School closures

[Speccy]

I am struck by the lack of perspective. All over the country - all over the western world in fact - we are struggling to maintain the services we have built up to maintain a decent standard for our most vulnerable people. In Shetland we still have enough money to keep decent standards of welfare going, if we spend wisely.

 

All Council departments have made cuts. Most have relatively small budgets compared to education and community care. There is not much more to glean from the other departments. Education and community care are the biggest spenders. The money should go where there is the greatest need. Community care is facing the same cuts as education. They are dealing with the most needy, vulnerable, friendless, lonely, abandoned, ill, senile, poverty-stricken and vulnerable. They need to help people who have a huge need, or to relieve their desperate families. Social work needs to be able to step in and protect the children in danger, the children who have much greater problems than which school they go to. They need to protect also our vulnerable adults, the people who no longer have parents to protect and support them.

 

We are facing a situation already where cuts in care homes and social care could leave dangerous gaps in help for desperately needy adults. In schools, we are looking at a very good education system, being slowly starved of funds, but still very good. We are looking at cuts which could require teenagers to travel longer on a bus each day, or stay in a very good, supportive hostel, and still get a very good education, perhaps a better one. We are looking at children with protective, supportive and responsible parents to look after them, homes to go back to and the health and resilience to help them cope with change and perhaps even benefit from it.

 

We are in very serious danger of keeping schools open due to emotive campaigning, and continuing to strangle our other services, including the ones which make life that little bit better for everyone, for the rest of our lives. And we will all need community care, sooner or later, for ourselves, for our elderly relatives. And so will these children that come after us.

 

Please get a perspective.

[Rubbernecker]

I'm following this schools debate with interest, and am bemused by the delaying tactics in Skerries.

http://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/2013/10/29/school-closure-meeting-delayed-again/print/

I tend to think this will make the campaigners seem ever less credible. Is this why the SIC is just rolling it's eyes and giving them more rope?

[shetlandpeat]

I

 

We are in very serious danger of keeping schools open due to emotive campaigning, and continuing to strangle our other services, including the ones which make life that little bit better for everyone, for the rest of our lives. And we will all need community care, sooner or later, for ourselves, for our elderly relatives. And so will these children that come after us.

 

Please get a perspective.

There is a side not mentioned here but as important to think about. Many folk in care due to their age and/or condition may not have anyone to support them. It may not be practical. Though, children, in the whole, have their parent(s) who can and should support them. "I did not choose my parents, but I chose to have children" is something that should be kept in mind. Mind, if your duty of care as a parent is to campaign to get others to take part responsibility for them so be it. I would guess though, if these changes are implemented many who complain of the "excessive" journey will let their charges make that journey.

[paulb]

you could also argue that the children have a duty of care for their parents. is it right that the state either local or national should take over the childrens responsibility. for example if all the children leave shetland and their parents are left up here alone why should the children not return to care for their parents. or move the parents in with the children.

 

care should not be the option of first choice.

it should be

self

family

community

state.

if the folks in the past could do it so can we. 

[shetlandpeat]

The advanced stages of mental illness and other degenerative conditions need speciallist care, not one perhaps a family can do, though, it seems that anyone can qualify as a parent until they are proved not.

 

as for the past, children walked miles to school, they worked and there were lunatic asylums that drugged and bound the mentally ill, or children that had been impregnated by their uncle, the past is not always a correct bench mark.

[JustMe]

OK so we now have another consultant coming up with yet another scheme.  Now I keep hearing that closing schools is nothing to do with saving money but is in the best interests of the pupils.  Well in that case lets have a consultant hired to tell the councillors where they can legitamately save money within the education budget without closing schools other than on educational grounds.  Or would the education department be afraid that a consultant might end up saying that cutting the administrative budget in half would be a good place to start?.

[Frances144]

Didnt they do this a few years back with Evil Headmaster Lookie-likey?

He came up, they paid him a huge amount, he said what should happen, they didn't dare do it, and then he went south?

 

Always good to get someone else to do your dirty work.

[Wheelsup]

The more I hear about this, I think that perhaps it might be better to take education out of the hands of our council. Perhaps it would be better run directly by a separate authority. My estimation of the SIC's ability to handle such an important  issue is low. After all this greatly affects the economic viability of the communities concerned as well as  providing the best possible education for our children.

 

My concern is that there are two factors pushing this along; short -term cost-cutting and justification for a new high school in Lerwick

[brian.smith]

The more I hear about this, I think that perhaps it might be better to take education out of the hands of our council. Perhaps it would be better run directly by a separate authority. My estimation of the SIC's ability to handle such an important  issue is low. After all this greatly affects the economic viability of the communities concerned as well as  providing the best possible education for our children.

 

My concern is that there are two factors pushing this along; short -term cost-cutting and justification for a new high school in Lerwick

Well put. Small communities require services firstly to survive and certainly to prosper. Do people not read the news fact people buy houses and moved to areas only if the have decent services of which education would be at the top of that list

[shetlandpeat]

Set up a private school?

[crofter]

It is not legitimate to spend e.g. £33,000 per child on secondary education in Baltasound when there are high-quality and better-value alternatives. If people really are moving there to take advantage of a school that costs us all so dear then I'm afraid I don't see what economic benefit they are to us. If we want to alleviate poverty we need to sort this out and make sure our education spend is fair and good value for all children.

 

Where do you get the number 33,000 from?  Because I am just reading the report by Professor Ledingham, and he suggests it is a lot less.  Also don't forget that if you send bairns from the isles (or those who would have travel times over 65 minutes) to school in Lerwick, you need to pay for their transport and hostel costs.  Which wipes out the savings gained by closing the Junior Highs, so maybe not such "good value"? 

[damissinlink]

i think closing schools in the out lying areas is not the best idea in the world and would not be ideal for the children with all the travel that will be involved, but it has been done before. i also think that while the folk in the country and the isles are not wanting there children to be doing all the travelling etc and how there education may be hampered, i ask what about the lerwick bairns, they all ready have quite big classes why would they want more bairns in the anderson would this help or hinder the lerwick bairns?

[damissinlink]

i also think that cost cutting should start from the top! i think if the wans in the toon hall should cut dir pay and dir spending folk might be more understanding to the cuts they are making the rest of shetland suffer. lead by example!!!

 

 

"setting an example is not the main means of influencing others, its the only means"

Albert Einstein..

Edited November 12, 2013 by damissinlink

[papastour]

Today is the right day for closing schools!!

[papastour]

Closing Skerries School that is delivering an excellent education, and saving no money.  This could only happen in Shetland??