Education, Culture and Sport Committee, 27 Jun 2001

Meeting date: Wednesday, June 27, 2001

Official Report 135KB pdf

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Petition PE342

Members will remember petition PE342 on rural school closures. The deputy convener recently met representatives of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and members have received copies of the national guidelines that it proposes. I invite Cathy Peattie to tell us about her meeting and the guidelines.

At the meeting I was pleased to learn that a draft report had been prepared, because previously the impression was that nothing had happened. That is a step in the right direction. The report was due to be sent to the Education, Culture and Sport Committee a few days later and I understand that it will go to local authorities this week. The report is going out for consultation, so I asked whether we could receive it. I felt that committee members might want to consider some of the issues.

Committee members have not had the report for very long so they may want to spend some time looking at it. COSLA has taken on board some of the issues that the committee has discussed. It has found what we have been doing helpful. However, we may be concerned about some issues, for example, decisions on whether a school is viable. Danny McCafferty of COSLA said that the financial situation would always have to be considered, but we have stressed that decisions on school closures should never be based only on financial considerations—they should be much wider. This committee has felt quite strongly about that in past debates. The draft report is generally fine, but we may want to raise one or two issues.

Another thing that we considered at the meeting was the link between this committee and the COSLA education committee. It is clearly important to have a formal link and I was asked to raise that with the committee.

What is the time scale for any comments on the draft report?

The draft report will go out to local authorities for consultation.

I suggest that we consider the report over the summer. I ask Cathy, who has been quite involved with this issue, to prepare a report for our first meeting after the recess. If members have any comments that they would like to feed into the process, I ask them to give them to Cathy during the summer. We will then be able to feed that report into COSLA's consultation process. I ask the clerks to let COSLA know that that is what we intend to do—and also the Executive, because any decisions will have implications for the Executive.

Members indicated agreement.

The debate is timely, considering what has been happening in the Borders.

Would there be any value in the committee having direct meetings with COSLA, as Cathy did, or should we just consider the report?

I think that it would be valuable for us to have direct contact with COSLA's education committee. We should pursue that. It is not on the agenda for today so we cannot agree to it, but we should put discussion of a formal contact link on the agenda for the first meeting after the recess. We should begin to develop those kinds of relationship.

If anything develops over the summer, Cathy Peattie or I will contact COSLA directly if necessary. We should also ask COSLA to contact Cathy if there are any developments on its side. I doubt whether anything substantial will be agreed over the summer because of local authorities' timetables, but it would be helpful to have an agreement with authorities that they will not proceed with anything before we can have an input.

Members indicated agreement.