The pupils of Hillhead Primary School in Wick, a demonstrably successful school whose parents and children want it to continue, created these inventive images as part of the campaign save their school.

One of these images – above – has already been used to introduce our article on the Education Secretary’s indecipherable decision to permit the closure of this school.

The pupils took the fact that their school runs at a very healthy 81% capacity.

The images they have made and the material they have used to make them also say a lot about Wick and the lives they live there – above and below.

Some of the images show a developing sense of symbolism – like the one below,  drawn on the sand with the tide about to obliterate it. The author of this image can now put a name on that tide -  Michael Russell. Perhaps it’s an ebb tide?

Some images work hard to tell the whole mathematical story – as below …

… as well as saying, as does the one below, something about the dietary preference of children everywhere.

There are images fed by sharp observation, finding readymades they can turn to their advantage – as with the two below and the third from the top:

… a galvanic option above;

… and, above, proving the cost of living in a place like Wick.

This (above) and the one below use familiar toys to put the case.

And a final two, below, are having all kinds of fun using what comes to hand:

… from the idyllic when they still had hope of surviving;

… to a conundrum of multiple identical identities that their school, Hillhead, now shares with Muirfield and  Timmergreens schools in Arbroath – via the dark art of bureaucratic cloning of educational benefit statements.

Thank you Hillhead pupils, for your playful creativity. It reminds all of us just where the careless decisions taken in faraway places by those adrift from consequences, really make their presence felt.

‘Live Long and prosper’, as in the Vulcan salute from Spock in Startrek. You are about ‘to boldly go where no man has gone before’ – to a brand new school. Enjoy it.