Border Telegraph | News | £28,000 to bus pupils to new school

Monday, 8th September, 2008

Published: Tuesday, 27th September, 2005 10:16

£28,000 to bus pupils to new school

By Border Telegraph Newsroom

FURIOUS Oxton residents fighting to save Channelkirk primary school have claimed that the equivalent of a teacher’s salary will be spent on transporting pupils if they are sent to a merged school in Lauder.

Members of the full Scottish Borders Council will decide the school’s fate on December 8, after a report detailing the findings of the consultation is published one week earlier.

One option is to move all 54 pupils to Lauder primary, but residents and campaigners have been angered by figures sent by SBC’s director of education, Glenn Rodger, which show a cost of £28,500 each year to bus children to and from school.

Paul Docherty, chairman of Channelkirk school board, said: “The amount that they have allocated for transport is the equivalent of a teacher’s salary. They are going to burn a teacher’s salary in petrol every year.”

SBC say the average cost of employing a primary teacher in the Borders is £31,000. There are various pay scales depending on responsibilities and qualifications, but according to the teacher’s union, EIS, £30,399 is the highest salary that is awarded to unpromoted primary school teachers in Scotland.

On hearing the figures, South of Scotland Green list MSP, Chris Ballance, said: “It is a significant sum of money, and I think it is completely tunnel vision economically. It will save very little money.

“You can bet anything that in two or three years, not all the children will be travelling in the bus. In the long run, I think it will cost.”

An education spokesperson for SBC said: “I don’t think it is material to the issue under consideration.”

Around 180 people gathered in Oxton last Tuesday to discuss the implications of the council’s decision to hold a consultation on the future of the school.

Local residents and campaigners are furious that SBC is using what they feel are “underhand tactics” in the consultation procedure, and have expressed a lack of trust in the council’s behaviour.

And residents have already sent a letter of complaint to the council’s chief executive regarding a report prepared for education executive members by Mr Rodger, which misrepresented the size of the village.

Hamish Reid, an Oxton resident and a vocal supporter of maintaining Channelkirk, said: “There is a great concern in the village that there are underhand tactics going on. People feel that the council don’t want to tell everyone what is going on and just want to close the school.

“There have been battles with the council before, and the people don’t necessarily feel their views are being taken into account. There is a great sense of frustration with the council.”

A website set up by campaigners – www.savechannelkirk.org - says: “Although the consultation paper contained some financial details, it did not contain any facts, concerns or issues put forward by the community.”

These concerns include the question of why an option to keep Channelkirk as it is today was removed from the consultation exercise, when it had been on the table for the past two years.

Mr Docherty said: “We were not notified at all. When the paper appeared, it appeared seven days before the council meeting, as it has to by law.

“At that point, the status quo option had been withdrawn and replaced with the option of operating as a satellite of Lauder. There was no decision and no debate.”

But an education spokesperson for SBC says the reason the option to keep Channelkirk as it is has been dropped from the consultation exercise is that this will be the outcome if council members vote to reject all three proposals.

As such the council feel there is no need to include this default setting as an option for members to consider. The spokesperson said: “We only consult on change.”

Oxton residents are now bracing themselves for a long fight, and Mr Docherty believes the result will affect the future of everyone in the village.

He said: “The council want to bring in the railway, and it will lose money but they describe it as having economic and social benefits. In exactly the same way, that is what we are saying about rural schools. The only difference is one of scale.”

Meanwhile, pupils at Channelkirk are holding a concert at Oxton Memorial Hall on Friday at 6.30pm to celebrate the school’s 150th anniversary. Pupils will also be releasing a commemorative CD to mark the occasion, singing a song written by the school’s music teacher.

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