamant that they cannot identify the terminal responsible.

These revelations could not be more damaging. They leave the surveys with no credibility.

Councillor Myles is obliged, in professional probity as an elected representative and, as Council Leader, a senior public servant, to drop the proposals or to conduct a second survey.

Instead of this, his officers have issued a note saying they had taken account of the multiple responses and were pushing ahead with the project.

This is a manifest nonsense.

Had they taken account of the multiple responses by discounting them as, properly, must be done, they would have been left with clear opposition to the proposals from the genuine responses.

How, exactly, is that a foundation for going ahead?

NOTE: Read the detail for yourself

The lead story, of which this is an investigation detail, is: Miles more on Myles: Angus Council, FOI and Arbroath Schools Review.

Choose which other parts of this investigation you wish to read in detail and in what order. Most are short – but for obvious reasons the piece on the FOI revelations on the two ‘public surveys” is more extensive.

• The Arbroath School Estate Review
• The scandal of the public opinion surveys
• Costs and funding of the proposed new school
• The educational benefit of a primary ‘superschool‘ of 500 pupils
• Cheaper and more cost effective alternatives
• Traffic risk to small children on the Westway town bypass
• Council determination to proceed with this project at all costs
• The political situation at Angus Council