Schools investment should not be ‘political football’

Lochaber senior councillor Andrew Baxter has said the issue of investment in local schools should not become a political football, but instead, everyone should come together to work for a more equitable funding formula for schools.

Mr Baxter, councillor for Fort William and Ardnamurchan, was responding to comments by SNP MSP Kate Forbes.

Ms Forbes, MSP for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch, recently commended Scotland’s Schools for the Future building programme for investing more than £63 million in the Highlands – but questioned why the local authority continued to have the worst school estate in the country.

She said £50.6m had been invested under the SNP since 2009 in building new Highland schools and £12.5m had been spent refurbishing schools in the area.

The figure means Highland Council has received the second highest amount of all local authorities in Scotland. But the MSP said despite this, significant investment from the Scottish Government, Highland Council had the worst school estate in Scotland and that she had personally visited schools on the Isle of Skye, Lochaber and Dingwall that were in desperate need of improvement.

But Mr Baxter said Ms Forbes was ‘conveniently forgetting’ that: ‘We’ve the largest number of schools, many that are small and in rural areas, so the expense of maintaining these schools is a challenge.

‘You can’t compare the cost of maintaining a school estate in the Highlands with somewhere like Edinburgh.

‘It’s such a shame there’s some attempt to make this issue a political football.

‘I would rather we work together for the benefit of the Highlands to make the case to the Scottish Government for a more equitable funding formula for our schools. They seem determined to ‘island proof’ everything so why not apply a bit of ‘Highland proofing?’