Councillors hear that tiny school is not under threat despite worries about school roll

A councillor has raised concerns around the long term viability of one of East Ayrshire’s smallest schools.

Governance and Scrutiny Committee chair, Councillor Peter Mabon, raised the issue during a report on Littlemill Primary School and Early Childhood Centre.

The school has 27 pupils, with a further 12 coming through the Early Childhood Centre. But the committee was told that there was no current consideration of any closure at the school.

Cllr Mabon said: “For me the the size of the school is something that’s being looked at.

“It’s obviously a very small school. I’m wondering what the long-term viability of a school this size is and what opportunities they would get if they were in a bigger school.

“I’m worried that there’s only 12 coming through in the Early Childhood Centre.

“How is that going to affect the school role in in the future in an already small school?”

Chief Governance Officer, David Mitchell, told the committee: “There are two schools of thought.

“There are a lot of people in my experience who subscribe to the view that their children will get or may get a better education in a smaller school setting .

“Others subscribe to the view that children will get a more rounded and a more full experience in a bigger school where you know there’s more folk to relate to a wider choice. “

He said that the legislation around closing schools had become more complicated and was not simply down to the size of the school roll.

He continued: “If we only have limited resources and we have underutilized assets in terms of the buildings then it would seem, at one level, to be a common sense approach to try and get to bigger capacity.”

Mr Mitchell told councillors that any closure of rural schools now had ‘extra hoops and hurdles’.

He continued: “It isn’t just what’s the impact of closing a school against a small number of pupils and what’s the impact in those pupils if they were to be relocated to to the nearest or another suitable school.

“You have that wider consideration of what other community use is made of these buildings and what’s the impact in the community.”

He cited Highland Council saying: “You can imagine the size of that area and they’ve got schools and places where at the moment it might not make sense to continue to operate because of the very small numbers.

“But the argument becomes ‘how will you ever encourage people to move into maybe the islands and the more remote areas?’

“It applies in the mainland as well- how will people been incentivised or motivated to move if you’re reducing that school provision?

“So where’s the flexibility if in the future families do move in or somebody builds a factory. Hence this new approach now of mothballing, which is effectively a temporary closure or suspension.

“It is not quite going the whole hog by closing the building and repurposing it or knocking it down and therefore removing the opportunity in the future to perhaps bring it back into use should the numbers change.”

Mr Mitchell pointed out that there was no current consideration of Littlemill in terms of its school roll.

SNP Councillor David Richardson said that, given there was a broader view of the need for a school, it was important that departments were aware of each others standpoint, such as the need to attract people into a community.

He added: “One of the ways you can quicken [outward] migration is to close the local school. “