No new high school for four years claims MSP

Published 24 Jun 2009 16:51

A NEW Barrhead High will not be built until 2013 - it has been claimed.

The Cabinet Secretary for Education, Fiona Hyslop, announced in Parliament last week that £800m of Government funding will be used towards the building of 55 schools from 2010.

But Ken MacIntosh, MSP for East Renfrewshire disputed this and claims the earliest the area can expect a new high school will be in four years.

When Ken pressed Ms Hyslop on where Barrhead High stands on the list of new schools he said he was stunned when she told him a decision won"t be made until September.

He told the News: 'The announcement was a non announcement. Instead of giving us the money to build a new Barrhead High, she has put a big question mark over a new Barrhead High.

'It has taken two years for this to come out and not one school has been named for development.

'The more you look at this report, the more it begins to fall apart.

'The worrying thing is she is talking about introducing national criteria, so it is meant to be a council decision but under the Government"s rules.

'The biggest problem is she is meant to have made a big announcement but it is not.

'Is it a big announcement that there might be some money available and there will be an announcement later in the year?

'We haven"t really moved forward at all and I am now very anxious about what will happen.

'The only thing we can say is that we won"t have a new Barrhead High until at least 2013.

'The earliest we can get a new school, assuming we are the first in Scotland to get funded, will be in four years.'

Ms Hyslop told Parliament: 'This new investment will provide state-of-the-art schools for almost 35,000 young people.

'It will make the cost of replacing secondary schools much more manageable for local authorities and comes on top of the record levels of funding already being provided to Scotland"s councils in the local government settlement.

'Work on the first buildings will start in 2010, significantly boosting economic activity up and down the country and generating or maintaining several thousand construction jobs.'

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This article appeared in Barrhead News 24 Jun 09

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