HUNDREDS of primary school pupils and teachers face moving to new campuses under proposals agreed by councillors.
Labour-run Renfrewshire Council is pressing ahead with a consultation on a £30 million shake-up which could see five primaries and five nurseries moved in with other educational facilities.
The council, which is run by leader Mark Macmillan, insists each school will retain its own staff, name and identities, but the SNP opposition says the plan amounts to closing schools.
Renfrewshire Council's education board yesterday agreed a plan to consult parents on the changes.
The five primary schools that face changes are St Fergus' and St Catherine's in Paisley, Bargarran and St Anne's in Erksine and St James' in Renfrew.
Education convener Jackie Henry said: "We will be talking and listening to parents and others before making a decision."
And referring to the report before councillors, she added: "There is no proposal to close schools in this paper."
But the SNP hit back, with their education spokeswoman Lorraine Cameron saying: "You are not shouting from the rooftops about the educational benefits of this for pupils. No matter how you dress this up, you are closing school and nursery buildings. It is a death list."
Labour argues that its plan will see £30m invested in better facilities, despite the council receiving what it claims is one of the smallest Scottish Government grants given to any authority.
After the meeting, Jayne Evans, treasurer of St Catherine's Primary parent council, said: "The building that they're proposing to move us to is not fit for purpose."
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