Interesting articles today in the Sunday Herald about joint campus schools etc
http://www.sundayherald.com/news/herald ... divide.phpThe great divide
INVESTIGATION: SHARED SCHOOL CAMPUSES WERE SUPPOSED TO COMBAT SECTARIANISM AND BRING CHILDREN TOGETHER ... BUT IN FIVE YEARS LESS THAN A THIRD OF LOCAL AUTHORITIES HAVE TAKEN THEM UP AND EVEN FEWER HAVE PLANS FOR ANY MORE. WHAT HAPPENED? By Paul Hutcheon
KATE CLARK, the head teacher at Cochrane Castle Primary school in Johnstone, is in no doubt about the positive impact her school has had on the pupils who walk through the gates.
"All the children play together, and they come to school together. They have lunch together, they share the gym, the dining hall, the playground and the libraries," she said.
This may sound like any normal school, but Clark is one of two heads at the West Johnstone-shared campus in Renfrewshire, which houses a Catholic and a non-denominational school in the same grounds.
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Before the shared campus opened last year, Cochrane Castle and St David's primary operated as separate schools at different locations.
Now, with the full support of the local council, both schools retain their distinctive ethos while at the same time bringing teachers, pupils and their parents closer together.
Jane Docherty, the acting head of St David's, said: "It has been one of the most positive experiences I have had in education. I think it is the children being together in the playground, sharing the canteen and talking about what is happening during the day.
"Even at the breakfast club in the morning you get them coming into school together."
However, educational policies that were designed to bring children closer together and address sectarianism are being ignored by councils and allowed to wither on the vine, a Sunday Herald investigation has established.
Around 70% of local authorities have failed to open a single shared campus facility. More than half of councils have also failed to twin any Catholic schools with other institutions in the non- religious sector.
The policies were part of former First Minister Jack McConnell's attempt at addressing the "secret shame" of sectarianism. The previous Scottish Executive's commitment to tackling the problem included putting pressure on football clubs to clamp down on offensive singing by fans, organising sectarianism summits and creating an aggravated offence for crimes motivated by religious hatred.
However, while defending the right of parents to send their children to Catholic schools, McConnell also believed the classroom was key to ensuring younger generations were not poisoned by the sectarian views of a small minority of parents.
In 2004, McConnell teamed up with Cardinal Keith O'Brien and a representative from the Church of Scotland to open a shared campus school in Midlothian - the first to be opened on the then First Minister's watch.
The project, which housed St David's High School and Dalkeith High in the same building, required pupils to share sports facilities, the library and the cafeteria. McConnell said the shared campus was about "celebrating difference and working together" and urged other councils to embrace the model.
But while the Catholic Church has supported shared campuses, its senior figures have had misgivings about a policy believed to undermine separate, faith-based education.
Figures obtained by the Sunday Herald show that the take up of shared campuses by councils has been miserably low. A freedom of information request to all 32 councils has found that, since 2005, 22 have not opened any such schools.
ALTHOUGH a small number of councils do not run Catholic schools - including Orkney and the Western Isles - a number of local authorities with Catholic schools have not embraced the initiative. These include councils in South Lanarkshire, West Dunbartonshire, North Ayrshire, Inverclyde, Falkirk, East Lothian and East Ayrshire.
Only two local authorities, Argyll and Bute and North Lanarkshire, have opened more than one shared campus school since 2005, with the latter council leading the way with seven. The policy's future also looks bleak, as more than 75% of councils said they had no plans to open any shared campuses.
A spokesman for the Scottish Catholic media office said shared campuses were not the Church's first preference for educating children.
"The policy of the Catholic Education Commission is that it expects local authorities to meet their obligation to provide denominational education normally through the establishment of free-standing denominational schools," he said. "It recognises that, in exceptional circumstances, the most viable form of school provision could include the sharing of some facilities by two autonomous schools on a single site.
"Such arrangements would require careful planning to ensure respect for the distinctive identity and ethos of each school and could only result from detailed discussions and agreement with the local Diocese."
A spokesman for COSLA, the council umbrella group, said national targets didn't exist for creating shared campuses, adding: "Decisions on joint campuses are for individual local authorities to discuss with their communities and church representatives. Such decisions will reflect local preferences and circumstances, for example, school building, refurbishment and rationalisation programmes."
Another policy that appears to have died a slow death is the twinning of denominational and non-denominational schools. Launched by McConnell in 2006, the initiative encouraged schools to work together to break down barriers between children.
Former LibDem Education Minister Robert Brown said at the time that twinning was "an important element in the Scottish Executive's work to tackle sectarianism", while Cardinal O'Brien said "schools have their part to play in this by reaching out to their neighbours".
The consensus led to a flurry of twinning arrangements in which schools integrated extra-curricular activities.
One twinning project was in West Lothian, where eight schools worked in collaboration from 2006.
Gerald Cowan, head teacher of Eastertoun primary in Armadale, said: "One of the key aims was to get pupils to know each other. We also looked at the development of prejudice."
Cowan said the programme includes sports activities, a joint art exhibition and Christmas carol singing.
The next stage, he said, is a presentation for parents: "We want to get the parents along and have a full-blown discussion about the issues."
On the effect of the twinning arrangement, he said: "There was a significant change in attitude in the pupils."
However, the example in West Lothian has not been replicated across Scotland. More than 50% of local authorities, including councils in the west of Scotland, said there were no twinning arrangements between non-denominational and faith schools within their boundary area since 2006.
While West Lothian Council has had 10 twinning arrangements since 2006, East Lothian had zero.
Similarly, although South Ayrshire Council had 10 twinning partnerships in the same period, North Ayrshire did not adopt a single one. Brown now says: "These figures are extremely disappointing."
Ewan Aitken, the Labour councillor who helped launch the twinning policy in 2006, said: "It was not a complicated policy. Twinning should be co-ordinated by COSLA and the Education Secretary Fiona Hyslop, whom I have not heard talk about the subject."
A spokesman for COSLA defended the role of councils: "It would be wrong to suggest that twinning arrangements between schools should be taken as the sole benchmark of local action to bridge religious divides or to tackle sectarianism. Councils and their partners are already doing a great deal to address these issues, for example, curriculum development and sport."
Opposition politicians at Holyrood believe the SNP government must bear some of the blame for the figures.
FIRST Minister Alex Salmond was quick to scrap the summits championed by McConnell and axed a fund for addressing anti-sectarianism in schools.
Bill Butler, the Labour MSP for Glasgow Anniesland, said Salmond had allowed the fight against sectarianism to slide: "While these figures are worrying they are hardly surprising given that last September the SNP Government chose to scrap a £100,000 fund set aside for supporting anti-sectarianism projects in schools.
Failure to place educational initiatives at the heart of any anti-sectarianism strategy will, I fear, result in these strategies failing thus increasing the prospect of more people being convicted of religiously aggravated offences in the future."
An SNP government spokesman said: "The Scottish government is committed to tackling all forms of religious intolerance.
Decisions on joint campuses and twinning will depend very much on local circumstances and are for the local authorities in consultation with their communities and the church representatives, allowing local solutions to local circumstances."
While the politicians apportion blame, teachers at West Johnstone get on with running a campus that could still be a model for the rest of Scotland.
"It's going from strength to strength," says Kate Clark.
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Why schools are vital in our battle against bigotry
By former First Minister Jack McConnell
I LOVE Scotland, its landscape, the people, our rich heritage and often turbulent history. It is because I love my country, and care passionately about its future, that I did not shirk from making difficult political decisions as First Minister.
Scotland's health record is amongst the worst in the developed world, and I was convinced that a ban on smoking in public places was the right thing to do because of the lives it would save.
The Fresh Talent Initiative, which actively encouraged economic migration, was designed to tackle the very real problem of a declining and ageing population, and the latest figures show that Scotland's population has risen to its highest for 28 years.
And I was determined to do all I could to rid Scotland of the deeply destructive culture of sectarianism that blighted far too many of our communities for generations.
Ending sectarianism was never going to be easy. We recognised from the outset that there needed to be a national effort so we worked with churches and faith groups, football clubs and the police, community organisations and schools to promote mutual respect and understanding.
Scotland's first national sectarian summit in 2005 was an event unprecedented in our history, and was so successful it was agreed to hold the event every year.
Where necessary we changed the law. In 2003 the Scottish Parliament introduced a law that made specific provision for offences aggravated by religious prejudice. The law is working. Between April 2006 and March 2008 over 500 people were convicted of religiously aggravated offences.
But our aim was never simply to punish those guilty of mindless bigotry and violence, but to achieve a fundamental shift in attitudes and behaviour.
The key to success lay in education. If Scotland was to consign sectarianism to the dustbin of history, where it so clearly belongs, then as a nation we could no longer be seen to condone or ignore the actions and words of bigoted adults.
We worked closely with schools, local authorities and key organisations such as Rangers and Celtic, Nil by Mouth and the Scottish Human Rights Centre to develop appropriate educational material.
This programme was then rolled out across Scotland, from Dumfries and Galloway to Dundee. Bigotry is not confined to the west of Scotland, as some try to suggest, but can and does rear its ugly head anywhere.
One of the most successful aspects of our work with schools, and the one that I found personally the most heartening, was the twinning projects between schools - an idea that came from the first national summit.
This approach helped break down the intolerance of previous generations by giving children a deeper understanding of each others, traditions and beliefs. It was a glimpse of how Scotland could be without sectarianism.
I am alarmed therefore to learn of the sharp drop in the number of school twinning arrangements revealed today by the Sunday Herald.
But I was sadly not surprised given that last September the Scottish government decided to end nationwide funding for anti-sectarian projects in schools.
In that same month Alex Salmond refused to host the annual sectarian summit and later dismissed it as nothing more than a gathering of "high-heidyins".
The laws are in place, what we need to do now is to build on our national effort to change the culture and attitudes that breed sectarianism.
That means supporting all schools in their efforts to work together and listening - and acting - on the views of everyone who cares about their country, whether they be "a high-heidyin" or a community activist.
For me tackling sectarianism is not - and never has been - a party political issue. It is about the kind of Scotland that I want my grandchildren to grow up in, a country of opportunity, not a state of fear.
by History » Wed Mar 25, 2009 8:15 pm 
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