We should all support the plan to turn St Joseph’s in Milngavie into Scotland’s first community partnership school, writes Kevin McKenna
WITHIN the handsome walls of douce Milngavie, just a few miles north of Glasgow, a campaign is building that may yet change the face of education in Scotland. The intended closure of St Joseph’s primary, a much-loved, 140-year-old school at the heart of its community, has awoken in the breasts of parents a crusading zeal that is challenging shibboleths about how this country teaches its children.
The campaign provides an early opportunity for Nicola Sturgeon to give substance to SNP rhetoric about listening to the people and governing for the people. For the Labour party in this area, though, represented by a ruling group of councillors on the coalition East Dunbartonshire council, this has not been their finest hour.
Their conduct, as the three-year struggle to keep St Joseph’s in Milngavie has unfolded, has been a microcosm of that shown by the national organisation: a refusal to listen and an arrogance bordering on outright contempt for local people.
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Picture courtesy of Dystopos