Uncertain future for rural schools in Aberdeenshire
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Aberdeenshire Council has revealed that 33 schools across the region are operating half empty as difficult budget cuts loom.
The local authority is facing a £67 million black hole for the year ahead, meaning some tough decisions and cuts will need to be made to save cash.
In an exclusive interview with the LDRS ahead of the budget setting exercise, we asked council chiefs what could be at risk.
Council leader Gillian Owen revealed that “everything is on the table”.
She said: “Last year we had in the region of £61m to find.
“Year-on-year it seems to be that we are having to make huge savings and obviously from our residents’ point of view, that is quite a concern.
“The key thing for us is the unintended consequences of the decisions that we are going to have to make, but if we are fully briefed and know exactly what that means then we are in a better situation to make decisions.”
Aberdeenshire Council spends over £400 million each year on education and children’s services.
Education takes up around 60 per cent of the whole budget, however, the council faces a number of pressures and challenges to deliver the best teaching experience to the region’s young people.
The council has found there is a gap between what it takes in and what it needs to spend.
For example, statutory services that have to be delivered such as school transport are only partly funded and the council needs to find the remaining cash elsewhere.
There are 147 primary schools, 17 academies and four special schools spread across Aberdeenshire.
The settings currently welcome 20,819 primary youngsters and 15,718 secondary students.
Meanwhile, around 2,800 full-time teachers are employed to educate the region’s pupils.
As it stands, 33 of the primaries are less than half full while just one is running over capacity.
In one specific Aberdeenshire cluster, which councillors asked not to be named, there is one academy and nine primary schools.
All of the primary schools aren’t full and are currently sitting at around 64 per cent capacity.
On average, it costs Aberdeenshire Council just over £261,000 to run a small school which estimates to around £13,000 per pupil.
Larger schools cost over £2 million per year – around £5,000 per child.
Meanwhile, the academy costs £5.18 million which works out at a cost of £8300 per student.
While the council isn’t considering closing smaller schools at the moment, it could be something it thinks about in the future.
Education and children’s services chairman David Keating revealed: “We do have some schools with quite low utilisation and the council has set a band of 75 -95 per cent as the optimum best value.
“It’s not about picking up on an individual school but looking at the whole estate, taking account of the life cycle maintenance and future projections of pupils.
“It will be data-led with full consultation and educational benefit as the lodestone in the middle of the process.”
A proposal to look at the region’s entire school estate is expected to go before councillors next month.
The tight-lipped officials didn’t specifically name any schools, but according to Aberdeenshire Council’s own figures, some are expected to drop to just 16 per cent capacity by 2027.
Those projected to be well under capacity include Kinneff (19 per cent), Luthermuir (19 per cent), Tipperty (16 per cent) and Kininmonth (17 per cent).
But the local authority faces a backlog of maintenance in its huge school estate.
It would cost a staggering £65 million to fix all of the identified jobs over the next ten years.
In the year ahead, the council could pay just under £4m to address the most urgent repairs such as heating upgrades, roof coverings and replacement windows.
Future essential jobs in the next couple of years could cost around £14.6m, with that cost jumping to a whopping £42.4m in five years time.
Mr Keating explained: “With the money we have, we have to prioritise what is important.
“Some things absolutely will need to be done, some things would be nice to do but truthfully we probably won’t get round to those in the next couple of years.
“There are also some things we will have to discuss along with housing and infrastructure services because we need a full council view of what’s right so that we get the best value.”
Operating school transport in just one cluster for a year currently costs £1.63 million, which works out at £2676 per pupil.
But will the council make any cuts to the service it currently provides?
Mr Keating explained: “We have requirements to provide school transport and unfortunately the way the allocation metric works, we and other rural authorities get substantially less than our cost of transport and that’s just a reality.
“It would be nice if the allocation metric changed because it doesn’t fully take account of rurality and I think that’s what drives school transport.”
The education chairman revealed Aberdeenshire Council broadly spends around £20 million providing buses to primary pupils and a further £15 million for secondary students.
“It’s a huge area that we have and we’re not going to be able to change that particularly in any great level and it is something the council has looked at several times.
“Where we are not providing school transport we have a professional road safety team and they make sure, with a responsible adult, any child could walk to school safely.”
Would Aberdeenshire Council consider cutting teacher numbers to help balance its budget?
Mr Keating said it would “look at things” but stated the Scottish Government is encouraging the local authority to keep the same number of teachers as an “absolute number”.
“We certainly are focused on making sure that pupil/teacher ratio stays as best we can but truth be told, the issue we have in Aberdeenshire at the moment is getting a hold of secondary teachers.
“We asked for 66 and we got 12 last year so that is more the issue.
“Primary population is about settled but I’m not saying we wouldn’t consider something if it was an option to us, but there’s no great plan to change numbers.”
As part of its budget setting exercise, finance chiefs at neighbouring Aberdeen City Council have suggested cutting the school week by two and a half hours.
They estimate the move could save £7m over the next two years.
But is this something that could happen in Aberdeenshire?
Mr Keating revealed: “We would consider cutting school hours if it was something we could do but that’s not happening.
“We meet our required school day, but any change that has a benefit in one direction will have a loss in the other.
“That is something that if we did it, it would have a long consultation process and is certainly not something we would be dropping on the public in six months’ time.
“But it’s something we could consider if we thought there was benefit.”
However, deputy leader Anne Stirling confirmed the region’s school core hours would remain unchanged.
But amid the local authority’s financial woes, there is some good news.
Construction of the new Peterhead Campus and Fraserburgh primary school will be going ahead as planned.
Mr Keating revealed: “They are in the pipeline, they are both approved by council so we are going ahead with them.
“When we see the exact sums of money we get at any particular point we may do some of the profiling, but at the moment Peterhead is going ahead and Fraserburgh is in the design phase which is where they should be.”
You can help set Aberdeenshire Council’s budget
Before it makes any final budget decisions, Aberdeenshire Council wants to hear from its residents.
Ms Owen explained: “Whatever we get from this, we will endeavour to feed that back in so that is taken notice of during our considerations.
“We are very open to listening to what people say to us.
“We are going to try and make sure that when we say things that we are open and transparent with what we are going to be doing.
“As elected representatives, we have to understand what that could mean to people so that we know what mitigations we have to put in.”
So what services matter the most to you and where do you think savings could be made?
Access the budget engagement survey at engage.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/aberdeenshirecouncilbudget-2024-25 to share your thoughts.
