News / Skerries vows to fight on
THE SKERRIES community is to appeal to Scottish education minister Mike Russell to “call in” Wednesday’s council decision to close their school’s secondary department.
Islanders said they were “devastated” after councillors voted by the narrowest of margins to withdraw secondary education from Skerries and send the school’s three pupils to Lerwick’s Anderson High School as of August next year.
Closing the department will save the local authority an estimated £73,000 per annum and give pupils access to a wider range of education. But they will have to stay in hostel accommodation during the week.
Father of three Ryan Arthur, who is about to move into his newly built house with wife Julie, said he felt “awful”.
“I absolutely put my heart and soul into building this house this year, which was delayed and delayed over this school decision.
“Eventually we decided to go ahead and build it anyway and just hope the decision would go our way. It is just awful.”
Arthur said the community was ready to continue their fight and felt that the education minister had valid reasons to overrule the council’s decision.
He felt that all the advice – educational and socio-economic – that was in favour of retaining secondary education on the small island had been ignored by councillors and officials.
“The first thing we will do is to appeal to Mike Russell to call in the decision. I believe we have a practically airtight case to do so.
“Throughout all the waffle councillors were subject to on Wednesday and Tuesday, no particular educational benefit for closing the school was actually spelt out.
“In fact, the HMIe report says that removing our kids from here and taking them to Lerwick will only result in ‘negligible education benefit’,” he said.
The travel issues associated with the 90-minute ferry journey between Skerries and the Shetland mainland have also not been resolved, he said.
Arthur added that the economic consequences of closing the department should have been more thoroughly considered.
“The school had the utmost support from the entire community, and everybody here can recognise its significance in keeping and attracting working age families and their children to the island,” he said.
The 70 islanders contribute around £5 million through fishing and fish farming to the Shetland economy.
Arthur said that all the alternatives – such as reducing he current S1 – S4 secondary education to just S1 and S2, as now agreed for other Shetland schools – should have been considered and consulted upon.
“At the end of the day, Hayfield House [the council’s schools service] has always wanted this place closed no matter what,” he said.
The minister has six weeks to decide once the Skerries community has lodged their appeal.
An online petition urging Mike Russell to reverse the council decision has been started by East Kilbride man Iain Murray whose grandmother was from Skerries.
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