University Offer Lifeline

Firstly, great to see other parents attending!

At the School Board meeting on 6th February 2007, the Chairman, Professor McKiernan, unveiled a proposal from St Andrews University that could deliver a solution to the split site issue. The University and a consortium of stakeholders including local building contractors, Sport Scotland and Fife Council propose to build a new complex near the North Haugh area of St. Andrews. This could include university buildings, a 50-metre swimming pool, seven tennis courts and all weather pitches for football, rugby etc.
St Andrews University and its development partners would also offer the use of land at North Haugh for Fife Council to place a school on and lease the land to the Council for as long as they wish to maintain a school there. Further, in return for the handover of both the Kilrymont site and the South Street site, they would give Fife Council the money to build this school.

The good news is that, as the proposal appears now, Fife Council would not have to provide the finance for the new school. The Council would build the school on land owned by the University and the University would give the cost of building the school back to Fife Council. The University are intending to invest approximately £100 Million on building at the North Haugh over the next few years and, if Fife Council accepts this proposal, a new Madras College could well be up and running before 2011.

The way we understand the situation, the benefits of this proposal are as follows:

The University would get both Kilrymont and South St sites in exchange for building a new school. We understand their intention would be to retain the façade of the South St site as part of the University, in keeping with the town, and re-develop the buildings behind this. The Kilrymont site could possibly be utilised for housing.
The development partners would obviously gain a very lucrative building contract.
Fife Council would have a new Madras College built for no financial outlay at all.
The school would have access to the wonderful sporting facilities.
Madras would become a single site campus with immediate access to the Station Park playing fields.

We understand that a meeting is taking place between Fife Council Education Officers and the University within the next 2 weeks to discuss this proposal. We await the outcome of their discussion with great interest!

OUR VIEW

Sounds like The Dream Solution! At this point, there are no apparent catches. Everybody benefits. We appreciate that the details of finance etc. still have to be addressed properly, but on the face of it, new Madras would be built well before 2011.

We have learned that some Liberal Democrat Councillors knew of this proposal prior to the CSC meeting on 11Jan 2007. We wonder why it was not submitted as an amendment for the CSC to consider as an Option or discussed at the meeting at all. Perhaps it is because it does not deliver a new school for the Taybridgehead area, which the Lib Dems have always insisted was a priority.

We believe the option of a new Madras and a Taybridgehead school is an unrealistic aspiration in the present political financial climate. Money is of crucial importance and the Council have stated that they should consider all areas of Fife when allocating funds. If money becomes available for a limited number of new secondary schools, Cllr Dair has stated that replacing Viewforth High school in Kirkcaldy and Dunfermline High School are of high priority. These projects would almost certainly be undertaken well ahead of a two-school project in the North East of Fife. We feel that insisting on replacing Madras College AND building a new school in the Taybridgehead area will only delay matters further, a lot further.

In our opinion, it would be far more realistic to get behind a proposal that replaces Madras College in less than five years and does not rely on waiting for our turn of Fife Council finance, which may not materialise until other schools estates have been addressed. We could be looking at possibly waiting up to 15 years for the two-school option; is this what we want for our children’s education?

What is your view? All welcome to comment.

Lisa Williams
Phill Williams