School closures

[MuckleJoannie]

The SIC home education policy is available online.

 

http://www.shetland.gov.uk/education/documents/HomeEducationPolicy.pdf

[trowie246]

The suggested savings for closing Olnafirth school for the first year is £91,000. It will be less than this in reality as an additional 2 x eight seater mini buses is required for school transport, this cost of £36,000 (which has already been taken off the total savings) is based on current school transport costs which are from 7 years ago when the previous school transport contracts were awarded.

 

The new transport contracts are due to be awarded next month. I have had people say to me that Schools Service are not expecting much of an increase in costs (which incidentally do not come out of Schools Service budget but still has to be recognised as a cost to the SIC) Forgive me if I say that I am hoping they get the shock of their lives when the tenders come in. I fail to see how costs can not have increased, fuel alone has gone up in price.

 

Any savings made by closing Olnafirth will be further reduced the following year as Brae Primary is due to go down from 5 to 4 teachers next year, if Olnafirth closes and the bairns are sent to Brae this will not happen.

[paulb]

we raised that with the council woman at the aith meeting. she dismissed a estimate from a transport provider about the cost of shifting all the transport to lerwick.

 

i wonder who was right i think i know. as you know there system does not work in real life. if we are trying to save money on say shopping we dont spend an extra 20 quid to save 5.

 

sadly if it does not come from there budget then its a saving. also the cost of the andersons education. is artificially reduced by shifting things like special needs to a county wide budget. yet other schools have all the costs added. there unattached fund is 2 million a year.

[humptygrumpty]

I personally think that whatever figures the sic come up with will be stoness , just designed to suit themselves in their own peerie plan. How can anybody take seriously anything the sic come up with considering the multiple millions lost / wasted and spent on utter hellery in the last 10 years alone ?

[trowie246]

I think they have a bit of a cheek to still be emphasing under capacity in schools as a reason to shut them, considering the Rural Commission was highly critical of the way some local authorities work this out. The Commission have recommended that there is a standardised formula for all local authorities.

 

I've never been in the Olnafirth Primary school but I've driven past it. I find it hard to believe it's operating at 10% capacity and that it can hold 125 pupils.

[shetlandpeat]

I personally think that whatever figures the sic come up with will be stones , just designed to suit themselves in their own peerie plan. How can anybody take seriously anything the sic come up with considering the multiple millions lost / wasted and spent on utter hellery in the last 10 years alone ?

 

That may be because there is no real public scrutiny. Perhaps someone could ask for the info piece by piece and work it out. Otherwise, not trying to sound rude, you are just blowing hot air. Oh, forgot about the conspirator theory, in that case, we will never know. Perhaps they are there as conspirators themselves just sent by the cooncil to demoralise us, make us think we are not really bright enough to understand what they think and throw us off the track. Damned Quislings.

[trowie246]

Someone phoned in to public platform on Radio Shetland tonight and asked why none of the schools in Yell were up for closure as there are 3 schools.

 

Firstly, Burravoe Primary is up for proposed closure AGAIN despite being up for closure in 2011 and being 'saved' by the Scottish Government ministerial call-in. The Rural Commission has recommended that schools have a 5 year minimum breathing space between consultations. This is being ignored by the SIC as it has not been made law (yet).

 

Secondly, Cullivoe Primary is a 2 teacher school and no 2 teacher schools are being looked at during these consultations.

 

And finally, here is some food for thought.

 

Shetland receives a lot of extra money from the Scottish Government, Grant Aided Expenditure (GAE) because of the number of rural schools with less than 70 pupils. The grant equates to about £2,900 per pupil.

 

If Burravoe and Cullivoe both shut and we only had one school in Yell Shetland would lose the GAE money for the 3 schools in Yell which could equate to over £200,000 as the pupil numbers would be over 70.

[Shasel]

I personally think that whatever figures the sic come up with will be stones , just designed to suit themselves in their own peerie plan. How can anybody take seriously anything the sic come up with considering the multiple millions lost / wasted and spent on utter hellery in the last 10 years alone ?

 

That may be because there is no real public scrutiny. Perhaps someone could ask for the info piece by piece and work it out. Otherwise, not trying to sound rude, you are just blowing hot air. Oh, forgot about the conspirator theory, in that case, we will never know. Perhaps they are there as conspirators themselves just sent by the cooncil to demoralise us, make us think we are not really bright enough to understand what they think and throw us off the track. Damned Quislings.

 

Actually we have scrutinised and shown that they cannot figure out the GAE properly making the savings exaggerated by over 10%. They have offered to let us go in and scrutinise the figures and I fully intend to do so.

[MuckleJoannie]

 

I've never been in the Olnafirth Primary school but I've driven past it. I find it hard to believe it's operating at 10% capacity and that it can hold 125 pupils.

 

I spent my last two or three years of primary at Olnafirth. There are two classrooms in the main building and another two in the huts on the other side of the playground, though I think 125 bairns in there would be a bit of a pack.

 

I was surprised to hear there are only 13 bairns there just now. There were far more in my day with a lot fewer people living in the village. According to the news the previous attempts to close it have made people from Voe send their bairns elsewhere.

[ll]

Is it not the case that every house that comes up for sale in Voe and Brae are bought to let to oil workers.

Most of the people coming will take family houses and erode school numbers. And the remaining locals claim they are loosing their pubs?

[Shasel]

 

I've never been in the Olnafirth Primary school but I've driven past it. I find it hard to believe it's operating at 10% capacity and that it can hold 125 pupils.

 

I spent my last two or three years of primary at Olnafirth. There are two classrooms in the main building and another two in the huts on the other side of the playground, though I think 125 bairns in there would be a bit of a pack.

 

I was surprised to hear there are only 13 bairns there just now. There were far more in my day with a lot fewer people living in the village. According to the news the previous attempts to close it have made people from Voe send their bairns elsewhere.

 

125 comes from just taking the surface area of the school and dividing by the area needed for a child. Olnafirth only has four classrooms and the is a maximum of 25 in a composite class so in theory the maximum is actually 100. There is a wrinkle though that the SIC admissions policy states that school capacity is based on projected roll and budget. So for a single teacher school, like Olnafirth, that would make the capacity 19.

 

Placing requests from Olnafirth spiked up after every time the council tried to close the school.

[shetlandpeat]

There has been a steady fall in the population of some of the islands. Folk are not breeding like they used to. Unless it is the District Heating that is enticing them away.

[peenk]

How can you say that

[peenk]

You dinna live here. Question. why is Shetland not to your liking.

[Winston Smith]

There has been a steady fall in the population of some of the islands. Folk are not breeding like they used to. Unless it is the District Heating that is enticing them away.

 

 

I agree that some of the islands have seen a decline in population; however the remainder of this post is insensitive, crass, claptrap.