As winter creeps, in students and staff at Edinburgh schools and nurseries have learned
of the chilling news that their places of learning and work places may be under
threat once again. The Edinburgh Evening News reported on the thirtieth of
October that Edinburgh Council intended to reopen a consultation process that
would look into the future of schools. It also listed seventeen schools and
nurseries that it expected to be earmarked for the process.
Included on the list were three high schools, all of them
community schools in working class areas. These are invaluable assets to the
areas involved. Not only are they vitally important as locally available
centres of education for young school students in the area, they also serve
many other purposes, including adult learning. For instance my own school, Drummond Community High School,
sees approximately one thousand adult learners use its facilities every week,
additional to its five hundred or so school students.
Of particular note is Wester Hailes Education Centre. This
is an important resource in a deprived area of Edinburgh. As well as being a school and an
important centre for the local community, it contains the city’s only single
mothers’ education unit. To even consider scrapping this shows a complete
disregard for a vulnerable section of society. Without this unit being
available to them, many single mothers in Edinburgh
will simply be unable to receive an education due to the inconvenience and
great expense involved in childcare. Many of the primary schools included in
the report are also in working class areas. It is claimed that the threat of
closure is due to falling rolls.
This is a
shortsighted approach in a city with an ever increasing population, and a large
influx of young workers from Eastern Europe
who will likely start families in the near future. Perhaps this is all
unsurprising, given that the councillor in charge of the whole process sends
her children to a private school.
The parties that run the Council in Edinburgh, the Lib Dems
and the Nationalists, both promised to improve education, with the SNP during
the general election campaign making the explicit promise to cut class sizes.
Now that they are in power the true face of nationalism and the Liberal
Democrats’ ‘radical alternative’ have been exposed – cuts in public services.
For not only are schools to shut, workers in the children and families’
department have also been told that their jobs are under threat. Apparently
this is due to a black hole in the Council’s budget. The figure quoted in justification started at
ten million pounds and has been rising ever since. In a centre of wealth and
finance such as Edinburgh
this is farcical. The Council often allows businesses to pay token rates while they
generate huge amounts of profit, yet at the same time is claiming to be short
of revenue. Clearly this shows who their loyalties lie with.
When school closures were threatened earlier this year
school students, parents and striking local government workers protested
together outside the City Chambers under the slogan of ‘no to cuts’. This
tradition must be continued. Only a united struggle of school students, parents
and workers will be able to save schools and prevent cuts in Edinburgh. We cannot afford to stand idly by
and watch our hard won Council services eroded. We must also call on the
teaching union, the Educational Institute of Scotland, to come out against
these cuts. Last time the leadership scandalously refused to come out against
closures. This robbed the membership of a voice, and potentially meant that we
would see a lower quality of education in Edinburgh
schools without a struggle from teachers.
Cuts in education in Edinburgh
predate the current Council. Under the control of New Labour bureaucrats we saw
the Council privatise schools. This is just the latest, most drastic
manifestation in recent years.
We need a socialist
education system run by those who work and use it, as part of an economy in
which resources are planned and made available to those who need them. Only
then will we see schools run not as financial assets to be traded off as real
estate. It would also spell the end for an education system that is under-staffed
and stretched to the limit.
