Peatstack - September 2007

School closures - communities must organise a defence

Last Tuesday's meeting in Back School was very well attended by parents, and gave a very good insight into the events of the previous week in the various Comhairle meetings that ultimately resulted in the review of education in the Western Isles, that may, or may not - we were informed - include the closure of the S1/2 units.

But before getting into the heart of the issues, I think we need to be absolutely clear about what is happening in the name of a review of education. At the meeting on Tuesday we heard of the two major issues driving the possibility of school closures - the new curriculum for excellence and the current cost of education in the islands.

The Peatstack - as of my last contribution - remains absolutely convinced that there is really only one issue driving the possibility of closure, and that is finance. I do not believe, and in fact am even more convinced of this after last Tuesday night's meeting - that we would not now be discussing school closures if the only issue under discussion is the suitability of the S1/2 units to deliver the new curriculum. The Peatstack reasserts that the Comhairle - and, if our councillors are to be believed, it sounds as if the senior officers in education and finance are the principle movers of these closure proposals - are dressing up a closure for financial reasons in the clothes of a benefit for education.

At the meeting, some parents argued very cogently that we need to ensure that the high quality of the education delivered in the schools at present is both quantified in terms of outcomes, and placed centre stage in this debate. This The Peatstack whole-heartedly agrees with - but with a note of caution, as above. Let's not be fooled into thinking that the first issue we are dealing with is anything to do with the quality of the education to be provided to future generations of children in the affected communities. It is to do with Comhairle finances.

But that said, let's challenge the Comhairle to prove the value of its so-called 'review' and promise that any school that can prove the quality of its education, and its suitability to deliver on the new curriculum, will remain open. Without such an undertaking, the 'review' is meaningless, and exposed to be what I think it really is - a soft-landing for a programme of cuts in the education provision in these islands.

On the issue of the new curriculum, one possibility did emerge at the meeting, and that is the proposal that Back should be expanded to fit the new age-parameters of the curriculum and become home to a new S1 - S3 unit. However, it must be remembered that part of the reason for the new curriculum is to remove the rigid age-based structure of progression through the classes and replace it with attainment-based progression.

I will not in this blog detail the many areas in the new curriculum that I feel to be very much in-line with the ethos of the current S1/2 units - their community base, their holistic social education that encourages and enables our children to be confident and secure young people, the closeness to the history, culture and spirituality of the community in which they live etc. There are many reasons, especially when, as the meeting heard from a very well informed contribution from the floor, the new curriculum is a transcendent curriculum, not so much about new content but about attitudes and ethos in the very principles of our education system.

One dark note about the meeting. The ugly rowing between new and ex-councillors. There is no place for these rows to be conducted in public. Such rows will serve only to alienate parents and others from the entire debate, and if all the individuals concerned cannot resist the temptation to settle scores then they should stay out of the debate, whoever they are. This political squabbling was not the only negative. The Peatstack was not aware that one of our newly elected counillors is the deputy chair (or equivalent) of the education committee. The Peatstack feels very strongly that such a position is not compatible with best interests of the campaign to stop these closures and therefore the individual concerned should resign that position and commit to fighting this campaign with the local community. Given the level of alleged subterfuge detailed to us at the meeting by our councillors, the resignation of this position should have occurred immediately this issue emerged in the way it did last week, and is now overdue.

All that remains to be said now, is that we as parents must organise a campaign against these closures. We must do that now, and with a commitment to getting informed and active. Whether this campaign should include our councillors or be in addition to their efforts in the council chamber, is a matter of debate, but while one of their number remains in an official office in the education committee, I'd say that have to remain at arms length. How we do this, we must decide, but we must, and when we do we must ensure that we work in tandem with the other communities that face these problems.

Secondary Schools - Has the decision already been taken?

First, an apology for opening this blog with a series of cliches, but if ever it were true that 'The Devil's in the Detail', or it's time to 'Read Between the Lines', then this is it.
A small item (given the seriousness of the issue) in last Thursday's Stornoway Gazette, bizarely entitled 'Progress on Western Isles' Schools' may, with reference to the above cliches, contain the final condemnation note for our S1 & S2 secondary school units.
The article in the Gazette does not explain its contents or provide any context other than its editorialised headline, and as such the Gazette continues to fail the people of these islands with its lazy indifference to key issues. But The Peatstack believes one thing is clear - a big step has been taken by the Comhairle (in private) in finalising and implementing the PPP for the schools building programme with the appointment (as reported) of a company called Faithful & Gould/Navigant as 'private sector development partner for the Western Isles'.
In making that decision, the Comhairle has committed itself to a long term, inflexible and probably poor value financial arrangement that will see private corporations and individuals profit greatly over many years on public money, whilst real choices in education are denied to the people of these islands due to a lack of funds.
If the Comhairle were Northern Rock then The Peatstack would at this point be queueing to withdraw his life savings.
Surely, it would only be in the interests of finding long-term stability in our local education and local government finances, if the the PPP were itself to be included in the protracted 'review' of education.
The so-called 'review' or 'consultation' is a sham when the very issues that are at the heart of the problem are not included in its scope, and indeed are even denied on-going public scrutiny by being discussed in private by the Comhairle.
In the same issue of the Gazette there is a letter from a Traci Froughi of Sollas, North Uist, that very precisely and informatively makes strong points about the school closures process, and which brings very much to the fore the impact these closures will have on local communities.
The Peatstack, through sources in the village, understands that a local campaign is shortly to be launched in Back. Time is of the essence, as the education review may last until 2009, but by then all the decisions that will leave the Comhairle with any real flexibility to change the disasterous course of action it has set out upon, will already have been taken.
In its article, The Gazette did report one possible chink of hope - the appointment of Faithful & Gould/Navigant was 'provided he [CNES Chief Executive] was satisified that the financial model deliverable [?] and the Scottish Government had given its approval.'
It is clear therefore that a main focus of any campaign to halt the wrecking ball hitting education in the Islands, must focus with equal force on ensuring that the Scottish Government does not give its approval. A word now from the Scottish Government in the ear of the Comhairle may sufficiently undermine the confidence of Faithful & Co. and the Comhairle in the viability of the PPP as the 'financial model'.
And one final pledge. If this issue has not been decided by the time of the next Scottish or local elections, then The Peatstack will stand as a single-issue candidate - giving the people of these islands a real referendum on the future of education.
Now, a note on Faith + Gould / Navigant. A read through the websites of these companies is well worthwhile. Faithful + Gould is owned by multi-national consultancy business, WS Atkins (www.atkingsglobal.com). The relationship between Faithful + Gould and Navigant is less clear. However, The Peatstack believes that the company referred to is the British wing of US consultancy giant Navigant Consulting who, in recent years, have eyed-up the UK PPP / PFI as being a potentially lucrative market for expansion.
Apologies if this is not the firm concerned - if this is a mistake then the companies concerned can leave a comment to this blog and it will be corrected in a future blog - but it looks likely to be correct given the following statement from a Mr Brian Norton, Navigant's European Head of Corporate Development in an article in Consulting News of 17 May 2007:
'Norton also believes that Navigant Consulting can draw on its public sector experience, particularly in the more forward-looking PFI and PPP projects that have combined capital investment and change techniques to create wide-ranging transformations, such as the regeneration of entire areas or school systems.'
What the term forward-looking might mean is not clear, but I'm sure readers of this blog will be reassured about the future of education in these islands to know of the experienced hands in which it has, in part been placed by the Comhairle.

The Peatstack has been banging his drum for a few weeks now on the issue of school closures, and so something a little lighter, but don't worry, The Peatstack has been digging around inside the issue of education and the PPP and will have something new in a day or two.

In the meantime...The Peatstack has celebrated his own personal Hogmannay, with the bringing home of the peats. This is my favourite time of the year, when you know its done and the peats are home, it has a real year-end feel to it, a time to relax a little, perhaps, and stop looking out the window every spare moment and wondering if its a good time to go to the moor. But sadness also (the helpless romantic in me, maybe talking here), that I say goodbye to the moor for a few months. Maybe that's a goodbye to a type of freedom that can only be experienced by total immersion in solitude, the sounds and light of the big place, the distant call of the birds, and even, when the winds in the right direction, the sound of the sea from both sides of the island - and it would be good to compile a list of all the places on the Long Isle where it is possible to hear the sea from both sides, east and west at the same time. Maybe the joy of the moor is that feeling of being small, being just another living thing in a massive scheme, made of the same stuff.
And the spare time can be put to other work. I have been working on a kind of Moorland Notebook, jottings, poems, little stories that come to mind as I work away out there and afterwards, at home. I must confess to spending a lot of time when on the moor supposedly working, doing absolutely nothing but standing, leaning on the bank or sitting on that obstinate white rock that has become like a summer twin so well do we know each other now, just peering out over the open space or looking at the sky, or holding some daft debate in my head that won't clear from my thoughts. This time grows often from a break for a mug of tea from that other twin of mine, the battered flask. I highly recommend it, spend time in the open doing nothing but thinking.
So, very nervous about this, but here's the lastest entry in the Moorland Notebook, a poem to my pal, the plover.

Plover

Plover,
wandering
like a banished monk
on the moor,
show me
what you see
from your tummock,

tell me
what you hear
at night
in the screaming
darkness

so that I can learn
from the bog.

I envy you running
bare-footed
beyond the road end
and your low, sure flight
by the river bend,

but do you know your
belly's black?
And why do you not fly
to a hot, dry land
to raise your young?

Why do you
not answer me
when I shout at you
untill my voice
has broken?


Then, in the quiet,
you ask me
why I live in a house
when the land is open
and the sky is as free
as burn water,
and why I will not be
your neighbour?

(c) The Peatstack 2007 (as if anyone else would want to claim it as their own!)

There's not only time for writing, but time for reading and here's a recomendation that came by surprise rooting through the secondhand books on some auction site or the other - the writing of Irishman, Sigerson Clifford. Clifford was, it seems, a Cork man of Kerry parentage born in 1913. He died many moons back and it seems has been very laregly forgotten this side of the Ring of Kerry.
The shortstories are in an old book called 'The Red Haired Woman and Other Stories', and there's a collection of poems called 'Ballads of a Bogman'.
A small exscerpt from the beginning of the story The Red-Haired Woman(I don't know if this is legal, its only a small quote and is for the good of Clifford GRHS, and gives a good taste of the quality and subject matter of this gentle, folk-lordy writer):
'All that morning the Fair Green had been a bedlam of lowing cattle, barking dogs and shouting men keeping their beasts herded together with whacking ashplants. Now it was empty save for the county council's unbroken stones in the centre, the tarred electric-light pole, with a circus poster wrapped around it, at the tope, and James Moylan with his bullock standing mournfully beside the school wall at the bottom.'
The writing is from some place that Clifford knew well, his own home patch and in the Brogue he spoke and heard everyday. The subjects are small moments of no great significance, the ballads about hard times and lost love but also the good times of a country childhood. It might not win the Booker Prize but it is real and seems to come from some kind of lost human place, maybe a bit like those moorlands.

One angry Peatstack here...
Listening to the radio this morning, it came as no surprise, given the recent news on this blog site about requests for a Sunday ferry service, to hear of CalMac's move to consultation on the issue. What has angered the Peatstack is not the prospect of debate on this issue or even the possibility of the ferries running on a Sunday, but the contribution of Rev Coghill supposedly on behalf of the Lords Day Observance Society. In an interview on the BBC, the learned Rev compared to commencement of the Harris-Uist Sunday Ferry service during the local communions as like 'driving a bus load of BNP members past a mosque at Ramadan.' How dare this ignorant man compare private people exercising their own totally legal choice to travel on a Sunday with members of a fascist organisation whose sole intent in such circumstances is to intimidate members of an ethnic or faith community? How dare he! He should apologise at once, and if that's the best the LDOS can muster by way of an argument against a Sunday ferry service on Stornoway then frankly they really are the lunatic fanatic fringe that some (though not previously the Peatstack) consider them to be, and their voice in this debate should be treated with contempt.