Tag Archives: community impact

Giving precedence to process over content and evidence

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Having lost two sets of school closure proposals on the grounds of their content and the lack of sound  evidence to support it, Mr Cleland in this submission argues that process should be the sole criterion for a judicial adjudication of any appealed closure decisions.

Mr Sneddon says: ”The understanding was that a call in by Ministers would only be on the basis of process (our emphasis) however some authorities had decisions on some schools called in and other decisions not when the same process was applied.’

And goes on: ‘The perceived political dimension to calls ins is unhelpful and it would be better if an independent judicial board was established to review decisions where an appeal is lodged – this would ensure that process (our emphasis) is the  focus of decisions on whether a decision is called in. ‘

It seems strange to describe issues of evidence testing as ‘a perceived political dimension’ and Mr Sneddon does seem to have some difficulty in understanding the drift of the law. His failure to do so may suggest that local authorities were given to understand – or assumed – that what the law said was never intended to be what the law did.

He says: ”The ability to “call in” a council’s proposal(s) for the closure of a school or schools was intended to be used in exceptional circumstances only and where a breach in process had been identified.   It was not intended to be a mechanism to review decisions taken by authorities (our emphasis). The same process has been used by authorities for those proposals which were called in as those which were approved.  This suggests a political dimension to the use of the “call in” which was not intended.’

We have been unable to find in the law the limitation Mr Sneddion appears to believe it contains. It is hard to credit that any law would deliberately avoid allowing for a mechanism ‘ to review decisions taken by authorities .

Moreover, the text to Question 12 -  to which Mr Sneddon is actually responding above, evidently unaware of the authoritative contradiction, says:  ‘Under the Schools Consultation Act, Scottish Ministers have powers to decide whether to “call in” or review a Council’s decision to close a school.  This can be applied where it appears to Scottish Ministers that the authority may have failed in a significant regard to comply with the requirements in the Schools Consultation Act or to take proper account of a material consideration relevant to the decision.’

Mr Sneddon’s preferred primacy of ‘process’ is the box-tickers’ charter, the ultimate get out of jail free card.

Process is:

  • Did you include a Community Impact Assessment? Tick,
  • Did you include an Educational Benefits Statement? Tick.
  • Did you consider all viable alternatives to closure? Tick.
  • Did you contact all statutory consultees? Tick?
  • Did you complete the statutory consultation period? Tick.
  • Did you retain all public submissions made during the consultation period? Tick.
  • Did you send these to HMIE with your proposal papers? Tick…….

You get the drift.

‘Process’ does not interrogate the community impact assessment; the educational benefits statement; the dismissed alternatives; the integrity of the ‘consultation’; the content, calibre and evidence in the public submissions tendered during consultation…

‘Process’ does not check the funding impact calculations (GAE); the school condition scores; the school roll projections; the capacity figures…

‘Process’ assumes that all of these are naturally correct – because council’s would never get them wrong? Would they? And would certainly never falsify them? Would they?

The hard evidence we have published from Argyll and Bute and from Angus, shouts in the language of the pantomime these experiences have been: ‘Oh yes they would. Oh yes they did.’

If the Commission were to recommend this strategy, it would mean that flagrantly false claims made by councils in support of their closure proposals would be outside the territory of adjudication.

It would mean that the testing of claims and evidences parent campaigners meticulously and scrupulously undertake would, when they prove council claims to be in error or worse, be of no account.

This simply cannot be.

The attempt to downgrade the impact on a community of the loss of its school

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Mr Sneddon says: ‘The primary concern should be the educational benefits to children and young people. The likely effect of the school closure on the local community should not be allowed to have more importance than the educational benefits for children and young people. In practice the impact upon a community became an emotive issue which detracted from the discussion of educational benefits for children and young people.’

This seeks to disregard altogether the relationship between community and school and the impact of one upon the other.

It also suggests that parents prioritise the interests of their community above those of their children. Who has ever met such a parent? Almost always, nothing comes before the perceived best interests of a child.

In fact there is evidence flatly to the contrary from one of the schools Mfr Sneddon attempted to close. Achaleven School in Connel, in the midst of a lively community, was abandoned by virtually all parents in the community because of problems on the education side. They took their kids elsewhere. The community now faces losing its school since the council made no effort to resolve the situation as it should have done.

The fact that Mr Sneddon either cannot see or does not care to see, is that parents of children in rural schools have made an informed decision that this particular educational context provides the best early foundation for the future lives of their children.

The knowing misapplication of evidence to deny community impact

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In strenuous efforts in his submission to dismiss the mutual sustainability of community and school, Mr Sneddon uses the very same trick he was exposed as trying during the closure proposals.

In his responses to Questions 8 and 16 in this submission, Mr Sneddon says:

  • ‘However the presence of a primary school is not the determining factor for whether communities continue to thrive or decline – there is a greater discernible impact of access to employment, to affordable housing and economic diversity – and many communities have continued to decline whilst they have a primary school whilst others have continued to thrive in the absence of a school. Statements about a school being the focus of a community and without it the community would die are highly emotive and are impossible to challenge but in many cases are not supported by evidence. ‘ (Q8)
  • ‘There would be significant cost consequences to commissioning unique research and there is considerable doubt whether the impact of a school closure on a rural community could be easily isolated from a range of other socio economic factors. Use of general research such as “Factors Influencing Rural Migration Decisions in Scotland” or the “Outer Hebrides Migration Study” which both suggested access to employment, economic diversity and access to affordable housing were of greater influence than the location of a school in a community were fiercely contested by campaigners.
    ‘Evidence of communities where growth has occurred either after a school closures or in the absence of a school at any time is presented  alongside evidence of the general rural population decline in communities with schools.  As an authority we do not accept that having no school is a detriment to a thriving community.   We have many examples of this within Argyll and Bute, e.g. Ardentinny, Cairndow and Kilmelford. ‘ (Q16)

Above he refers specifically to the Outer Hebrides Migration Study.

He introduced this first in a fairly bizarre press release he issued one night during the first set of closure proposals, entitled Response to allegations made by ARSN.

His argument was that this study proved that the presence of a school in a rural community was not a priority in supporting its sustainability.

Since testing this was not the focus of the study in question, Mr Sneddon’s selective quotation was misapplied. (Sandy Longmuir, Chair of SRSN later showed, in an article published here: School Closures: The integrity of Cleland Sneddon’s information, Part-One, that selective quotation, usually in flagrant distortion of the original meaning, was a feature of Mr Sneddon’s case making.)

Denis Donoghue, one of the authors of the study to which Mr Sneddon had referred and Research Director of Hall Aitken,  the company commissioned to produce it responded to a query from ARSN on its conclusions.

In his letter, he said: ‘Thank you for forwarding the information from your FOI request to Argyll and Bute Council.  I understand that they referred to our 2007 Outer Hebrides Migration Study as a basis for the following conclusion: ‘Studies of the sustainability of rural communities do not generally see the existence of a school as being of comparable importance to local employment, availability of housing, private sector led economic diversity of clean energy.’

‘Firstly, I would like to point out that the section of the report that they refer to sets out the outcomes of a scenario planning workshop involving public sector officials and elected members.  It was only one element of a very comprehensive and wide-ranging research project.  Secondly, the inference that they draw about schools is not one that the vast majority of those reading the report (or even that section) would draw.  The session, as I recollect, did not ask participants to compare importance of local services and it is therefore highly misleading of Argyll and Bute Council (our emphasis) to use this as a basis for drawing this conclusion.’

Mr Donoghue went on to say: ”Overall I feel that using this report as a basis for concluding that schools are less important in sustaining rural communities is wholly unjustified (our emphasis).  The report clearly states that business, jobs and housing are the factors that will help to sustain local communities and that retaining primary school rolls is an explicit desirable outcome of doing so.’ (The full text of Mr Donoghue’s letter is here: Letter from Author of Outer Hebrides Migration Study.

Mr Sneddon’s use again here of reference to this study, despite its authors open declaration, that this is ‘wholly unjustified’, could not be clearer proof of his lack of care for probity of evidence.

Would an honest man and a reliable witness repeat a known misuse of evidence?

The communities Mr Sneddon evidences as thriving despite the loss of their schools might have something to say about that judgment, as would many others.

In the case of Cairndow, this community now runs its own creche and playgroup in the village hall. This facility has proved capable of sustaining the ability of parents of young children to stay in the community – a situation that actually proves the opposite of Mr Sneddon’s claim.

Amongst the schools he tried and failed to shut – the ‘community’ of Ulva in west Mull was not a community at all but, in this widely dispersed small population, came together as a community because of the school. Since the council’s threat to the school’s and their community’s survival, Ulva has continued to grow the strength of the links between the two.