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Thanks.

Doomed schools list fails every test
GARETH ROSE
EDUCATION REPORTER

WE all knew it was coming, as sure as children knew the summer holidays would not last forever. All the warnings about falling rolls, all the half-empty schools and, of course, that alarming £10 million council black hole, much of it the education department's own overspend, meant it was inevitable that at some stage we would see a long list of schools to be closed.

On Friday it came - 13 primary schools, three secondaries and six nurseries were put forward for closure, in a programme on an even bigger scale than had been feared. In the city, it was like a bomb going off. A shocked silence followed by an angry eruption. Parents went from quiet, and in some cases tearful, desperation to angry and determined indignation, in a matter of hours.
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You could chart the change in mood as the day wore on and the consequences of the heart being ripped out of a community became more apparent. Now the time has come to pick among the debris and devastation caused by the council's proposal and try to find the rights and wrongs - and it is not easy.

I thought there would be few people who would be opposed to shutting at least some of Edinburgh's schools. After all, the council's argument is strong - running half-empty schools wastes money that could be better spent on children's education. But there have been plenty of people leaving messages on the Evening News website saying that no schools at all should be closed. The general tone seems to be that money being spent on trams would be better used keeping these schools open.

Sadly, it does not work that way - although maybe we should ask why - and the two areas belong to entirely separate budgets. But it is understandable that people should get confused when they are told class sizes are being reduced because it is better for children to get more one-on-one teacher time, while at the same time schools are being closed because their populations are too low.

But the hard truth is that some schools should close. The maths is undeniable - the schools close, the council saves money, and if that cash is ring-fenced and put back into education, then the children will benefit. So the question is whether the council has got the right schools. In some cases, it would appear that it has not.

Closing Dalmeny and Stockbridge makes no sense. They are very good schools and oversubscribed for a reason - if you send your child there, he or she will get a great start in life. Stockbridge parents complain the city council has got its catchments drawn wrong, and a lot of children who are down as coming from outside the area, are actually going to their nearest school.

A lot of children who attend Abbeyhill and Stockbridge go on to two of the city's top private schools, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville College. Bingham, meanwhile, is to lose both its school and community centre.

But in my opinion the greatest error the council has made so far is in the high schools it has named. The appearance of Drummond Community High School on the list drew an angry and articulate response from a sixth-former on our website. She made it clear that she had benefited from an education at a small, so-called underpopulated school, and if she had not spelled it out in her words, the quality of her grammar and reasoning would have told you as much anyway.

But closing Drummond would not even be the council's biggest mistake. Axing Castlebrae and Wester Hailes Education Centre could be disastrous and have major implications for two of the Capital's poorest wards.

Right now the schools are just 12 months into a £1.5 million project, funded by Sir Tom Hunter, that hopes to narrow the gap in achievement between rich kids and poor, which is supposed to last another two years. Castlebrae is all set to get a new high school building in 2011. It is supposed to be the jewel in the crown of the regen

School's out as 16 to be closed
GARETH ROSE EDUCATION REPORTER
(grose@edinburghnews.com)
TWENTY-TWO schools are to be closed across the city in the biggest programme of its kind seen in Edinburgh.

Three high schools, 13 primaries and six nurseries have been earmarked for closure - within as little as a year - as the council battles to solve a £10 million funding crisis.

Falling rolls had forced the local authority to review the number of state schools in the city. But plans announced today were far more wide-reaching than expected.

Four community centres have also been earmarked for closure in a move which will save £3m a year.

Some of that money will go into making improvements at the schools which will take children from the ones that close.

The sale of most of the properties will also raise over £16m.

The council has promised to keep all playing fields at closing schools as public green spaces. Some buildings will be offered for rent to the NHS and the police. The proposals will now go out to public consultation and are expected to be the subject of some fierce community protests.

The city's education leader, Councillor Marilyne MacLaren, said the closures were for educational, not financial, reasons.

However, the council's dire financial position meant she had been forced to draw up the list sooner than she would have liked- just three months after she took up her post.

"We need to take decisions quickly," she said. "I would have liked time to look at the whole estate, using the same criteria, at a more leisurely pace. I feel I have been accelerated into this process."

But she said there were pressing reasons for closing schools.

"We've got deteriorating school buildings, not fit for purpose, and in some cases two-thirds empty," she said. "We need to take a good, long, hard look at the estate and see how we can provide the best environment for the youngsters.

"Children, teachers and staff get attached to buildings, we understand that, but it is the only way to go to modernise our estate. We're looking to integrate our services where we can, to have primaries near to secondaries, and nurseries next to primaries. We are also looking to put health facilities on school sites, and maybe police."

But Malcolm Chisholm, Labour MSP for Edinburgh North & Leith, said today: "I am appalled that so many popular and well-respected schools in my constituency are up for closure. I will do all I can to help the parents in resisting these proposals."

Council leaders said they had more than doubled the six primary and one secondary school which they said had been privately earmarked for closure before the May elections. The council also estimates it will save £9m in running costs over three years, rather than the £12m predicted under the old Labour administration.

However, the new Lib Dem-SNP council leadership believes the previous estimates were highly optimistic, and their own fairly conservative.

Among the schools targeted for closure is Craigmillar High, while plans to build a new £30m Castlebrae Community High School by 2009 face being scrapped, as the existing school has the lowest occupancy rate of any secondary in the Capital, at just 41 per cent. Instead, pupils will be bussed to Liberton High.

In Bingham, where the Lismore Parents Action Group formed in 2004 to campaign against council closures, the primary school has been put forward for the axe again, along with the nearby community centre.

Two of the secondary schools facing closure - Castlebrae and Wester Hailes Education Centre - received £3m in funding from the Sir Tom Hunter Foundation, aimed at helping under-achieving pupils, which has seen a hairdressing salon and engineering yard built at Castlebrae.

The third, Drummond Community High, was refurbished as part of the first phase of the PPP school-building programme. It is expected to be converted to hold one or possibly two primary scho