School Closure
From Moriston Matters, Issue 23, February 1981
EDITORIAL
On the proposal to close Invermoriston Primary School, albeit perhaps temporarily, we make three points.
First, the claim of the Inverness Division that the pupils would not he educationally disadvantaged in being transferred to Fort Augustus School because in the main children benefit from a larger set-up where there is more incentive to make an effort, should be scrutinised very carefully. It all depends, as one person pointed at the meeting in the school, what you mean by ??? "educationally disadvantaged" or "advantaged". Certainly there is some validity in saying that children can benefit from being educationally in larger numbers, but only in certain things - in P.E. and Music, for example, when larger numbers can allow scope for team games and full choral singing. In an ideal world there is an optimal size of class or group. And so on. But these possible benefits cannot outweigh the total educational (using the word in its widest sense) advantages to be gained from the kind of small education that is possible in a community school in a community blessed with a strong sense of the identity and in which the school is still very much focal. In saying this, we do not in any way call to question the quality of education available in Fort Augustus School. And how on earth can the converse, implicit in the statement of the Inverness Division representative, be true: that because a school roll be small there must to less incentive for pupils to make an effort? Anyway, at present the pupils of Invermoriston School do benefit, at just the right age, from being educated in a larger set-up, when in the natural course of things they transfer to secondary education. Really, on this words fail: all we can say is that the Inverness Division's rather bland assurance, containing a statement so extremely blanket, so very generalised, begging so many questions and therefore so misleading, smacks somewhat of the desire to hoodwink.
Second, there is the question of bussing young children on a busy main road. No one, fortunately, can question the care taken, by all concerned anywhere in the country over the conveying of children to and from school, but if you begin to bus pupils on a busy main road the ??? ??? ??? you must increase the danger to limb and life. Okay, if as in some parts of Scotland there is no choice, but if the possible financial saving, as it seems in the case of Invermoriston School, is very little, then the decision to close must be a very careful one.
And third, the Region's statement that closures are to be possibly temporary should be treated with a great deal of healthy scepticism. Administrators notoriously become afflicted with the compulsion to rationalise; become addicted to drawing final, conclusive lines under their neat and tidy answers. Once closed, which we trust will not be the case, it is doubtful if Invermoriston Primary School would ever be reopened.
The Highland Regional Council is under an overwhelming obligation to do their sums again - financially AND MORALLY.