News / Parents offer alternative to school closures
A RADICAL plan to create a single junior high school on multiple sites to cover rural Shetland has been proposed by a consortium of parents fighting to save their local schools from closure.
For the first time, Shetland Islands Council invited a public deputation to address its education and families committee on Wednesday where the proposals were laid out.
Three parent council chairs presented an 11 page document outlining major flaws in the council’s own Blueprint for Education designed to save more than £3 million from its schools budget.
The paper also outlined an alternative strategy for saving such a sum to help the authority with its challenging target to cut education spending by 10 per cent.
The Blueprint outraged parents last September with its proposal to close four junior high schools in Aith, Skerries, Sandwick and Whalsay along with five single teacher primary schools in Voe, Burravoe, North Roe, Urafirth and Sandness.
Parent councils from all Shetland’s junior highs, including Baltasound and Mid Yell, which are not under immediate threat, have been meeting since last September to scrutinise the Blueprint.
Their own document highlights some startling statistics about education in the isles, including high levels of staffing and the most generous additional support needs (ASN) spend in Scotland.
The Blueprint, they say, would give Shetland the highest hostel accommodation rates at a time when numbers are falling nationally.
It would also give Shetland the longest school bus journeys in the land, and result in one of the biggest and one of the smallest high schools in Scotland at Lerwick and Brae.
Rather than dismantling the successful junior high school network, they suggest a federated school covering rural Shetland with a single head in charge of six principal teachers.
Staff could travel between sites to deliver certain subjects coupled with a creative use of computer communications.
Their model, they believe, could cut staffing costs by £1.8 million alone, while a further saving of £1.5 million in ASN would still leave the islands with one of the best funded services in the country.
The paper was well received by the committee and eight of its 11 members met with the parent council chairs for one hour after Wednesday’s meeting to hear their arguments more fully.
Aith parent council chairman Jeremy Sansom said he was encouraged by the reception they had received.
“We felt we had a very good hearing and are thankful for that. We feel there are so many good ideas out there and so many folk that want to be involved but feel unable to do so because of procedure,” he said.
SIC children’s services director Helen Budge welcomed the parents’ engagement and promised to look in detail at their proposals.
“It is good to see people spending time and looking at the details of education and how we deliver it here in Shetland in comparison to other places,” she said.
Committee vice chairman George Smith described the parents’ initiative as “heartening” and hoped it could lead to a way of making essential savings without confronting communities with unpalatable choices.
“The best thing about today is that a group of folk have come to the council with new ideas that we can look at seriously and work up and hopefully come up with a solution that’s the best way forward for everybody.”
Budge said that the staff would see if the suggestions could be tied in with work the department is already carrying out into IT, S1 to S3 and the hub and spoke model with a progress report to council in March.
Meanwhile the education and families committee agreed to bring forward the consultation on the future of Sandwick junior high school from 2015 to this year to remove any uncertainty about the school’s future.
The alternative blueprint for junior high schools can be viewed here.
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