The occupation by parents of the Wyndford Primary School and St. Gregory’s Primary School in Glasgow which began on Friday 3 April is part of a Glasgow-wide campaign (Save Our Schools) triggered by proposals for a city-wide cull of primary schools and nurseries.
In January a meeting of the Glasgow City Council Executive Committee agreed in principle to shut down 13 primary schools and 12 nurseries, attended in total by more than 2,000 children. Later a full meeting of the City Council endorsed the proposals.
In previous rounds the Council has defended school closures on the basis that old schools will be replaced (somewhere else) by new schools. This time however, there are to be closures — but no new schools.
According to the City Council leader Steven Purcell: “We cannot afford to build new schools and nurseries through prudential borrowing.”
The City Council’s “justification” for the closures is purely economic: the closures will, it claims, result in “savings” of £3.7 millions a year, ranging from an estimated £241,000 from closing Albert Primary to an estimated £32,445 from closing Merrylee Nursery.
The Council has also claimed that in deciding which schools and nurseries to propose for closure it has applied criteria such as educational benefit, building capacity and occupancy, transport arrangements and the wider community impact.
And, just to underline its supposed democratic and people-empowering credentials, the Council extended the consultation period for its proposals, which began on 2 February, from four weeks to six weeks, and promised public meetings at each of the threatened schools to discuss their proposed closure.
But ever since the proposed closures were first announced by the City Council Executive Committee parents throughout Glasgow have been campaigning in defence of the threatened schools and nurseries and challenging the arguments being put forward by the Council.
Demonstrations have been held in front of the City Chambers and also in the localities where the threatened schools are located. 45 public meetings have been held. 8,000 responses, overwhelmingly hostile, have sent been in to the Council.
Parents have hammered home the point that the closures will break up local communities, create larger classes in the receiving schools, and lead to children travelling a lot further to and from school.
The final decision on the proposed closures will take place at a full City Council meeting on 23 April. It is not a question of deciding whether this school or that school should be kept open or shut down, but of ensuring that none of the schools are closed.
