Littlemill Primary School's future raised at council meeting

Littlemill Primary School and Early Childhood Centre (ECC) was the subject of an Education Scotland review recently, which highlighted a selection of areas for improvement.

The report stated that the school "needs additional support".

An East Ayrshire Council governance and scrutiny meeting last week discussed the findings of the report.

An East Ayrshire Council governance and scrutiny meeting last week discussed the school (Image: East Ayrshire Council) Littlemill's primary school is split into just two classes which cover the 27 pupils enrolled. One teacher teaches pupils from P1-3 in one class, while another teacher takes pupils from P4-7 in another class, meaning that mixed-age learning taking place.

With only 12 pupils currently within the ECC, the long-term future of the building was raised at the council meeting.

Meeting chair, councillor Peter Mabon, said: “[I'm] wondering what the long-term viability of a school this size is and what education and opportunities these children would get at a bigger school.

“The nearest school would be Drongan. I don’t know if the capacity of Drongan could deal with 27 more [pupils].

“I’m worried that there’s only 12 [pupils] coming through from the ECC and how that’s going to affect the school roll in the future in an already small school.”

Head of schools, Linda McAulay-Griffiths, responded: “It wouldn’t be for me to comment on availability of Drongan at this particular time, but I can come back to you with available space.

“There are some procedures out there at the moment that colleagues might call mothballing, which falls short of closure and puts schools into temporary positions of inactivity.

“We do note the small size of the school, but ultimately the piece around is complex."

Head of schools, Linda McAulay-Griffiths (Image: East Ayrshire Council) Mothballing is a term for temporarily closing a building, with a view to potentially re-opening it in the future.

Chief governance officer, David Mitchell, said that, while that option might be viable if it was needed, there would be costs required for the upkeep of the building throughout this time.

He added: “The issue with rural schools is that there are extra hurdles that authorities need to get through.

“Wider consideration isn’t just now about what’s the impact of closing a school against a small number of pupils and what’s the impact on those pupils if they were to be relocated to another suitable school.

“You have that wider consideration of what other community use is made of these buildings and what’s the impact on the community."

Mr Mitchell also pointed towards trying to encourage people to move to the rural areas of East Ayrshire.

He said: “The argument becomes how would you ever encourage people to move into the more rural areas if you are refusing that school provision, so where’s the flexibility if, in the future, families do move in and somebody builds a factory and there’s jobs etc.

“Hence this new approach of mothballing, which is effectively almost a temporary closure at the moment because it doesn’t make sense to run it because of the low numbers, but not quite going the whole hog of closing the building and repurposing it or knocking it down and therefore removing the opportunity in the future to perhaps bring it back into use, should the numbers change.

“At the moment, there’s been no consideration given to this particular school. If that’s a view of the committee then that’s certainly something that can be picked up and taken forward in the next review of the overall school estate.

“We do keep these things under review.”