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!