News / New rules for councils seeking to shut schools
STRICTER nationwide rules to protect rural schools from the threat of closure will have an impact on the ongoing Blueprint for Education consultation in Shetland.
On Friday, rules that require local authorities to carry out more rigorous consultation in all school closures came into force.
The move was welcomed by community group CURE (Communities United for Rural Education), which opposes Shetland Islands Council’s programme of school closures.
The SIC is currently consulting on closing the primary schools in Sandness, Urafirth, North Roe and Burravoe as well as changing the set-up of secondary education in Shetland’s five junior high schools, with the potential closure of some of them.
In June hundreds turned out for a march through central Lerwick in support of rural schools and communities.
Audrey Edwards of the council’s schools department confirmed on Friday that the new Scottish Government rules would impact on the current process.
The main changes are:
- The consultation into closure must be of a higher standard, including more detailed evidence as to why alternatives to closure are dismissed by the local authority;
- If a closure is rejected the school will be protected from closure for the next five years;
- Communities have the right to challenge any inaccuracies in council proposals;
- The period within which a council decision can be called-in by Scottish Ministers is being extended from six to eight weeks;
- School closure review panels to look at called-in proposals to shut schools will be established early in 2015.
Edwards said: “We have to adhere to these new requirement from 1 August.
“We also now have to advise people in our public notices that they can suggest alternatives to the proposal, and we have to make sure that we not only come forward with the reasons for our proposal but also what we think the other alternatives are and what the impact on the community would be of each of those alternatives.”
She said that the council was already producing far more in-depth consultation reports than any other local authority, and added that some of the new government rules were in fact based on the SIC’s own template.
CURE secretary Gordon Thomson said he hasn’t had the opportunity yet to study the new rules in detail.
“It appears that the Scottish government is keen to ensure that rural schools are safeguarded as much as possible, and we would hope that these new regulations would help us to strengthen our case,” he said.
The changes to the Schools (Consultation) (Scotland) Act 2010 were made on the basis of recommendations from the commission on the delivery of rural education, which visited Shetland in March 2012 and published its report in June 2013.
Scottish minister for learning Alasdair Allan said: “Rural schools are at the heart of many of our communities in Scotland and the new legislation will give them greater protection and require councils to undertake more careful consideration before they can propose closure.
“Clearly, local authorities are best placed to consider how to deliver services across their communities and sometimes it is necessary to close a school.
“However, the new legislation will strengthen parents and pupils’ rights to clear information when these decisions are being considered.”
The new guidance for local authorities can be found here: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0045/00456849.pdf
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