Clydeview Academy...

I have been following with interest the 'debate' on Inverclyde Now about the difficulties at Clydeview Academy due to the school having opened with a school roll significantly above the roll it was designed for.

This situation is clearly not ideal and the Head Teacher, his staff and Education Officials are working to address the specific issues raised by parents and pupils.

Those who have short memories, and wish to blame the current Labour-led Administration, might find a short history lesson of use in putting these difficulties into context.

The decision to merge Greenock Academy and Gourock High School was taken by the Education and Lifelong Learning Committee on 19 January 2005. The proposal was moved by the then Convener Jim Mitchell on behalf of the Liberal Democrat Administration. An alternative Labour proposal to merge Greenock Academy with Wellington Academy and Gourock High School with Greenock High School was defeated by 11 votes to 6.

The specific proposal from the Liberal Democrats was to build a new non-denominational secondary school with a capacity of 950 on the site of the existing St Columba's High School to replace Gourock High School and Greenock Academy.

It was also agreed that the school rolls of Gourock High School and Greenock Academy be capped with the annual intake limited to 100 and 80 respectively. Crucially the capping was not to take effect until December 2007, meaning that the school intake of August 2008 would be the first to be affected. It was no co-incidence that the capping would not come into effect until after the May 2007 Council elections. This politically motivated decision to delay capping and the subsequent well-documented difficulties in enforcing the caps once introduced has resulted in the present situation where the school has opened with a school roll well above the design capacity.

When Labour won back control of the Council in May 2007 we initiated a review of the school estate strategy. Unfortunately due the advanced nature of the proposed merger of Wellington Academy and Greenock High School and the stage that the PPP procurement process was at we could not fundamentally change the decisions of the previous Council in respect of non-denominational secondary provision. We did however consider the option of building a bigger school at Bayhill to accommodate pupils from King's Glen Primary School.

At its meeting on 18 June 2008 the Education and Lifelong Learning Committee unanimously re-affirmed the previous decision to build a new non-denominational school on the Bayhill site with a capacity of 950. While the proposal for a bigger school had met with opposition from the parent body of Greenock Academy, the reason it was rejected by the Administration was the potential detrimental impact such a decision would have on the long-term rolls of other secondary schools.

It is worth making the point that it was never the intention of the current or previous administration to build a school to accommodate placing requests. The new school was to be built to accommodate the natural intake from its associated primary schools, namely Moorfoot, Gourock and Ardgowan Primary Schools. The use of roll caps was to be the means by which the joint school rolls of Gourock High School and Greenock Academy were to be reduced over time to ensure that the new school did not open over capacity.

The central thrust of the Council's education strategy is to make every school in Inverclyde a school of choice.   We do not believe in a free market in education. If parents want to exercise their right to make a placing request then we must respect that under the law. We do not have to build in surplus capacity to our schools to guarantee that such placing requests will always be granted.

While there was and is the option of providing temporary accommodation on site the danger is that a short-term fix turns into a long-term solution, which has the same detrimental impact on other schools that building a larger school than required would have had.

I would certainly have preferred that Clydeview Academy had not opened with more pupils than it was designed for. I am confident however that staff, pupils, parents and the Education Authority working together will overcome this short-term challenge and that Clydeview will prove to be a worthy successor to Gourock High School and Greenock Academy.