HELP! An appeal from Craigroyston

Craigroyston Community High School to lose adult education classes?

My name is Vanessa Cousins, Chairperson of Craigroyston Community Centre. I wish to draw your attention to the fact that we are LOSING our Community Centre and Day Time Adult Education Classes.

WE NEED YOUR HELP.

• We have asked to be updated and informed by the Head Teacher, Steve Ross in a written request in February 2016 of any changes and received NO reply.

• We have contacted Councillors Cammie Day, Vicki Redpath, Steve Downie and Allan Jackson to invite them to a meeting and have received NO reply.

• We have emailed David Bruce (senior education official). No reply.

Steve Ross, has made it clear that we will not be able to run any daytime adult education classes in the Craigroyston Community High School from August 2016 as the school will be using all of the community rooms for pupil classes, during curriculum time.

He had a group from Council Asset Management inspect the school and they confirmed the community wing classrooms to be for pupil use only from August 2016. It is not clear if they were made aware of the regular community use.

We wish to meet with the Council Community Asset Management team. If the decisions are not made by Steve Ross then we need to know who does and be allowed to meet them to put our case forward.

We need to be advertising courses very shortly so we need clear information and confirmation that our community centre rooms will be available from August.

Info Points

• The head teacher suggested that the increased school roll, possibly going up to around 480 pupils (although the school was designed for a school roll of 600 pupils), necessitated use of the community rooms to offer two Social Science classes and the third classroom to be used by a new development teacher for the school.

• There seems no recognition of the loss of this as being a vital community asset, especially as the three rooms are all that remains of the original Craigroyston Community Centre, guaranteed by the council at the time (2009), to provide community centre equivalent in the school building.

• Craigroyston Community Centre was established in the 1970s to serve the community in North Edinburgh and was demolished when the centre was amalgamated with the new Community High School

• The three community rooms, specially built to provide access for local people, are usually constantly busy with daytime adult education classes and community groups – with a newly formed community centre management group, made up of adult learners, developing more ideas and classes in response to community needs.

• At the moment the rooms are taken up with providing classroom space for the additional 250 Craigroyston Primary School pupils who have been accommodated in the high school, along with teaching and admin staff, and admin staff from Pirniehall Primary school which is supported by the Committee.

‘Empowering communities is key to creating a more prosperous and fairer Scotland. It is the role of central and local government to work in partnership with communities and support them to lead change for themselves, to create thriving and sustainable places to live.’ 

(First sentence of the Community Empowerment Act (Scotland ) 2015 Asset Transfer section)

Vanessa Cousins

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