Plenary, 01 Jun 2000

Meeting date: Thursday, June 1, 2000

Official Report 617KB pdf

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Bell Baxter High School

The next item of business is a members' business debate on motion S1M-822, in the name of Mr Keith Harding, on Bell Baxter High School in Cupar. The debate will be concluded at the end of 30 minutes without any questions being put. Members who wish to speak in the debate should press their request-to-speak buttons as soon as possible.

Motion debated,

That the Parliament notes that Bell Baxter High School in Cupar, Fife has operated on a split-site for the past 40 years, that pupils must walk along busy roads between both sites to attend classes with a loss of teaching time, and that Fife Council's capital programme for the school will take four years to implement and will nevertheless omit the refurbishment of the swimming pool and gymnasium and the provision of community facilities, and believes that the Scottish Executive should review the situation as a matter of urgency in order to determine whether it is able to assist Fife Council to resolve this problem at the earliest opportunity.

I am grateful to be able to debate this issue, which has been a cause of great concern in North-East Fife constituency for a considerable number of years. In March this year, along with all the other MSPs representing the area, I received an invitation from the Bell Baxter school board to visit its high school in Cupar and spend a day in the life of a school pupil. With Tricia Marwick, I visited the school on 20 March; we were concerned at what we found and experienced.

Since the 1940s, the school has operated on sites that are approximately half a mile apart. In 1966, when the then rector was appointed, he was promised a new school. In the 1980s, Fife Regional Council, as it then was, proposed that Bell Baxter should become a one-site school. Plans were drawn up and development started. The completion date was scheduled for 1991 but, with various delays, that slipped to 1995. The school moved down the priority ladder yet again, and the school board submitted a petition two years ago to Brian Wilson, the Scottish Office minister with responsibility for education, and to Fife Council. The board was promised that all phases of the programme would continue and be completed by this year. Recently, Fife Council announced capital funding of £3 million to complete the refurbishment of the school's south wing at Carslogie Road within the next five years. While that is welcome news, it will not complete the school. Additional funds of approximately £1 million are required to complete the project.

When I arrived at the school, I was impressed by the building and began to wonder why I had been asked to visit. The Carslogie Road school was built in 1962, yet it appears modern and well maintained. I understand that sufficient space is available for the refurbishment to incorporate teaching accommodation as well as a craft, design and technology block, studies that are currently undertaken on the old school site at Westport. That programme is the one that was recently approved for completion in five years.

We were then asked to walk to the Westport site, as all first and second-year pupils do daily. The almost half-mile journey is down a busy major road in Cupar, which must have safety implications. We were lucky, because that day was dry, sunny and quite cold. When we arrived at the Westport site, it was like stepping back in time. The buildings are, to say the least, dilapidated. I am surprised that, as far as I am aware, there have been no health and safety issues. Many of the structures are crumbling. Windows are boarded up because of vandalism, and facilities are far inferior to anything that I have ever seen, even when I was at school in the 1950s. I am sure that Iain Smith, the constituency member and a former pupil at the school, will be able to describe the situation far better than I can.

The reason I have sought this debate is not to cast blame on anyone for the long delays in consolidating the school on one site, but because of genuine concern at what I found. I acknowledge that funds are limited and that difficult choices must be made. However, I would like the issue to be resolved at the earliest possible date. We should not condemn another school generation to a totally unacceptable situation in this day and age.

I ask the minister, or members of his staff, to visit the school and to consider ways of assisting Fife Council to resolve the problem. I understand that, as development has already commenced, a private partnership initiative is not an option, but I respectfully ask him to consider a spend-to-save scheme.

Material savings are to be made in amalgamating the school on one site. At present, around 800 children travel between buildings for physical education, technical education and home economics. As I said, that is along a busy road with narrow pavements. Management at all levels is hampered and management teams are almost permanently split. The number of behavioural management issues is increasing because of the impact of travel on late-coming for lessons and the increased opportunities for misconduct. An additional 7.4 full-time equivalent teachers have to be employed to facilitate travel. Additional allowances are required for clerical, technical and janitorial services and road-crossing patrols. The teaching staff have to travel to teach in consecutive periods; cover teachers are used while they travel. That has an obvious impact on teaching time and quality. It also creates stress.

The cost of maintaining Westport to minimal standards must be exorbitant. The value of the site, which is well situated in Cupar, must also be taken into consideration. At present, there are two canteen facilities, two cleaning contracts and two administrative offices. I am concerned that an accident is waiting to happen—either a failure in the structure of the old buildings or a road accident. I know that road safety for schoolchildren is a concern that the Executive is vigorously addressing.

The current situation undermines the desired ethos of the school as an integrated community. All that I seek today is for Peter Peacock to examine the matter and to undertake a cost-benefit analysis so that action can be taken much more quickly to meet the needs and aspirations of pupils, parents and teachers. We said that this Parliament would make a difference—that we would address Scottish problems with Scottish solutions. Let us now give some hope to the parents of north-east Fife.

Several members have asked to speak in this debate. To accommodate all the members who wish to take part, I ask for speeches to be kept to three minutes.

I thank Keith Harding for initiating this debate and Peter Peacock for allowing me, as the local member, to participate. The biggest thanks should go to the Bell Baxter school board, which has kept this matter at the top of the political agenda within north-east Fife. It has worked tirelessly in the campaign to ensure the completion of the Bell Baxter project. I express my thanks to it for its work on that.

As Keith Harding mentioned, Bell Baxter is my old school, so it gives me particular pleasure to speak about it, although it is with displeasure that I have to speak on it because it has not yet been completed. I went there in 1972—I know that I do not look old enough to have gone to secondary school then, but I did. In those days, the school suffered from many of the inadequacies that it suffers now. Its small, cramped classrooms, many of which are in poor condition, are unsuited to modern teaching methods. There is a village of huts, many of which are now almost literally falling apart; they are being tied together, not so much by Sellotape as by carpets, which are holding the floors together. The situation is very unsatisfactory and it needs to be addressed.

I should also add—in case members are not aware of this—that I am not the first Scottish minister who is a former pupil of Bell Baxter, because a certain Allan Stewart was a pupil of Bell Baxter as well. In those days he was a Liberal—he went slightly off the rails after he left the area.

It is important to consider the history of this project. When I became a Fife regional councillor back in 1982, the project was in the capital programme, but it did not get the priority that it deserved. Fife Regional Council put other projects ahead of it, although the work started with, as Keith Harding said, a target date of finishing in 1991. However, cuts in the capital programme that Fife Regional Council suffered throughout the 1980s and 1990s meant that the completion date slipped year on year, so that it was not possible to complete the project in 1991. Indeed, the project was cut up into more and more phases, between which there were bigger and bigger gaps. It seems impossible to find out when the end of the project will be.

However, I am pleased to say—I am not sure whether Keith Harding is aware of this—that Fife Council's most recent capital programme indicates some progress. The council has moved forward the start of the next stage, which is the refurbishment of the south wing. It appears that that will now start next year, rather than in three years' time, as was previously thought. That stage is crucial as, once the south wing is refurbished, it should be possible to begin to put the school on to one site. As Keith Harding rightly says, the project will not then be completed, as there are other phases to follow, but completion of that stage will allow the management to examine seriously the possibility of having the school on one site for the first time. That progress is to be welcomed, although I would have preferred a start on the building this year.

I have been critical of Fife Council for not giving the project the priority it deserves. However, we have to take into account the cuts to capital expenditure that were imposed on Fife Regional Council and Fife Council by the Conservative Government, which have led to this project slipping back. We need to address that issue. The Executive has begun to do so by investing more money into education, which has to be welcomed.

I congratulate Keith Harding on his motion, which has given us this opportunity to have a short debate about the problems of Bell Baxter. Like Iain Smith and Keith Harding, I pay tribute not just to the school board, but to the staff and, in particular, the rector of Bell Baxter, who are working in intolerable conditions. The school has a good record of achievement and it is important that we give it the support that it needs.

As Keith Harding mentioned, he and I visited the school. Frankly, I was appalled by what I saw: a two-site school that is joined by a very busy road. When my children were at school in Fife, they had to have permission from me as a parent to step outside the school or to go on a school trip. I am seriously concerned about young schoolchildren walking up and down a busy road many times a day. There is an accident waiting to happen. If I were the parent of a child at the school, I would be very concerned about the regime, which has existed for a long time. The road is extremely busy, the pavement is extremely narrow and the children have to walk half a mile between the sites.

I will talk about the physical conditions of the school. The physics laboratory is like a school museum. When I was at school, a bit before Iain Smith, the conditions in my school were far superior to those that I saw at Bell Baxter. There is what is known as hut alley—where children are taught in 40 huts, which are falling apart—and there is a dining hall in which I would not allow my children to eat. The health and safety issue has to be addressed urgently.

Iain Smith is quite right that Fife County Council, Fife Regional Council and Fife Council have given no priority to Bell Baxter. Nobody denies that improvements have been made, but it is unacceptable in this day and age that school pupils should have to go to two sites. I know that the problems of Bell Baxter are replicated throughout Scotland. The Executive will have to address urgently the recent report that showed that repairing Scotland's schools would cost £1.3 billion—it is estimated that it will cost £70 million to repair schools in Fife alone.

I leave members with this thought. Every week, the schoolchildren at Bell Baxter spend an hour travelling back and forward. That is a week a year during which those children are denied an education because of the circumstances in which they find themselves. That is not acceptable. Something has to be done—and soon.

It seems to be confession time about when we went to school. I, too, went to school in Fife, after Iain Smith and certainly after Tricia Marwick. [Laughter.]

We should congratulate Keith Harding on bringing this issue to the attention of the Parliament, although I have some doubt about whether this is the best venue for the debate—perhaps it is a debate more fit for the council chamber in Glenrothes. Nevertheless, the issues outlined by Keith Harding, and amplified by Iain Smith and Tricia Marwick, are worthy of comment.

It is unfortunate that people at one of our schools in Fife are still being accommodated on a twin site. However, that is not an unusual occurrence in the history of Fife's schools. When I was at school in the late 1970s, a number of high schools operated on twin sites. We should not lose sight of the fact that Fife Regional Council and Fife Council have invested heavily in the schools programme in the region to build the new Lochgelly High School to replace Ballingry and Auchterderran junior high schools, and to site Kirkcaldy High School and Beath High School on single sites. As Keith Harding has conceded, eventually Bell Baxter will also be accommodated on a single site.

It is certainly not the case that Fife Council has not invested in schools in Cupar. My understanding is that more than £10 million has been spent in the past decade on Bell Baxter High School. This year, in a £1.5 million expansion of nursery provision due to come to fruition in August, the primary school at Cupar will be sited on one site.

There are massive demands on the council's capital programme in Fife, not just in education. It should be acknowledged that one of the drains on the new Fife Council's capital programme was the deteriorating condition of the estate inherited from preceding authorities and, in particular, the amount of money that had to spent to bring the county buildings in north-east Fife district up to an acceptable standard.

Education priorities exist all over Fife. In my constituency, Dunfermline West, we are in the deplorable situation of having two inadequately housed special schools, one of which, I would argue, is in a far worse fabric state than any other school in Fife. The Queen Anne High School campus, where staff and pupils have been waiting for more than 20 years for a new building, contains a substantial amount of hutted accommodation, although not quite as much as at Bell Baxter, and is in a deplorable state.

Problems exist at Bell Baxter and it is right that they should be highlighted, but problems exist at other schools in Fife as well. It is important to acknowledge the efforts that Fife Council is making to address the problems. Those efforts will lead, I hope, to improvements in the future.

I congratulate Keith Harding on bringing forward this motion, which gives us the chance to debate the issue. I will keep my remarks on Bell Baxter fairly short. I want to give an insight into my experience of Portobello High School—some people may doubt that I went to school, but there we are.

The situation was very similar—Portobello High School also had an annexe. The school was a modern building designed for some 1,200 pupils, but there were 2,500 there at the time, which was enough to keep it in "The Guinness Book of Records" for a number of years while I was a pupil. Because of the school's size, the old building had to be reopened as an annexe and the whole of the first year and some of the second year studied there.

My experience is pertinent. There were accidents on the journey between the two schools. The dual site was also a source of indiscipline, which has not been touched on—perhaps indiscipline was particular to my school, but I doubt it. The journey time between one school and another was an opportunity for skiving and all sorts of larking about. Of course, it is the larking about that often leads to safety problems. There is real concern about the dual-site status of Bell Baxter, which we must address.

Lessons can be learned from Portobello. That annexe is no longer used by schools but has been converted into highly desirable flats. I hope that the site at Bell Baxter can be developed to release funds that would allow the school to be restored to a single site. If we could do that, the savings would be considerable and the sense of community of the school would improve.

I commend Keith Harding for securing the debate and look forward to hearing what the minister has to say and what help he can give.

I, too, would like to congratulate Keith Harding on securing today's debate. I would also like to thank the campaign sub-committee at Bell Baxter—Gina Logan, Veronica Kirk and others—for their efforts and commitment to the school. They managed to get many MSPs along on different days for detailed and lengthy visits—I visited on 17 March.

I am not sure that there is much advantage in taking Scott Barrie's approach of raking over the past and giving us a history lesson—I am sorry that he is not in the chamber just now. The crucial message that we must send out is that the situation at Bell Baxter is unacceptable. That is the view of every political party in the Parliament and something must be done about it. In nearly 30 years in active politics I have never seen a situation like that behind the decrepit building on Westport. It conceals a scandalous situation of 50 huts with rotting structures, which are too cold in winter and too hot in summer. They are unhealthy for pupils and teachers and are unacceptable in terms of educational provision. We must do something about that now.

As Keith Harding and others have said, the problem is that the finishing date has kept on slipping, from 1991 to 1995 to 2000. On 27 April, Fife Council made an announcement on the ending of the split site—although not on the building work that is required—which has been forecast for 2003. That date must not slip any further.

This is not just about safety issues, although, as Tricia Marwick said, those are crucial. I walked the route to the school and back on a fairly dry day. However, I was told that on rainy days kids arrive at one or other site totally drenched. Furthermore, that journey eats into the lesson time and school periods are therefore shorter than they should be.

Bell Baxter is not alone. Sam Galbraith has rightly said that there has been

"an historic underinvestment in Scotland's school buildings".

The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland estimate that it would take £1.3 billion to bring all primary and secondary schools up to scratch.

When a parliamentary question was asked about school building maintenance in Scotland, we were given that famous civil service answer:

"Detailed information of the kind requested is not held centrally."

Furthermore, we were told that

"assessments of school building maintenance and other needs . . . may not be . . . consistent across authorities."—[Official Report, Written Answers, 12 May 2000; Vol 6,
p 141.]

I know that the education department is trying to remedy that situation, but how can the Parliament decide on priorities unless we know accurately what the situation is? The Scottish Executive must begin to collect and hold the necessary information centrally as well as ensure that there are consistent assessments of need across authorities. That is a priority.

We keep hearing how much extra money the chancellor is going to spend. I hope that when it comes to spending, our share of the money will be a priority. I hope that we can encourage more public-private partnership schemes. I give credit to Glasgow City Council for what it is doing. Public-private partnerships are not ideal—I have some reservations—but it is the only game in town. In the interest of our pupils and teachers, such schemes must be extended so that we have a dramatic improvement in the condition of school buildings in Scotland within a reasonably short time, before the next Scottish Parliament elections.

My first full-time teaching job was in 1964, in Buckhaven in Fife, with the great R F MacKenzie at Braehead Junior Secondary School. At that time, Fife was investing heavily in a split system of junior secondaries and high schools. In fact, I think that Fife was the lead local authority in Scotland in terms of the proportion of budget spent on education.

I want to make the case for teachers who teach on split sites. I spent two years of my teaching career in a split-site school, where—two or three times a day—I had to make a half-mile journey between the two sites, so I have bitter personal experience of the pressures that that puts on teachers. In that situation, teachers are always late for their lessons—no professional teacher likes to be late for his or her lessons. There is a continual nagging pressure, month after month and year after year, that wears teachers down. The experience is entirely negative; I ended up, at the end of those two years, feeling more sick and ill, with an ulcer, than I had ever felt in my teaching career.

I beg the Executive to solve the problem at Bell Baxter, and at any other split-site school in the country, as soon as possible.

First, let me say that I can well appreciate the concerns of any community about the continued split-site operation of any school in Scotland. In almost any circumstances imaginable, it would be preferable for a school to be on a single site. That requires no further explanation—it is the view that everybody would hold.

However, for a whole variety of historic reasons—depending on land availability or the growth of any particular community at any particular time—it has been necessary, on occasion, for split-site arrangements to be developed. I am confident that local authorities, which are responsible for such matters, try to avoid those arrangements wherever possible and to rectify the situation where that is achievable. Fife Council has done that on a number of occasions; Scott Barrie drew attention to that. There are other situations across Scotland that are not dissimilar and that could also be rectified over time.

A number of members have referred to the fact that split sites, by their nature, can have an impact on the school's timetabling and general management and on the occupation of pupils' time. Both teachers and pupils can find it inconvenient when pupils have to move from one site to another, sometimes in inclement weather, which adds a particular difficulty to the situation.

I am sure that all those who are involved in the management of Bell Baxter merit commendation for managing successfully, despite the school's split-site nature, and for having done so over many years. The school's attainment levels are high, despite the split-site operation and the nature of the buildings, and the extensive building work that has gone on over the past 10 years has not interrupted or had an adverse effect on the school's quality of education.

As Scott Barrie and, I think, Iain Smith mentioned, something over £9 million has been spent on the school over the past five years. In a moment or two, I will come on to say what is planned to be done.

In the present circumstances at Bell Baxter, pupil safety, which was referred to by a number of members—Tricia Marwick, Brian Monteith and others—is, of course, paramount. From what I have been told, I am confident that that matter has received, and continues to receive, priority attention from staff and pupils alike. Crossing arrangements are made in the course of every day; it is recognised that there are circumstances in which the pupils require to be protected.

I must confess that I feel some surprise at the fact that Mr Harding has raised this matter for debate in the Parliament. Mr Harding has been a councillor of very long standing—he and I have debated council matters in another forum over the years. I believe that he may still be a councillor in Stirling, so he—of all members in the chamber—will know better than most that detailed decisions about school buildings are for local councils, not for the Executive or the Parliament.

I am a strong supporter of local democracy and I want to see such decisions being taken at the level that is closest to the citizen—the local council. The detailed debate on this matter ought to be taking place in Fife, with locally elected politicians expressing their priorities where they can be held to account for their decisions by people in the local community. The Parliament was not created to centralise decisions in Edinburgh; it was created as part of a process of decentralising power in our society.

We must be careful not to use the Parliament to debate matters that are properly the province of another tier of democratically elected politicians and for which they are accountable to local communities. It would be all too easy to turn this Parliament into a big council for Scotland that interferes in or takes decisions that are best taken locally and are sensitive to local circumstances.

Although I acknowledge the minister's points about the need to make decisions at the lowest level—that is, at Fife Council—the real issue is resources. We need £1.3 billion to tackle repairs to Scotland's schools, with £70 million needed in Fife alone. Will the minister give a commitment not just to Fife Council but to every council in Scotland that the money will be available to tackle that problem? Perhaps we can then debate the issue locally.

I will address the issue of resources later and pick up the points that Tricia Marwick makes. However, in the case of Bell Baxter, the Executive does not intend to intervene on a matter that we believe should be handled in Fife. It is Fife Council's responsibility to deal with the building issues at Bell Baxter school. I know that the need to bring the school on to one site was identified at least 20 years ago and I understand people's frustrations at the lack of progress. However, councils determine their own capital expenditure priorities; the Government does not intervene on such decisions and does not intend to do so in this case. Councils receive a single annual allocation of capital consent, which is not specific to individual capital programmes or particular projects, and decide whether to spend the money on roads, offices, leisure centres, schools, nursery provision or whatever.

Our role is to ensure that, overall, councils have a reasonable level of resources to tackle the priorities that they want to address. We are increasing those resources. In Fife alone, with our support, approvals for the public-private partnership scheme will release about £32 million in new investment. Not only will projects directly benefit from that money, but section 94 consent will also become available to tackle them. We are putting £115 million extra into the new deal for schools in Scotland and Scottish local authorities are spending £150 million a year on improving the fabric of Scottish schools. Such measures are why we have seen progress over the years.

Furthermore, in response to Keith Harding, our national priorities programme—which we have just published and are consulting on—makes it clear that we want to lift the issue of school capital expenditure and school refurbishment expenditure higher up the political agenda. It was the Executive that first identified that more than £1 billion would be required; we did so not to hide from the problem, but to begin to address it.

Although we have agreed with COSLA that school buildings are a key priority within the overall framework of capital allocations arrangements, it is for local authorities to translate that into reality at a local level. As I have indicated, it will take many years to clear the backlog of work required in Scottish schools. However, we are determined to achieve that aim and to raise the standard of our schools.

I am also surprised that Keith Harding raised this issue because it draws attention to the Conservatives' record on reducing capital allocations to councils when they were in government. It is at least arguable that Bell Baxter would now have been on a single site had it not been for the actions of the Government that he supported in the 1980s and 1990s. However, he and all members in the chamber will no doubt welcome the fact that Fife Council has reinstated into its capital programme the project to initiate work on the new south wing at Bell Baxter, with expenditure starting this year and continuing into the next. That project will help the school towards single-site status. Clearly, the details of the start and completion dates are a matter for Fife Council and any major building work at the school has to take account of the need to minimise disruption of daily teaching and learning.

Will the minister give way?

I am sorry, I must wind up.

I am sure that Fife Council's most recent commitment will be welcomed by everyone associated with the school, who will be hoping that the council can schedule the work for completion as soon as possible. Clearly, the council's first priority is to address the single-site issue before considering other matters such as the pool and gymnasium. I am sure that all members will welcome what Fife Council has done and will wish it well in the task of completing this project.

Meeting suspended until 14:30.

On resuming—