EDUCATION chiefs at a Scottish council have admitted they breached Government regulations over the recruitment of a new headteacher at one of their schools.
An internal investigation found bosses at North Ayrshire Council broke Scottish Government rules when they made the appointment at Garnock Academy.
Problems came to light following a complaint about the process by the school's parent council, and an investigation found the council broke rules under the Scottish Schools (Parental Involvement) Act 2006.
Parents criticised the job description in the council's advertisement for a new head, calling it 'vague', and also complained about council officials, saying parent council chairman Brent Norris was not impartial in the recruitment process.
The parent council subsequently voted overwhelmingly to reject that accusation by the council.
Mr Norris and colleagues have welcomed the new head, Alan Dick, and promised him their every support.
Mary Docherty, head of service, education and skills, told parents: "I regret very much that we did not engage with the parent council earlier in the process. We've been very negligent and lessons have been learned."
Director of Education Carol Kirk said: "We hold our hands up. There was no intent on our part to exclude the parents at Garnock.
"We want to get the best, most inspirational educator we can for all our schools and we feel we have still done that here."
Meanwhile, Ms Kirk will retire in March.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article