IT turns out that, if Bolton Education Authority succeeds in closing Scot Lane End School in 2001, there will be insufficient space in Blackrod Church School to accommodate the extra children, and the Education Authority concedes that additional buildings will be needed.
If the Education Authority's figures are correct and pupil numbers fall, those additional buildings will become redundant within a few years. Thus, the proposals involve the closing of perfectly good buildings at Scot Lane and spending our money on new buildings, which will only be of temporary use! Every taxpayer in Bolton should be in arms against this disgraceful waste of public funds.
What is even more astonishing, is that there appears to be no detailed plan to deal with the shortfall! The Director of Strategy was unable to say how additional children would be fitted in. When pressed, he had vague ideas about stripping the School of its educationally vital Resource Centre to make a further classroom.
It is elementary that such a feasibility study should have taken place before the proposals were presented. There should have been a number of different scenarios to take account of the uncertain numbers of children transferring. On the evidence presented, this has not been done.
If so, it follows that no costings can be available. By spinelessly accepting the proposal, the Labour Group on the Education Committee seems to have given carte blanche to waste our money. Why have they not asked to see the detailed plans and costings? If detailed plans do exist, why was the Director of Strategy unable to present them?
The solution is to retain Scot Lane until the numbers fall sufficiently to allow all the children to be accommodated in the existing facilities. This is so blindingly obvious that it is hard to understand why it was not the original proposal and one suspects ulterior motives. Perhaps the Education Authority fears that by then the errors in its figures will be exposed and the effort to close Scot Lane End will be revealed as the foolish mistake we know it to be.
A W Frost
Fryent Close
Blackrod
Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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