For Argyll will not be at tomorrow’s first meeting in the new session of Argyll and Bute Council. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Cleland Sneddon
Princess Royal to visit Helensburgh
The Princess Royal is to visit Helensburgh later this month. Continue reading
No remission of anger at meeting with Rural Education Commission
On a truly awful night of driving rain, the meeting of the Commission on the Delivery of Rural Education Continue reading
ARSN submission to Rural Education Commission
The Argyll Rural Schools Network (ARSN) has made its submission to the Commission on the Delivery of Rural Education, Continue reading
United opposition dissociates itself from Executive response to Commission on Rural Education
The following agreed statement has been issued by opposition councillors on Argyll and Bute Council Continue reading
Highland Council caught in a copy and paste job on school closures
The Scottish Government has called-in a proposal by Highland Council to close four primary schools Continue reading
Costa Sneddonia refloated: council submission to Rural Education Commission
Education Director Cleland Sneddon’s cruise to close rural schools in Argyll was given to sailing too close Continue reading
Distortion of the condition scores of the Argyll school estate
Talking of pressure from external bodies to close schools for financial reasons (HMIE and Audit Scotland) he mentions that: “A Follow-through report in 2007 stated … 59% of the primary school estate was classified as Poor or Bad”.
But the only reference to a figure of ’59% Poor or Bad’ was in the March 2010 School Estate Asset Strategy & Management Plan and was in reference to a much earlier (2005) report which found the Suitability of the Argyll school estate to be thus.
The actual ratings in 2010 were 89% Good or Satisfactory for Suitability, with 9% Poor and NONE rated as Bad.
This marked improvement over the intervening 5 years was largely attributed to a change in methodology whereby Head Teachers were now involved in the gradings – suggesting that teachers were generally much happier than the council with the useability of their teaching spaces & facilities.
Meanwhile, the same 2010 report showed the Condition of the primary school estate as being 84% Good or Satisfactory, 16% Poor and NONE Bad.
The report even acknowledged that the overall average Condition was “Slightly better than the average for Scotland”
Quite how Mr Sneddon feels able to take what was, in 2010, a generally very positive report of both Condition and Suitability of Argyll’s primary schools and turn it round so completely is one of the enduring mysteries of Sneddonia.
Angus must have been one of the six councils he had flown in and out of before he came to Argyll and Bute.
Continuing inability to grasp the GAE funding formula for small rural schools
This is bizarre, given that it was a focal point for the successful dispatch of the first set of closure proposals, with the evidenced challenge from ARSN, through Sandy Longmuir of SSN, upheld by external experts and eventually admitted by the council.
Yet in this submission, Me Sneddon gets it wrong again. He quotes: ‘.’The small schools element of GAE is allocated to authorities as a per capita payment (currently approximately £2,450 per annum) in respect of each pupil in schools which have less than 70 pupils enrolled.
SRSN’s Sandy Longmuir says, wearily: ”The figure for Argyll and Bute Council in 2011-12 is £3,877,838 for 1413 qualifying pupils. This gives a per pupil figure of £2744 per pupil. They used the figure of £2730 in the second set of proposals last spring – we did not argue this.’
Hilariously, in this response Mr Sneddon goes on to suggest a sliding scale of GAE funding – which would have some merit if it did not come from a man who cannot master a single scale of calculation.
The use of external bodies as buffer-zones
In his submission Mr Sneddon suggests, variously, that first Education Scotland (the Education Secretary;’s department) and then HMIE might take lover the adjudication of educational benefit arguments.
Relying on HMIE for rigorous objectivity would be fool’s gold. This is the body that gave Uyeasound School in Shetland a heartwarmingly ringing endorsement for the quality of its teaching and learning – and then allowed it to be closed, on the basis of an ”educational benefit’ statement on the transfer of its pupils to a school with a much less shining HMIE report.
Education Scotland would be no better. Like calls to like. Much of the everyday work of civil servants at Education Scotland and those in local authority education departments is collaborative. They are far too close. They see themselves as being essentially on the same side. Recent evidence of this cosy relationship was seen in the call-in letter to Angus Council from the Head of the Infrastructure Unit, suggesting a ‘helpful’ meeting).
Education Scotland could not be accepted any more than HMIE as a genuinely independent assessor.