"National body concerned at shared school ground"

An article in The Courier on 21 May 2009 reported on the correspondence between Fields in Trust and Dundee City Council. The article is not available on The Courier's website, so it has been transcribed here:

A national organisation dedicated to protecting and improving outdoor sports and play areas has sought assurances from Dundee City Council about a shared campus for two primary schools, writes Brian Allison, local Government reporter.

The council has agreed to go ahead with controversial plans to create a shared campus for St Joseph's primary school and Park Place primary and nursery on the site of the former Harris Academy annexe in Blackness Road.

The views of parents on the scheme are sharply divided, with those of pupils at Park Place generally in favour while many of the St Joseph's parents are against it.

There were angry scenes at last week's meeting of the education committee, which endorsed the plan, with opponents shouting that they had been lied to by the council.

Now the matter has been raised with Fields in Trust (FIT), which was formerly the National Playing Fields Association.

Scottish manager of FIT, Colin Rennie, said they had been contacted by a number of parents concerned that the new site might be too small to allow proper play and outdoor sports provision.

Mr Rennie has written to director of education Jim Collins asking for details of how the council intends to meet the requirements of the school premises regulations in relation to outdoor sports and play provision at the site.

"Our organisation would caution against seeking a waiver to obtain a level of provision less than is required by the regulations," he said.

"Our message to the council is not to take this matter lightly," he said.

"Given the appalling levels of childhood obesity throughout the country it is something all councils should take seriously."

He said taking part in sports and exercise provided not just physical benefits for children but also social and psychological ones as well.

FIT is the only independent UK-wide organisation with a mission to protect and improve outdoor spaces and facilities for sports and play.

Its intention is to ensure that people of all ages have somewhere nearby to go for healthy, outdoor activities.

"No absolute need for them ... for us to provide them with a playing field"

Speaking on STV last night, Cllr Liz Fordyce (Education Convener of the Education Committee) had this to say:

“It is tight, but … where we’ve had room we’ve built out the way and schools are only one storey high. This one we could build up the way and they’ll still have all the facilities. It is an inner city school so there is no absolute need for them ... for us to provide them with a playing field as part of the facilities of the school.”

"It's a tight site"

The Director of Education and the new Education Convener have both independently admitted that the Logie site is "a tight site" but maintain that it is big enough to accommodate 450 primary school pupils in two schools, plus up to 110 pupils in the new nursery, as well as the ancillary accommodation and other facilities required by the School Premises (Scotland) Regulations 1967, and as amended.

The council's proposal (report 69-2009) states that they will build:

..."2 x 1 stream primary schools with 6 additional classrooms, a nursery and full ancillary accommodation ... within the overall 4595m² footprint of the building"

The claimed area of the site is 1.27 hectares (12,700 m²).

How much land does 4595m² consume? We had a go, using Google Planimeter and got the following for 4597m²:

You'll have to zoom into the Logie site area and find the site: it's bounded by Glenagnes Road to the west, Blackness Road to the south and Rosefield Street to the east.

Try it yourself and see how creative you can be with building shapes that come to the same total.

How much room is left for other facilities?

Outcome of Education Committee Meeting 11 May 2009

Last night, the Education Committee of Dundee City Council approved the proposal to build new schools on the Logie site and relocate St Joseph's Primary, Park Place Primary and Park Place Nursery schools to that site.

Actually, they voted on this proposal in January 2009 and last night was simply a confirmation of this following public consultation and the Director of Education's report (274-2009) on the outcome of the consultation exercise.

They listened to our deputation and that of the St Joseph's Parent Council, but they didn't ask any questions, so they must have agreed with the speakers, and still they approved the proposal.

Plus ça change.

We issued statements to The Courier and Radio Tay. The Evening Telegraph has expanded (and misinterpreted) the words in our statement, the BBC website asked for a statement for a story they were running, and we've been interviewed and broadcast on GMTV and STV.

We are committed to working to ensure that the Director of Education keeps to his promise to cap the pupil intake for the new schools at 450 (combined) and to ensure that the Council delivers genuine improvements to the schools estate for the West End.

Three storeys (or more)?

We contacted the Director of Education about the council's proposal and have obtained his permission to quote his responses.

Director of Education: “There is no information to suggest that a three-storey primary school is not ideal, and it is certainly not unusual - there are several examples in Dundee, including Forthill, Hillside and Sidlaw View.”

The schools you refer to are all quite old (1940’s-1960’s) and not indicative of best practice for the 21st century. Many new primary schools in Scotland are single storey and nearly all are no more than two storeys.

In Dundee, it has been stated that Craigowl is three-storey. Since it is built on a slope, it is two storeys at the front. As a result, occupants are never more than one storey away from the ground.

Confirmation that there will be no playing field

We contacted the Director of Education about the council's proposal and have obtained his permission to quote his responses.

Director of Education: “With regard to the matter of playing fields, we are committed to providing facilities at this site for outdoor education. Many inner city schools, including St Joseph's and Park Place, do not have playing fields in close proximity, and the regulations acknowledge that there will be occasions when enforcement of this regulation is "impracticable or would be unreasonable". The reference to SportScotland is for guidance only, and is generally to be taken into account when building on a new greenfield site.”

We take this as further evidence, if any was needed, that there would be no playing fields, should the proposal go ahead. This does not meet the minimum standards in the regulations. Furthermore, the SportScotland guidance makes no reference to any distinction between greenfield and brownfield sites.

Confirmation that the Logie site is too small

The Scottish Executive Education Department Circular 3/2004 “Guidance on Determining School Capacities” states that: “Authorities will want to ensure that their system for determining school capacities is open, transparent, fair and rigorous. They will also want to ensure that this system is applied consistently to schools across their area.”

We contacted the Director of Education about the council's proposal and have obtained his permission to quote his responses.

Director of Education: “In Dundee we take account of the number of children that can be taught in a classroom by one teacher, and we have regard to both local and national guidelines and regulations regarding class size. Therefore, in a one-stream primary school, in Dundee the capacity is likely to be 217 (25, 30,30, 33, 33, 33, 33 respectively in each of the 7 classes). This takes account of Circular 1/2007, issued by the Scottish Executive on 2 April 2007, which contains formal guidance on class sizes in P1, the Education (Lower Primary Class Sizes (Scotland) Regulations 1999 and the Scheme of Salaries and Conditions of Service for Teaching Staff in School Education. As you are aware, our proposals for the West End allow for 6 additional classrooms to be used as needed by the two schools, so in theory the capacity of each school could increase by up to 198 (i.e. if all 6 classrooms were used by one of the schools, with up to 33 pupils in each room).”


In other words the combined capacity for the primary pupils is 217+217+198 = 632. Even if the proposal was for ONE primary school with this capacity, the regulations state that the site area for this school should be at least 12,000 sq. metres. Of course, the proposal is not to build one primary school, but to build TWO with shared facilities. And then there is the nursery which it has been stated will have a capacity of at least 90 a.m. and 90 p.m. Any reasonable interpretation of the regulations leads to the same conclusion:

Minimum statutory requirements on site size cannot be met by this proposal

The size of the proposed site is 12,700 sq. m. according to the report to the Education Committee (although see comments below on usable area of the site). Even if the schools were merged, nursery capacity was only 90, and the entire site was usable, this would be 1,800 sq. m. short.

ONE primary school with capacity of 632:        12,000 sq. m.
Nursery with capacity of 90:                     2,500 sq. m.
Total area for minimum statutory requirements:  14,500 sq. m.

In addition, there should be a playing field available on site or in close proximity of 6,000 sq. m.

Director of Education: “Any proposed demolition of the listed janitor's house would have to be included in the development proposals, and any request for tree removal would go through normal planning approval processes.”

We infer from this response that no assumption can be made at this stage about the demolition of the janitor’s house. Therefore, the area of site that can be assumed to be available for new build is considerably reduced, by our estimate to no more than 11,000 sq metres (taking into account also the steep slope at the north of the site). The current St. Joseph’s site (including car park and pitch) is approximately 11,000 sq. metres and accommodates one school, not two schools plus a nursery!

Paused, reflected and re-opened!

So, we've all paused for over a week now. All visitors have had an opportunity to reflect on the comments that were being posted and we can hopefully look forward to more constructive comments in future.

We're going to re-open the website to allow comments to blog entries, but these will be checked before publishing to the website. The comments may have to be edited and in extreme cases may not be allowed at all.

Guidance is as before: keep your comments on topic and avoid making unkind references to private individuals or groups. For further content guidance, please see Google's Blogger Content Policy.

For those people who were able to attend the Club Romano meeting a couple of weeks ago, thanks again for your time and contributions. We hope that the information presented was of interest and has encouraged you to consider the council's proposal and the way in which the consultation process has been conducted.