Education, Culture and Sport Committee, 04 Jul 2000

Meeting date: Tuesday, July 4, 2000

Official Report 198KB pdf

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Rural Schools

The next item on the agenda has been held over from the previous meeting—it relates to what has become known as the Stone report on rural schools. I invite Jamie Stone to say a few words and to make a few recommendations.

I apologise to you, convener, and to committee members for my absence last week. This report has been a long time in coming. It deals with three local authorities in the first section, and with Moray Council in the second and final section. Committee members will be aware of the reasons for that.

I put on record my thanks to the councils that were involved at all stages of the report. Compiling the report has been a very civil, open and interesting process, in which officials and elected members have gone out of their way to answer questions. As you can see, the report is quite detailed—perhaps I should apologise to members for its length—but on such an issue it is necessary to be thorough.

The report speaks for itself. The points are made for the committee to take note of in deciding what action would be most appropriate. There are several overarching aspects that, having written the report and having had the time to think about it, I feel are important. Many of the issues that concern rural schools also affect the way in which schools in not-so-rural areas are run, such as capital, revenue, change, teachers and classes. Those issues are important across the board.

Except in the Moray report, I have not really drawn attention to the role of the Scottish Parliament, but that role is important. Although it was not said in so many words, I received the impression, when talking to the other three councils, that the role of the Scottish Parliament vis-à-vis the education authorities is important and that the jury is still out on it.

To say that there is fear over what the Scottish Parliament might or might not do is to paint the picture too boldly. However, education authorities feel that their role is to deliver and administer education; they might look askance if there is any diminution of that role. They argue that that structure has served Scotland well over the years. As we are aware, a favourite news story has been to speculate whether the Scottish Parliament will pull in education powers. The education authorities are following that discussion. This committee and the Parliament must address that issue and work out where we are. If we believe in local democracy and devolution to the lowest level—the level of delivery—I would counsel caution to this committee. That is connected with recent discussions that we have had on other, related topics.

Moray Council's comments on the way in which the system could be improved—for example, by implementing the 5-mile rule—and on the apparent delay in the Executive's agreeing to decisions that have been made by the local democratic body show that we have some issues to think about. I have tried to be entirely unbiased and factual in gathering issues and assembling them into a logical array. Quite what this committee may be minded to do, I do not know. It may be that—perhaps in the broader context of a Scotland-wide, rural and not-so-rural inquiry—we will want to take more evidence after the summer recess.

The report gives a flavour of the issues. A lot of work has been put into it; it is a fairly detailed document. Any further action is entirely in the committee's hands, regarding what avenues we might want to explore. I was and am the committee's representative. My role was to seek, record and bring back information and then to await the committee's deliberation. I would therefore be interested to hear any remarks that committee members may want to make.

Thank you, Jamie. Before we consider what action to take on this report, I invite members to ask Jamie any questions that they have, general or specific.

In the report, you comment a few times on the need for research to be carried out into the educational provision made by small schools. In paragraph 6.1 on page 3, you refer to that specifically. Have you asked the Scottish Parliament information centre to undertake a literature review on that subject? I am aware that quite a bit of that research has been carried out, not necessarily in Scotland, but in other countries with similar geographical concerns.

I was very tempted to ask SPICe to carry out a literature review, but I decided that I did not have the right to do so before the report had been presented to the committee—I thought that that would be getting ahead of myself and this committee. I know exactly what Fiona McLeod means, but what is right in Dumfries and Galloway is not necessarily going to be right in the Highland area or in Moray. I was struck by the differences between provision in the different parts of Scotland—members may get a flavour of that when reading the report. If the committee is minded to go down the SPICe route, I would support that decision.

This is a useful report. I was especially interested in the comments from the Moray area, which I know well. My constituency is neither rural nor in the central belt, so the polarisation between those areas does not appeal to me. However, the comments that the councils make about the ways in which they have dealt with school closures were interesting. Did the other authorities to which you spoke express views on clustering and on the idea of several small schools sharing a head teacher as a way of addressing the issue of small numbers of pupils studying together in rural schools?

Yes. Dumfries and Galloway Council was furthest ahead in that context and has carried out some positive work. Members will be aware that Moray Council highlighted the possible legal hurdle of such an idea, as there has been recent press coverage of the issue of whether every school needs to have a head teacher. I am not aware of the final answer. I found Dumfries and Galloway Council's thinking on this issue constructive and interesting, particularly the idea of having a person—let us not call them a head teacher—responsible for a cluster of schools that might contain a secondary school. There seemed to be tremendous opportunities for staff development in having a person who could take such an overarching view. I do not know whether other committee members have any thoughts about the legal aspect of the exact definition of a head teacher; I do not know where we stand on that question. I left the matter with the tail-end Charlie comment from Moray Council, which has not yet been addressed.

Jamie Stone's final point will be discussed during the review of the "Schools (Scotland) Code 1956" this summer. He might well be right not to give the person responsible for the cluster of schools the title of head teacher, as that touches on difficult issues about whether schools should have head teachers.

Although we would broadly agree that the authorities that you mentioned are rural, Jamie, did you have any difficulty with defining rurality?

Absolutely. For example, although Highland Council covers a vast distance from Acharacle to John o' Groats and Cape Wrath, Moray Council made the cogent point that, notwithstanding the rural deprivation factors, Moray is still one travel-to-work area. That point was also raised in Dumfries and Galloway, where more types of work now involve commuting. That means that the whole face of agricultural communities only 5, 6 or 10 miles out of Dumfries has changed—they are not so much farming villages with people involved in agriculture as a commuter belt. That posed questions about the nature of education for children in those communities.

Although the pace of change in Moray and Dumfries and Galloway is possibly faster than in the Highlands, the geography of the Highlands—including Argyll, the western isles, Orkney and Shetland—probably means that the area will always be rather different. It was brought home to me how much the definition of rurality in Scotland now differs from my preconception of it.

I have one or two thoughts on this report and the report that we had last week. Jamie Stone mentioned the 5-mile rule, which is one of a number of anomalies in Scotland that do not take account of the needs of rural areas. Perhaps we should speak to the Accounts Commission about how its information is interpreted. Any guidance to local authorities in rural areas should be relevant to those areas; for example, guidance on a 5-mile rule might mean something completely different in Falkirk from what it means in the north or the Borders. Besides asking the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities to consider some code of practice, we should also ask the Accounts Commission to update its information, which was, after all, produced at the time of Strathclyde Regional Council and bigger local education authority departments. Local authorities must now adhere to recommendations, which should reflect the needs of specific local authority areas.

If there are no further questions, I suggest that we thank Jamie Stone for his report and take the various points on board. Jamie has flagged up a number of issues that are difficult to define, such as rurality, the nature of the remit of local authorities and their responsibility for their schools, and the differences not just between local authorities but within a local authority boundary. The report also flags up resource allocation to schools and school buildings, school closures and staff supply in local areas—those issues do not apply just to rural schools.

My suggestion is that we note Jamie Stone's report and move on with the committee's outstanding work, including the infrastructure report, which we can ensure has a rural element, so that any difficulties faced by the rural areas are picked up. We should also reinforce last week's report, which asked COSLA to draw up a set of guidelines on how schools throughout Scotland should go about consulting on school closures. We must take on board Cathy Peattie's point about asking the Accounts Commission to review its position in relation to the change in the current guidelines, from dealing with regional authorities to dealing with 32 local authorities.

That covers all the points that I envisaged we needed to cover at this stage. If anybody wants to add anything or take anything away, we can discuss it now.

I am happy to go along with that. However, it is important that we come back to this issue soon after recess to assess what has happened and where we might want to go.

One matter arises out of Cathy Peattie's report. We should note that last week Argyll and Bute Council took a decision not to proceed with the six rural school closures in its area. Members will recall that one of the issues that we flagged up was the importance of the special islands needs allowance for Argyll and Bute in securing the future of rural schools. In the interest of fairness, we may want to invite a representative of the council to a meeting after the recess to discuss the issue and what, if anything, the committee can do to help the council to secure that funding.

The committee unanimously agreed Cathy Peattie's report last week. It is unfortunate if anybody in the media or outside saw that as an instruction from this committee to a local authority. If that is the case, the perception is wrong. It was quite clear that, although the committee accepted the report and the fact that there were difficulties with the consultation process, the decision on whether to proceed with school closures in Argyll and Bute was up to the local authority. We also accepted that island funding arrangements were an issue. However, that is being dealt with as part of an on-going review. I do not accept that this committee should examine the issue, which will be raised in another place. The local authority will have an opportunity to speak to the people who are carrying out the review and I am not sure what this committee could add to that.

On a point of clarification, I did not suggest—and I do not think that anyone understood from last week's meeting—that we were instructing Argyll and Bute Council to do anything.

I did not say that you had.

You said that an unfortunate conclusion had been drawn from last week's meeting, which suggests that you think that some people drew that conclusion. However, I do not think that anyone did, including people from Argyll and Bute Council. It is important that I put that on record.

I can see from the eye contact among some of the Labour group members that this issue is causing some disquiet. I ask the clerks to clarify exactly what we communicated to Argyll and Bute Council last week on the issue of special islands needs allowance, because we definitely agreed something on that point. I am unsure whether the Official Report of last week's meeting has been published yet, but we must make clear what we agreed last week.

It will be in the Official Report. My understanding is that we recognised that there was an anomaly and that Argyll and Bute Council did not receive funding under SINA. We accepted that that might be an issue for the council. However, it is not for the Education, Culture and Sport Committee to decide whether the council should receive that funding, which is matter for the on-going review of SINA. I understand that the local authority will have an opportunity to make submissions to that review.

The disquiet that Nicola Sturgeon refers to is disquiet at her interpretation of what was said by Argyll and Bute Council, or, certainly, at the difference between her interpretation and the interpretation that appeared in the press. It seems clear to me that Argyll and Bute Council referred to the recommendations in our report as though in some way it ceased to be responsible for its own decisions on whether to proceed with closing those schools.

It is important that the committee puts on record clearly that responsibility for each and every stage of those decisions lies with Argyll and Bute Council and not with the Education, Culture and Sport Committee. Moreover, such decisions do not rest on the link that the council attempted to make, and which Nicola is encouraging it to make, between its education policy and its application for SINA. We recognised the existence of an anomaly, but the way in which that anomaly is dealt with does not relate specifically to the education budget, to the provision of education services or to this committee. SINA has wider implications than that.

If any committee of the Scottish Parliament was to consider the case for SINA in Argyll and Bute, it would be another committee, such as the Rural Affairs Committee, the Finance Committee or the Local Government Committee. Those committees might find it a bit odd that the Education, Culture and Sport Committee chose to adopt a position on a matter that is not exclusively an educational matter.

It is important that we are clear about the position of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee and, above all, about the fact that the responsibility for school closures or education provision in Argyll and Bute rests with Argyll and Bute Council—full stop.

I will pick up on what Lewis Macdonald said about SINA. As I understand the process, if the Parliament were to examine SINA, a lead committee would be designated and other committees with an interest in the matter would investigate and report to the lead committee. The Education, Culture and Sport Committee has followed that procedure on a number of occasions, such as when we considered section 28. We were not the lead committee, but as section 28 had an impact on education, we took evidence and reported to the lead committee. This is exactly the same sort of situation.

There is a case for the Finance Committee to consider the on-going review of SINA. It would be totally proper if the bureau were to designate the Finance Committee as the lead committee on an inquiry into SINA, or if that committee were to decide to conduct such an inquiry and to ask us for input.

It is interesting that people set so much store by last week's decision by Argyll and Bute Council to condemn our report. The council said that our report was inaccurate, ill-founded and based on the wrong information, which I find most disturbing. The council did not take into account this committee's criticisms of its consultation process. It grasped on to one line that got it out of making a decision; it tried to throw that decision back into the hands of the Scottish Executive by saying that it made the decision only because it did not get SINA money. That is my interpretation of what I read in the press.

The council criticised Cathy Peattie's report, which this committee endorsed unanimously. Our report said clearly that there were problems with the consultation process. That issue falls within our remit. However, the council refused to accept the legitimacy of that criticism. The parents who were quoted in the press said that they were disappointed by the council's response to our report.

Karen Gillon's interpretation undermines the suggestion made by Lewis Macdonald about what the council tried to do. It usefully undermines it, however: I think that Lewis was misinterpreting the council's decision. I do not think that anyone has suggested that this committee could or did instruct Argyll and Bute Council to do anything; I do not think that Argyll and Bute Council took that from what we did.

Nevertheless, Cathy Peattie's report, which the committee endorsed last week, highlighted no more and no less than the issue of special islands needs allowance. In fairness to Argyll and Bute Council, we should not simply leave the matter hanging. I accept Lewis's point that this committee is not the appropriate one to look into the matter, but I suggest that we write to the Finance Committee and ask it, in any on-going review of SINA, to take evidence or representations from Argyll and Bute Council if it is not already doing so. It is a question of fairness to the council that the issues that this committee flags up are not simply left hanging in mid air because they might be politically uncomfortable.

I really do not think that that is the problem. The question is who the right people are to deal with the matter. If Argyll and Bute Council wants an opportunity to make representations on the issue, that is fair enough. I will allow Cathy Peattie to comment and I will then try to wind this item up.

We have agreed that it is not for this committee to tell any council what to do, but members will be aware that I have been concerned since the outset that we could find ourselves making decisions on petitions about school closures all over Scotland. That is not our role.

The report was about the consultation process, which was flawed. That is not just my opinion, but that of the parents and teachers in Argyll and Bute. There is an argument for seeking SINA money, but I do not think that that is part of our remit. Interestingly, the parents in Argyll and Bute have continued to e-mail and write to me. One parent, whom I will not name, said that schools were clearly being used cynically as bargaining chips for SINA money.

We do not want to go into that argument. I think that the Finance Committee or the Local Government Committee should consider the matter. Argyll and Bute has a strong case for SINA money, given that it covers such a wide area and contains many island communities. However, I repeat that it is not our role to make that case.

If the council secures SINA money, I assume that that will not simply be for education; the council will have a wider agenda on how it spends the money. If the Finance Committee, another committee or a minister were to consider the case, and if we were asked to give evidence on the report, that would be appropriate.

Parents may be concerned that this case could serve as a smokescreen for future decisions. Moreover, there may be concerns that this committee will push the Finance Committee into accepting what we think any decision should be, based on the report. Those concerns would be unfounded. The report was based on the consultation process and I hope that it will affect future consultation processes in Argyll and Bute and other areas.

I suggest that we note Jamie Stone's report; that as part of our inquiry into schools infrastructure we examine the rural element; that we submit the reports by Jamie Stone and Cathy Peattie to COSLA and ask it to review its guidelines on school closures; that we submit both reports to the Accounts Commission and ask it to review its guidance on school issues; that we consider Nicola Sturgeon's suggestion to send the Official Report of the previous meeting to the relevant committee, be it the Local Government Committee or the Finance Committee, to highlight our concern about SINA, which was raised in Cathy's report; and that we ask the appropriate committee to take into account the comments that have been made. Is that okay?

Members indicated agreement.