News / Race to publish school consultation reports
EDUCATION staff at Shetland Islands Council are working overtime to publish consultation reports on the future of four closure-threatened rural primary schools next week.
The council’s schools service has received 579 responses to its Blueprint for Education proposals to close the primary schools at Uyeasound, Burravoe, North Roe and Sandness in a bid to save money.
The four reports, each around 70 pages long, will be published during the day on Tuesday 19 April.
Head of schools Helen Budge said the department had been “naïve” about the workload involved in processing four separate reports within the five weeks available since the consultation ended on 13 March.
Staff will be working over the weekend to make sure the documents are available on the council’s website at www.shetland.gov.uk/education/blueprintforeducation.asp on Tuesday.
Ms Budge said: “I want to extend a huge thankyou to the staff who have worked day and night over the past few weeks to get these reports as detailed and well informed as we possible can.
“All the questions and queries that have been raised have been answered after gathering all the information.
“However in hindsight, it’s been much more work than I anticipated. To take four reports in this way was perhaps naïve considering the level of work that we have actually had to do for each one. I would not take on four consultations on four closures again.
“Having said that, we are delighted so many folk took the time to respond because there have been lots of questions to answer and we want councillors to make an informed decision and to do that we have to provide them with as much information as we can.”
There will be three weeks for people to digest the consultation reports and lobby their councillors prior to the 10 May meeting of the council’s services committee where the future of the four schools will be debated.
A final decision on their fate will be made by the full council a week later on 17 May, though that is likely to rubber stamp the decision of the services committee, on which all 22 councillors sit.
The largest response has been to the Uyeasound consultation with 236 replies, followed by North Roe with 188, Burravoe with 83 and Sandness with 72. Parents from Uyeasound also handed in a 400 signature petition opposing the closure of their award-winning school.
Copies of the consultation reports will also be available at the schools service headquarters at Lerwick’s Hayfield House, at the Lerwick library and at the affected schools.
In December the council approved the closure of Scalloway junior high school, a decision backed by the Scottish government after it had been called in for further examination.
Skerries secondary department, the smallest in the country with just three pupils, escaped closure after councillors decided it was too important to the island’s economic survival.
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