TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO Friday March 14, 1997

Councillors demand to see school hit list

The row over school closures in Argyll and Bute is rumbling on with some councillors demanding a list of schools that could potentially be shut.

Council leaders and education officials are still denying the existence of a ‘hit list’.

At Friday’s finance and personnel meeting, the question of school closures was brought up by Councillor Sandy McQueen. He asked why the council had not issued a list of schools that would fit the criteria for closure.

Kintyre councillor George McMillan said he couldn’t accept that there was legislation that could prevent a council from issuing a potential closure list.

Councillor McQueen asked: ‘Is there not a way round this by putting forward a document with proposals that the schools may be closed?’

The Self-Governing Schools Act for Scotland 1989 stops the council from being as open as it would like. The act relates to schools ‘opting out’ from local authority control and it is feared that some schools will try to opt out to prevent closure.

Council leader Dick Walsh said: ‘It would create real problems for some communities in Argyll and Bute and school boards would want to look at opting out.’

He added: ‘The number of school closures depends on the budget meeting. It wouldn’t make sense at all to produce a list saying we are going to close all the schools when it might not be necessary.’