Issues | For Argyll

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.