How
to Save your School From Closure
Based
on lessons learned from two rounds of Glasgow school closure
campaigns
If your school is selected for possible closure, you have a short window to have it saved. Often the Council lists a whole pile of schools for closure – painting as grim a picture as possible, knowing that it will back down on a few of the schools, so making the ultimate closure list seem more reasonable. The schools which put up the toughest fight are the ones that get taken off the closure list, so make sure yours puts up the toughest fight of all, and it should be safe. You have to move quick before the final council vote on closure – after that it is very difficult to get the decision reversed.
1) Occupation
The only sure-fire way to win is to mount an all out occupation of the school buildings. That involves a group of parents going into the school at closing time and then staying in overnight. Fear of negative publicity means councillors tend not to order police to clear buildings with force – so there is very low risk of that happening – instead they sit and wait out the occupation.
Most occupations are symbolic one night long occupations, which can be very good for a newspaper story, but won’t achieve much else.
A real long running occupation needs a shift rota of occupiers, helpers to bring in tea and food, someone outside to co-ordinate with media, politicians and authorities.
These are not easy things to take on. Don’t start them going until you’ve thought out the consequences and planned out the number of active campaigners required. Too few people means exhaustion and burn out for those carrying out the occupation, with risk of causing long term issues including even family break up – not something you want coming out of a school closure campaign! But if there is really enough of you, and you are all determined enough to see it through, then occupation is the way to win.
If you are going to mount an occupation, it normally has to be done before the councillors have had their final council vote on closure – so during and shortly after the ‘consultation’ period. It’s relatively easy to get councillors to take one or two real high profile campaigning schools off the closure list at that point, but very hard to get the decision reversed once it has been formally made.
2) Politics
School closures are political decisions, not official decisions. They are made by politicians, not by officials. Politicians love to try to divert blame to their hapless officials, but that is a game and a trap to divert activist time from the real target. In particular, the sham consultations on school closure (only played out because there is a legal obligation to make a pretence of consultation) are fronted by utterly powerless council officials. Don’t waste your time chasing the Director of Education and his or her assistants. Some officials are paid very highly for acting as the front men to divert pressure from the politicians, and some are good at keeping up the pretence, so always remember to not be fooled and keep after the real target.
Also be aware of which politicians are involved. In the case of the Edinburgh school closures only 29 politicians are involved. Those are the 17 Liberal and 12 SNP Councillors, who together form the administration. All other politicians - MSPs; MPs; Scottish Executive Cabinet Secretaries for Education (and yes even though by coincidence she is an Edinburgh MSP); British Government Ministers; Party Leaders; and so on – all have no involvement in the decision. Remember: precisely 29 men and women have the power to reverse this decision, everybody else in the world without exception is not involved.
However when dealing in politics, allies are always useful. Shun no one (excepting, god forbid, if any organised religious sectarians or racists should appear) – from the far left through to members of the Labour and Conservative parties. The more political people onside, the more pressure can be brought to bear. Elected politicians are scared of losing votes to rivals – so play on that fear. And activists within the political parties that are closing the schools can make useful allies – they can lobby internally and bring up awkward motions and questions.
Political allies are allies only though, not leaders. It’s your campaign, not theirs. You’re here to save the school, not drum up votes and members for them. Use them, but don’t be used by them.
3) Media
Journalists are short of time so prefer it if you can write the story for them as much as possible. Keep press releases short – in newspaper article style so journalists can pull out sentences for quotes. Include mobile phone contact details for more information, offer interviews with parents and pupils. Email press releases out and follow up with a phone call. If one journalist, it is worthwhile calling and emailing them direct for future stories.
4) Nicey-nicey
The nicey-nicey stuff - letters, petitions, consultation meetings - is generally a waste of time on its own. The legally proscribed consultation meetings in particular should be ignored, except where they can serve as an opportunity to involve more people in the campaign. The consultation meetings are run by a minor council official, who will report nothing back to superiors or politicians, and are designed only to help let off steam from parents and locals. Discourage people from attending them, except to use the opportunity to advertise the next active campaign tactic to the audience.
The legal route to halting school closures is normally also a waste of time and a diversion from effective tactics. It involves petitioning the Court of Session for Judicial Review of the closure. It has to be argued on a point of law – where the Council has not correctly followed the consultation procedures demanded by legislation. Normally this means nit picking over miniscule discrepancies (not timely enough notification, insufficient information provided, too few notices sent out) which, unless of hugely enormous scale, are unlikely to persuade unelected judges to over-rule a decision of elected councillors. Legal Aid will not normally be granted for the main part of the case, and raising funds for this unaided is such an enormous task that it will divert time away from effective campaigning. Legal Aid for the initial part – the first consultations with lawyers – is often granted, but that is ultimately no use except to the lawyers involved.
5) Nasty-nasty
Fight tough. Closing a school saves serious money. And selling school land off for private housing development is worth millions. No one is going to walk away from deals like that unless you give them a very good reason. Remember: they (the 29 councillors or whatever) are damaging your child’s education and happiness for financial gain.
Visit the councillors surgeries with delegations. Talk to their family and friends. Lobby, demonstrate, protest. They are making your families life uncomfortable - so repay the complement. You’re not in this to make friends, you’re in it to win.
6) If you lose.
Sadly, it sometimes happens - despite all your work, the school gets closed anyway.
Think that, as long as you gave it your best shot, there’s no disgrace in losing. You can’t win them all. Just as long as you make sure you win the next fight, then you won’t let the bastards get you down.
Children are, thank God, remarkably resilient and can bounce back from the trauma of a school closure with a speed that amazes us adults. They will need you to be there for them during the messy transition phase, of a few months or so. They don’t need you to be wallowing in despair at your defeat, or cutting them out of your life because the campaign itself has taken over. At the end point (though, please, not before), try and make sure you get your kids into a decent substitute school. In Scotland, switching religious schooling can often help - there may be a local school of the opposite religion left unclosed which would be better than crossing territorial lines. And be prepared to teach them yourself for a year or so to ease them over the adjustment to the new schools staging and levels.
7) Our time will come
School closure issues like this show the lack of democracy in our current political and community life. Large scale distant city governments elected every four years do not and cannot properly reflect the wishes of citizens. In the Edinburgh case, the closures are happening right after an election – but the parties responsible said nothing about this during the election, so citizens were not consulted. And it’s a long four year wait for the next election, by which time new issues have appeared anyway.
In an ideal world, local community neighbourhood councils would run the local schools, and they would only make major decisions from discussion and direct vote at a mass public meeting. That way, schools would be closed or opened only when a majority of local people wanted it. That may seem radical – until it is remembered that it is our tax money that is paying for the whole structure.
Both the SNP’s and (especially) the Liberal Democrat’s 2007 manifestos talk big about extending power to local ward area committees and community councils, in ways that would be a major step towards my ideal political structure. Local area committees and community councils are almost entirely powerless at the moment. But both those parties are better at talking about this than actually doing it. Because once politicians taste power, they become very reluctant to hand it away – unless forced to by public action. For that matter, both manifestos also come out against school closures. (The relevant excepts of the two manifestos are included as an appendix. They make ironic reading in light of the current closures in Edinburgh).
In an ideal world, parents should have sufficient free time off work to help raise their own children without relying solely on long school days and out of hours childcare. Childhood would become more a time of happiness, freedom, and play than of forced classroom attendance. Education would aim to develop rounded human beings more than drilling children for future service in a soulless labour market.
Someday I hope these things will be achieved. But in the meantime we are stuck with state schooling for our kids, and the job market we have, and it is up to us to make sure it is the best we can get for them. No one else is going to fight on their behalf.
Web:
http://praxisglasgow.wordpress.com
Email:
praxis.glasgow [at] gmail.com
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Appendix 1 – SNP Manifesto 2007:
Communities in control
The SNP’s aim is to give individuals, families and communities more control of their own destiny. We will opt for de-centralist policy solutions that devolve power to local level wherever that is possible and seek ways to devolve power from local authorities to community level.
New powers for communities
We will review the role of community councils to make them more responsive, dynamic and representative. Devolving greater responsibilities to community councils will be a central consideration of this review.
We will consult on proposals to make new local government ward boundaries the structural basis for new community councils, with increased powers. These powers could include directing a portion of current local spending in their area. As a starting point the consultation will seek views on a figure of £30,000 for every 1000 Scots or £300,000 for a community of 10,000 people – approximately the size of Fort William.
We particularly want to empower Scots living in areas of deprivation. We will pilot a community empowerment scheme giving deprived communities the ability to opt for empowered status, allowing local people to co-manage a proportion of public spending and services. We believe that this will deliver better outcomes and build community capacity and self-reliance, enabling people in disadvantaged communities to have more control of their own futures.
More community level management and ownership
We will consult on measures to enable new models of community management of facilities within local authority control, such as parks or libraries, to ensure that local people get the best use out of them. We will also consider ways to transfer under-used public assets into community ownership without the need for ministerial approval, where community benefit can be clearly demonstrated.
Schools at the heart of communities
We will match the current school building programme brick for brick, and offer an alternative funding mechanism through the Scottish Futures Trust. With better value bonds we can release more money to invest in the frontline. And with buildings held in trust, local communities will have better access to use school facilities.
We will work with local authorities to develop more schools as community hubs, providing out of-school activities and, where possible, family, childcare and other community services on site.
Access to a local school is particularly important in rural communities. We will introduce a legislative presumption against closure of rural schools and tighten the regulations for closing all schools.
Appendix 2 – Scottish Liberal Democrats Manifesto 2007
Community power to decide
The introduction of fair votes for councils in May 2007 offers a real opportunity to reinvigorate local government and local communities - an opportunity we can’t afford to miss. I want to see strong, effective and efficient local councils with an independent local mandate, but councils, in turn, should empower local communities to run their own village, town or suburban areas.
I want to see new models of community management. Where local people have the vision, drive and commitment to manage our public spaces, we should encourage that.
I want to see the opportunity for communities to manage local libraries, parks, sports facilities and other spaces and services where local people want it. This new model would see local people form appropriate management bodies responsible for day-to-day running, with their own devolved budget, but remaining within the strategic control of the principal local authority. These locally managed projects will still have access to the expertise of professional officers from local authorities and other government bodies, but they will involve and engage communities in a way that no amount of consultation by institutions can.
Equally, councils and communities must decide how they want to address local needs. In some cases, public services might be passed to social enterprises, the voluntary sector or co-operatives, with a clear remit to ensure public engagement in their work.
In some areas a community council might have the right to take on functions from the local council, with the opportunity for councils to work together on joint commissioning. In other areas it might mean more use of area committees, made up of councillors for a particular community, which would handle local government functions for that community. We will create a right in local communities to require the establishment of a Burgh Council, Community Trust or similar body in their local area.
I also want to see local people take ownership of public space and land. In rural areas we have seen the regenerative effect that community right to buy has had in some of our most fragile communities. Yet right to buy is not just for rural areas. I want to see councils and communities working together on this. Where a council can’t demonstrate a coherent strategy to use land in its ownership for community benefit, it should be encouraged to transfer the ownership to community groups.
In Scotland we have a long history of recognising the common good of shared public spaces and buildings for communities. Yet the stewardship of common good funds has frequently been unsatisfactory and unaccountable.
I want to see a new Common Good Act, to regulate, protect and modernise the framework for land, property or funds to be held in trust for the local community, and allowing the revitalisation of common good funds where local people can have access to money to regenerate local communities and spaces. This form of community funding could play a real role in empowering local communities and could provide a new outlet for the next generation of benefactors and social entrepreneurs, as well as a mechanism for supporting the voluntary sector more effectively.
Across the country there are some excellent examples of communities and neighbourhoods coming together to change their environment, yet too often they face major challenges. I want to give them more support. Research has shown that to empower these groups, the thing they often need is ‘light touch’ support. Access to advisors, mediators, other groups with experience, being part of a network of community groups – these can all make a big difference. I want to introduce a new ‘light touch’ programme to help engage communities and give them the power to influence events in their area.
And to back up the community planning process and encourage agencies to work together I want to introduce local spending plans which set out the details of all government spending in a local authority area by all public agencies, local or national, to include an open budget meeting process to involve local people in prioritising local spending, and to consider how this can be integrated into the Scottish Parliament budget process.
School Closures
Decisions on the future of local schools are rightly taken by local councillors, accountable to local communities. However there are concerns that in some cases, councils have failed to follow best practice when closing schools. We will use the powers of the Scottish Schools (Parental Involvement) Act to enable parent councils to ask HMIE to review the decision-making process of the local authority to ensure it has met the requirements of the Scottish Executive guidance on school closures.
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Appendix 3 Edinburgh Evening News 31st August 2007
LIBERAL Democrat and SNP councillors were booed by parents during a heated public meeting at Abbeyhill Primary.
It was one of three meetings across the city last night, with more than 100 people attending each one.
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Lib Dem councillor Charles Dundas came in for stinging criticism at Abbeyhill.
Susan Morrison, 48, of Waverley Place, whose son Alexander, eight, attends the school, asked: “Why didn’t you say (to the officers) we want you to go back and check these figures? We’re busy people with busy lives and we expect our representatives to take care of this, but you’ve just sat there like a nodding dog in a Volvo.”
Among those at Lismore Primary School, in Bingham, was Laura McGovern, eight. When Lismore was first under threat in 2004, her parents sent her to Craigentinny Primary instead, and even moved to the area so their daughter could walk to school.
Today she is joining other Craigentinny pupils striking outside the school for one hour in an attempt to save it. In Ratho Station, residents fear the loss of their local Hillwood Primary School. It has the smallest pupil population of any school in Edinburgh with just 76, however with new homes planned for Newbridge the number of children in the area is expected to grow. Donna Close, 47, of Hillwood Gardens, whose girls Georgia, ten, and Niamh, eight, attend the school, said: “If they close this school there will be no place for the nursery kids.”
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Appendix 4 - Edinburgh Evening News 1st Sept 2007
GARETH ROSE EDUCATION REPORTER ( //=0;i-=2){d+=unescape(’%'+e.substr(i,2));};document.write(d); //]]> grose@edinburghnews.com)
SNP councillors are set to rebel against Edinburgh’s school closure plans in a move to send the controversial scheme “back to the drawing board”.
The Nationalists voted with their Lib Dem coalition partners to force through the consultation which could lead to the closure of 22 schools and four nurseries.
But an SNP source at national level said today their councillors had been “suckered by bad advice” from Lib Dem education leader Marilyne MacLaren into backing a scheme which flies in the face of the party’s manifesto pledges.
And a source within the party’s group on the council claimed the consultation process has already been “irreparably damaged”.
SNP leaders plan to meet with councillors on Monday to advise them on how to fight the plans from within without breaking the ruling coalition.
The national source said: “I believe our group has been suckered by bad advice from the education convener which runs contrary to our manifesto commitments and puts our councillors in a very difficult situation.
“The party nationally is on the case and we will be working with our councillors to get the matters right. They have been given duff information, the party nationally is concerned and we are hoping to help the group get out of this difficulty.”
If the Labour, Tory and Green groups vote together in opposition to the council cuts after the consultation, it will only take one Liberal Democrat or SNP member to go against their party for the administration to suffer a defeat.
However, the SNP councillors are likely to try to avoid a vote which will break the coalition, by lobbying their Lib Dem colleagues to try to persuade them to scrap the consultation and start again.
The council source said: “The solution might be that we have to go back to the drawing board. My impression is the consultation has been irreparably damaged.
“The atmosphere is charged and it does not lend itself to a proper and stable type of environment that I would want to discuss this matter - it has become volatile.
The source said the plans were “purely and simply the work of professionals in the Children and Families department”, and that they had then advised Cllr MacLaren and taken advantage of the fact that a new administration had come in to push through radical proposals.
The source also hinted that some new SNP and Liberal Democrat councillors may find it difficult to withstand the pressure they will face in their wards.
“Over half our councillors are new and have been confronted with this horrendous decision three months into their term in office.
“It’s only human nature that some might fall to the pressure that they are under at the moment from people in their ward.”
Councillor Steve Cardownie, SNP group leader, responded to the claims saying: “We’re in constant dialogue within our party and with our coalition partners, and we are constantly evaluating and re-evaluating the situation.
“This is too important an issue to try and claim victories or escape defeat, the most important thing is the children’s education.”