News / Islands prepare to battle school plans
ISLAND communities are drawing up battle plans to fight to save their local schools in the wake of radical proposals to redesign education in Shetland.
On Monday night a public meeting will be held in the isle of Yell to gather views about proposals to send 14 year old pupils to Lerwick for their secondary education, forcing them to stay all week in a hostel.
Communities on Whalsay and Unst, who face the same challenge, are considering their positions ahead of next Wednesday’s council meeting to approve a strategy for the future of secondary education.
Meanwhile parent councils in Shetland’s west and south mainland have indicated they intend to step up their campaigns to stop their schools from being closed as Shetland Islands Council strives to save £3.25 million from its education budget.
The reaction is to recommendations from education consultant Don Ledingham in a 144 page report published on Wednesday that has left many in shock.
Ledingham arrived in Shetland on Thursday afternoon and met with stakeholders to discuss his proposals.
In his report, he warned that after years of consultation it was obvious that it would be impossible to ever reach a consensus about the future of education in Shetland.
Therefore, he said: “It is necessary to make difficult decisions in the short term in order to protect the quality of service in the long term.”
He added: “The status quo is quite clearly not an option and any half measures may only serve to put off the inevitable – but with systemic damage being inflicted in the intervening period.”
Ledingham said that education authorities throughout Scotland were scared that unless they implemented “planned and coherent schemes for reducing costs”, they would be forced to make ad hoc closures without any accompanying improvement.
In contrast, he held out a vision for Shetland that he believes will provide an exemplary education for all island pupils.
His rationale for ending the four year junior high school system that has served Shetland well for the past 40 years is to create a seamless learning path for children approaching their qualifications.
He noted a lack of enthusiasm for a previous suggestion to stop teaching pupils at S3 level in smaller schools as part of his argument, as well as fear that these changes were the “thin end of the wedge”.
Parents say they want to keep the current model and are alarmed at the thought of losing their children to a hostel in Lerwick at such a young age.
Mid Yell junior high school parent council chairman John Irvine said the feeling on the island was so strong they had called a public meeting at 7.30pm on Monday night at the school.
“Everyone is feeling very disappointed the council has decided to go along yun route and we are not very happy with the prospect of losing our bairns from the community at the end of S2,” he said.
“Our parent council thoroughly believes the junior high school model is a good one and we support all the schools that are under threat.”
Irvine said they feel that they are “fire fighting” all the time to protect their communities from council cuts, and he felt people did not appreciate the fragility of the island communities.
“It doesn’t take much before things start to break down. Taking these bairns out of the third and fourth year could threaten the viability of the leisure centre – one thing leads to another and all of a sudden we are in a difficult place.
“This is such a huge issue we need to involve the wider community and we need a meeting that lets people air their views. We need to muster the troops, because everyone feels disappointed and frustrated with this.”
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