By journalist and parent at St Joseph’s primary in Milngavie Andrew McFadyen
THE Labour Party should give three cheers for parents at St Joseph’s Primary school in Milngavie.
The Parent Council’s audacious plan to make St Joseph’s the first community-led school in Scotland featured offers Jim Murphy a chance to do something bold and radical that could benefit children for generations to come.
What began as a campaign to save a popular local school from closure has created a much-needed debate about the democratisation of Scottish education.
For the past three years, parents have been lobbying councillors, signing petitions and marching in their hundreds against East Dunbartonshire’s proposal to close the town’s only Catholic primary and bus the children to a new-build in Bearsden.
One mother remarked in the playground that she had been on more demonstrations in the past few months than in a lifetime of living in Belfast.
Local Labour members have been at the heart of the campaign to save the school. Clydebank & Milngavie CLP unanimously passed a motion urging councillors to come forward with new proposals. It made no difference.