Could Powderhall be the new gateway to Edinburgh's Gaelic Medium Education at secondary level?
That’s the question posed by Drummond Community member Laura Vivanco. She's been considering alternatives to Drummond Community High School for GME (see Breaking news, 9.1.18), and below lays out her reasons for thinking that the site of the former Powderhall waste transfer station on Bonnington Road could indeed be a practical new home.
In short, she argues that Powderhall (which, at around 2 ha, is slightly larger than the entire Drummond CHS site) could provide the flexibility required to fulfil the ambitions of the Council’s Gaelic Language Plan (GLP). Crucially, it could satisfy Edinburgh’s need to accommodate rising school rolls but allow for a gradual expansion that wouldn’t put impossible strain on the Council’s budget. All this while also meeting the needs of the Drummond Community High School community.
[Image: Kim Traynor, Creative Commons]
A crisis of capacity
The current proposal to move GME to Drummond is extremely vague and does not explain how the move would be of educational benefit to both Drummond and GME pupils. It also fails to address the issue of capacity at Drummond (detailed in the Spurtle on 9 January).
Moreover, it is not clear that simply moving GME to Drummond, and having GME and English Medium Education (EME) co-exist on the same site, would fulfil GLP ambitions. The Plan requires that before GME pupils move from Gillespie’s the new school site ‘would be required to develop a long-term plan to ensure the quality and sustainable (with capacity for at least 20 years) expansion of GME, and may form a through school for 3–18’.
Firstly, it supports either ‘Develop[ing] a new Bun-sgoil 5–11 in another part of the City in an existing primary school’ or building a new primary school for GME in another part of Edinburgh. So, supposing a second school, of the current size of Taobh na Pàirce, were established on the south side of the city, the combined intake of the secondary school would be roughly 700 places.
However, uptake of GME has reportedly been ‘soaring’, and the GLP states that there is a need to ‘Expand capacity at Bun-sgoil Taobh na Pàirce through capital works and re-organising classroom space’. Even if the current P1 intake of 77 at Taobh na Pàirce were simply sustained rather than increased, that would eventually feed through into a requirement for 462 GME secondary places for pupils from that primary school alone. A counterpart of that size on the south side of the city would double the roll at secondary level to 924.
Since the Drummond site currently has a capacity of 600 it is extremely hard to see how 924 GME pupils could be accommodated there in addition to a Drummond roll which is (conservatively) estimated to reach around 500 pupils in the next few years.
Powderhall well placed
The GLP’s ambition is to see provision for ages 3–18 on one site, but the primary-level Taobh na Pàirce is extremely close to Powderhall and one could therefore see them as two adjacent campuses. Given the size of the Powderhall site, it might be possible to include nursery provision and facilities for adult Gaelic learning there, perhaps with an on-site crèche.
The GLP is, of course, a long-term ambition and there is no immediate need to build a school capable of accommodating 924 pupils. Nonetheless, if the Council is to fulfil such ambitions it must plan ahead by choosing a site capable of accommodating these kind of numbers. In the short-term, however, such a site will need to rely partially on the facilities of an existing secondary school since, as the ‘Gaelic Champion’ Councillor Lewis Ritchie has observed, there aren’t ‘enough […] Gaelic teachers to make a dedicated school work right now’.
According to the GLP, as of March 2017 there were only three qualified teachers engaging in GME at Gillespie’s. In other words, Councillor Ritchie is correct about a massive shortage of teachers capable of teaching secondary subjects in Gaelic.
What is needed, then, is a flexible site which allows for growth over a 20-year period. The cost of such building work would be spread over that period and, since building would respond to demand, no money would be spent unnecessarily in constructing facilities which might not eventually be required.
A good match
The Council-owned Powderhall site meets all the necessary criteria:
- It’s large.
- It’s only a very short walk from Drummond CHS.
- It has an attractive B-listed building which could be refurbished.
- It’s connected by cycle-path to many parts of the city. This connectivity would only be increased if the Powderhall Railway branch line were converted into a cycle path. This is an important benefit to a school with a city-wide catchment.
- It has ample access to playing fields at Warriston, and is next to St Mark’s Park should extra space be required for outdoor activities. There is also the possibility of sharing the bowling-green areas with Broughton Primary School.
GLP costs and requirements
Councillor Chas Booth has, rather flippantly, asked me about the costs of constructing a new facility for GME:
Sandra Bagnall, a Drummond Community member, contacted a number of councillors about this, asking whether the £40m figure was a reasonable estimate for the cost of a new 1,000–1,200 capacity high school. The response she received from Councillor Karen Doran’s office was reassuring on this point:
No funding or site is currently available for a new build school. £40m is a reasonable estimate for a new 1000-1200 capacity high school. However, every project is different depending on the local circumstances.
This article contains a proposal regarding a site which is available and is owned by the Council. It is not proposed that a 1,000-1,200 capacity high school be built here. The figure of £40 million is, therefore, alarmist.
Right size, right location, long-term vision
It was reported in the Evening News in 2016 that ‘work is already under way to look at residential development of the Powderhall site potentially as affordable housing’. But while sale of the Powderhall site might raise funds for the Council in the short term, the long-term ambitions of the GLP require a large, fairly central site like Powderhall. As noted in one report regarding GME education, for ‘a dedicated secondary school which has a capacity of between 320 and 500 pupils [...] a minimum site of 1.6 hectares would be required’. Both the projected number of pupils (924) and the Powderhall site exceed this.
Calls for a central site have been made by Wilson McLeod, one of the most vocal GME supporters, on account of the requirement to be ‘reasonably accessible’ to all in the GME secondary school’s city-wide catchment area.
Moving GME from Gillespie's to Drummond will inevitably come at some cost to the Council. Councillor Callum Laidlaw says his 'understanding was that [Drummond] school would be expanded’.
Since an expansion will be required in any case, the costs should be roughly similar on either the Drummond or Powderhall site, assuming that the first phase of moving GME to Powderhall would involve building a fairly modest facility for around 350-462 pupils. To begin with, it would function as an annexe to Drummond, and GME pupils could use some of Drummond’s facilities as required. It could be gradually expanded later as necessary.
To sum up, the Powderhall proposal outlined here would let the Council fulfil its obligations under the Gaelic Language Plan, would satisfy both the short and long-term aspirations of the GME community, and would also secure the Drummond High School building for local people. I urge councillors and officials to consider it carefully.
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