AN MP last night urged Labour-controlled Stirling Council to suspend its decision on a rural village school in Perthshire following a warning by education minister Brian Wilson at the weekend that no closure should be solely on cost grounds, writes Keith Sinclair.
In a move which will be welcomed in rural communities throughout Scotland, local authorities have been told by Mr Wilson to ensure that there is a ''credible educational justification'' for such closures.
Last night, Anne McGuire, Labour MP for Stirling, said she had asked for an urgent meeting with the minister to discuss the closure of Kinbuck School near Dunblane ''in the context of his speech''.
At a rural schools seminar in Dunoon on Saturday, Mr Wilson said guidelines were designed not to favour closures or retention, but to guarantee the credibility of the process.
''I have previously made clear my view that no school should close on financial grounds alone. There must also be credible educational justification for closure. I am going further by inviting education authorities to apply a test of proportionate advantage to any proposed closure of a rural primary school.
''In other words, do the educational and financial gains deriving from a closure stand up to scrutiny and do they outweigh the negative effects on that rural community and the children and their families which that closure will have?''
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