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.