trowie246

If you're speaking about councillors here, I agree. But to make pledges in your manifesto which is a major vote winner and then do a u-turn, that is fraud in my book. If you're speaking about SIC officers then I have no problem criticising someone who is earning £98,000 a year when I feel they're making a backside of it.

Yes paulb, I think the closure of the JHS's has a fair bit to do with the new AHS and it's not just being done to save money. If it was all about savings then why was the new secondary hub model, which was passed by the council about 2 years ago not implemented? No adequate explanation was given as to why it never happened, yet if it had gone ahead it would have saved in the region of one million pounds. Why am I hearing about head teachers going to meetings in Lerwick and making suggestions which are never followed up? Why also is Helen Budge so adament that the new Curriculum for Excellence cannot work in JHS's when Mike Russell and a union rep both spoke on Radio Shetland following Helen's comments saying that was simply not true?

In my view closing schools is not the answer and I don't believe it's all about making financial savings. I think it has been the intentions of Schools Service for a long time now to drastically reduce the size of the school estate. If it was all about money they would have spent more time considering other options. Is this what they call 'out of the box thinking' ? Time and again we see Council departments being criticised for having too many staff, too many buildings, too big a budget and pretty much only out to build their empire. Here I see Education being criticised for spending too much time trying to shrink their empire and save money ? In any case, Councilors have instructed the education department to make savings, large savings. The sort that can not be done simply by getting a discount by bulk buying pencils. I'll take the 'out of the box thinking' comment as a compliment, thanks. Getting rid of teachers is not my idea of shrinking an empire. Teachers are front line staff and any reduction could impact on the quality of pupil's education. When people speak about too many staff employed by the SIC they're usually talking about office/admin staff and managers. I have heard that the AHS is now overstaffed since Scalloway shut but I don't suppose that will ever be looked into since they intend to shut junior highs. Are there still 6 pupil support staff there? It's also very unhelpful that unlike primary there are no guidelines on secondary staffing levels. You're absolutely right - it was the councillors who requested the level of savings. What I want to know is why Helen Budge didn't tell the councillors the truth of the matter, that the level of cuts was completely unachievable.

What I'm saying is that I think that the financial situation is 'convenient' for the schools service hidden agenda of shrinking the school estate. They won't reach the savings that they are saying they will achieve by closures, they haven't been properly worked out and people who have pointed out mistakes in the costings are told it is 'typos'. It's very difficult to pick apart the creative accounting that has been going on by Helen Budget in Haywire house for years now but little by little people are digging into it and discovering so called savings are being passed onto other SIC depts and not just school transport, we hear that the same has happened with school IT costs. These are not true savings in real terms. The school service budget costs £35 million. £5 million of that is recharges - costs charged from other depts within the SIC Another £5 million is spent on Additional Support Needs, there will be some cuts here but I imagine it will be kept to a minimum. As quoted on radio Shetland last night 3.3% of the budget spent on central staff, so I think that's just over £1,000000. I think there has to be a much closer look at what these 'recharges' are and why it's so expensive. Also, central staff is far too expensive, Orkney has cut it's Quality Improvement staff to 1.8, Shetland has 3 officers and 2 managers, one of which is dedicated to the Blueprint.

In my view closing schools is not the answer and I don't believe it's all about making financial savings. I think it has been the intentions of Schools Service for a long time now to drastically reduce the size of the school estate. If it was all about money they would have spent more time considering other options.

And that's the biggest pile of c**p too. The councillors DID make decisions last time around and that culminated in the decision to shut Scalloway and Skerries secondary depts and Burravoe and Uyeasound Primaries, utimately Scalloway and Uyeasound closed.

Gary Robinson is a fool, he should have voted the way the vast majority of his own constituents wanted him to vote, the consultation would still have gone ahead. His career as a Wastside councillor is over, no one will trust him ever again. Saying he has not voted for school closures but only for consultation does not make it better, does he think people are stupid? He has voted for formal consultation on the closure of two schools in his own constituency, he's effectively agreed that closures are a possibility when he should have supported the wishes of his constituents to keep their schools open in their own communities! For them, closure is NOT an option. Never mind, he can always stand for councillor in the area he lives (Lerwick) and represent the views of the majority of the people livng there, at the next elections......er, wait a minute.....looks like he's doing that already!

Spinner, the amounts of money we are talking about are so huge that education is going to suffer across the board whether schools close or not. They have been asked to save 3 million pounds this year (which is unacheivable) and 4 million pounds next year. This 'stance' being taken by the education dept is simply a way of dividing communities in Shetland and giving people an excuse to justify school closures.

As far as I'm concerned it should work both ways, Lerwick and rural schools should be both looked on equally when it comes to trying to make any kind of savings in education but this is just not happening. All schools in Shetland have to comply with national staffing levels and composite classes but I hear one primary school in Lerwick has resisted this and to date has not reduced it's staffing level. The proposed school closures that were voted through yesterday smacks of desperation to save money with little thought as to how things will work in reality. They haven't thought any further than close the schools and save the money. Any savings will not be immediate and will only become apparant over a number of years and is all dependent on the new AHS and hostel build, details of which are sketchy to say the least. Has the grant money from the Scottish Government been secured and how much is it? And more importantly where is the rest of the money to complete the project coming from? Also, for any staff wanting voluntary severence where does that money come from? If things are really as bad as Jonathon Wills is stating and Shetland is doomed, is this really the right time to be building a new AHS and hostel? Everyone knows that it is needed but we've waited over 20 years why not wait another 5yrs or so until finances (hopefully) are in better shape?

This attitude actually really annoys me. Speaking personally I am just an ordinary bod with no real insight into the goings on of the council financial or otherwise more than any other person who listens to radio Shetland or reads the Shetland Times. But as chair of a parent council who has had to fight to keep our local school open in the past and no doubt will have to do so again I have had to spend hours of my own time, unpaid, trawling through documents on the SIC website to try and gain some insight into the financial affairs of our local authority. It's not the job of the local people to come up with ideas on how to save money, most of us just don't know enough about how the system works. The final decisions lie with our councillors who are paid to do a job and who have access to any information they require through their officers. Despite reading in news reports that the children and families services cost 48 million pounds the schools service part of it ( education) costs 38 million and the budget for this year has been set at 35 million pounds. It has always been my belief that education should be made a priority and the councillors should now leave the budget at 38 million. The only reason we are having this conversation and facing cuts in Shetland is because the money invested from the reserves funds has had such poor returns due to the economic downturn. Who's to say that they won't recover in the future?

To be quite honest if this does happen in the future I can see many people moving away/not settling here as I think small class sizes and smaller schools have been an attraction here, if you can get similar on mainland Scotland or England why stick around? Education in Shetland has always been of an extremely high quality, mainly due to small class sizes, but I don't believe that will be sustainable in big 'super' schools. Going back to the financial info, from what I can see, the projected savings from closing Aith is due to the fact that none of the teachers will be employed at the AHS. There is a cost against Burravoe of about 45,000 pounds because they will have to employ a 3rd teacher at Mid Yell but there is nothing for Aith, so where exactly are all these specialist secondary teachers going to go in light of the fact that they intent to shut down all (but one) of the JHS secondary dept's? I have heard that the AHS is already over-staffed due to many of the teacher's from Scalloway moving there.

I agree, the new AHS should be built before they even consider shutting any more JHS secondary depts. SIC buildings dept have classified the present AHS buildings as 'B' or 'good' after a major refurb and extension to the canteen area and upgrade of heating system. Previous to that it was a 'C' or 'poor'. The upgrade to the heating system had been planned for a while but the extension and upgrade of the canteen was not and appeared to happen out of the blue while the consultation on the closure of Scalloway secondary dept was taking place. There certainly is no mention of an upgrade during consultation meetings when Scalloway parents were voicing their concerns re the canteen facilities. I haven't found out where the money came from for the unplanned upgrade or how much it cost despite extensive searching of docs on the SIC website. I did hear it was fast-tracked through the capital projects budget but maybe someone can enlighten me? By the ed dept's own admission the AHS building as it stands at the moment is classified as 'C' - poor according to the Scottish Government Suitability Workbook. This is one of the reasons they have used in their grant application for funding for a new school. (quote) " 'C' - Poor - showing major problems and/or not operating optimally ( the school building and grounds impede the delivery of activities that are needed for children and communities in the school)." (unquote)

I'm just a bit confused that they've chosen to show it as a percentage of the education budget if it doesn't come out of that budget. Will the new councillors realise that? Because it's not made clear. Also, this is the one main cost which is uncontrollable, once the sic commits to bussing school bairns long distances to get to school there is no going back and transport costs is the one cost which is guaranteed to rise over the years. I share Crofter's concerns that the extra transport costs predicted when Uyeasound school shut have in fact doubled, maybe there have been unforeseen circumstances but it makes me wonder how/where they get the transport costs from and how accurate they are. Just a small error in the documentation but Hamars Ness is in Fetlar, not Unst. Pupils getting the 7.50am ferry to gutcher would be in Mid Yell at approx. 8.15am. That is 55 mins before the school day begins.

Just a thought but could the 6% transport costs they show in the pie chart relate to transport required within the school day eg ferrying bairns back and fore to leisure centres rather than transport to and from school? And possibly costs relating to taxi fares for special needs pupils?

I am also questioning some of the figures. I might be wrong here but I think they are being a bit disingenuous by saying that school transport makes up 6% of the education budget. School transport does not come out of the education budget, it comes out of transport. I don't understand why they would show it as a cost against the education budget, which makes me wonder if this 6% is for something else? Can anyone shed any light on this? Helen Budge has made no secret of the fact in the past that she is not concerned about the cost of school tansport because it does not come out of her budget.

For anyone who has the time and the stomach to trawl through the info that councillors have requested from children's services before a decision is taken at Friday's meeting re school closures. http://www.shetland.gov.uk/coins/submissiondocuments.asp?submissionid=13620

I completely agree that education is always going to be more expensive in island groups than on the scottish mainland. And it is more expensive in Shetland than Orkney for a number of reasons but mainly because geographically it's easier for them to have fewer schools. I also wonder how much money we are spending on Additional Support Needs in schools, including the Bell's Brae special needs unit. Before anyone jumps on me I am not saying that the money should not be spent on these bairns I think the absolute opposite. I am just pointing out that perhaps this is an area where a good chunk of money is being spent. Also from the Scottish Government website are some Additional Supports statistics. Orkney have 257 pupils requiring additional support in school. These are broken down into different catagories - here are 3 - learning disability, 31 Dyslexia, 29 Autism, 54. Shetland have 803 pupils requiring additional support. Learning disability, 73 Dyslexia, 127 Autism, 58. What was interesting for me was the much larger number in Learning Disabilty and Dyslexia for Shetland. To me this means that Shetland is much better at identifying these problems and giving additional support. This also of course means spending more money. It was also interesting that the 'Autism' figure was almost the same.

I spent a bit of time looking up statistics on the Scottish Government website and found a couple of interesting things. I know that we quite often get compared with Orkney and although I think this is a bit unfair as they are geographically smaller and roughly oval in shape meaning that nowhere is very far away from anywhere else so it is easier to have a smaller school estate we do have a similar population and pupil numbers. I looked at a report regarding PE targets for school bairns dated June 2012. The Scottish Government wants primary bairns to have at least 120 mins of physical education per week, 100 mins for secondary. Orkney is achieving 85% for primary and 100% for secondary. Shetland is achieving 61% for primary and 75% for secondary. When you take into account the fact that we have brilliant leisure centre facilities many which are situated next to a school I find these figures for Shetland pretty disappointing.

I agree that financial information regarding where exactly 42 million pounds is being spent has been far too vague and if you ask for any financial information from the sic you would need to be an accountant to understand it, what with recharges and so on. It's so complicated that I wonder if they have a firm grasp on the financial side of things themselves. The way the system works can make small school budgets look very large, eg. the headteacher of our school needed the cloakroom painted. This is an extremely small area with basically 3 walls to be painted. All jobs are carried out by DLO. The headteacher does not get a quote but has to guesstimate how much to keep aside out of the school budget to cover the cost. She kept aside £1000. It costs about £800. To get 3 walls painted. Ridiculous.

My 'alternative' is leave the rural areas alone. We're sick and fed up of being continually targeted. Go ahead and build a 'super' primary school in Lerwick, one school instead of two for Lerwick. Despite Brian Smith's chastising of councillor Manson for speaking up and saying more jobs could go within the SIC I think she is only speaking the truth. He says that job losses means an impact on the economy and society. What about the economy and society of rural Shetland by closing schools? You can always create more jobs in the future if necessary but once a school shuts it shuts for good.

If your proposing to close all but one of the JHS's in Shetland (and that one has only been saved because it is brand new) and have them taught in a school in Lerwick I fail to see how that is anything other than centralisation and a bias towards Lerwick. But I do agree that the SIC has given a degree of support to rural areas in the past, including a roro ferry to Papa Stour which the majority of islanders didn't want/need.

At last, the education dept or whatever they call themselves now, children's services I think, have come clean and published their 'vision' for the future of education in Shetland. It comes as no surprise to anyone with an interest in the blueprint that they are proposing a massive reduction of the school estate (therefore a huge increase in transport/hostel costs) which amounts to one thing and one thing only - centralisation and decimation of rural communities. Now it is up to the councillors to agree or not that centralisation is the right thing for Shetland. Personally I think it would be a disaster.

I never said it did. You are a bus user and when there is no bus you have to pay for a taxi. I am a car user and I have to pay a car tax. Sorry if I'm not making myself clear.

What bigger cuts? Please explain.

Substitute Lerwick with Aberdeen, Glasgow, or Edinburgh, You said in your post that you could substitute Lerwick with Aberdeen, Glasgow or Edinburgh - then go on to say in another post that you couldn't give a toss if they reduced the service to Aberdeen. Well, my point is that I do give a toss if they reduce the ferry service to the isles. I used to be able to jump in my car and go to Lerwick without thinking about it because I am not from the isles originally. Now I can't and obviously I live with that because I do not have any other option. I do not want to see a reduction in service. Simple as that. I sometimes use SHOUTY caps as you call it not to shout but for emphasis on certain words. Pardon me if you find that offensive. Colin, I'm talking about people with cars. I sympathise with people who rely on buses but I have a car which I pay my road tax on, by the way. I thought the petition was against cuts to the SIC ferries ie. a reduction in service and that is why I signed it. Yes, there are other suggestion of ways to make/save money and not all of them involve cuts but it is fairly obvious which ones are going to save the most money and therefore will be the most popular amongst some councillors.