Largs council's thumbs up for new school campus

The council has voted to give its approval to a blueprint that would see radical changes to education provision in the town.

North Ayrshire Council asked for local people’s views on their proposal to pursue a partnership with sportscotland to replace the existing Largs Academy with a modern, fit-for purpose school at the site, and to explore options to incorporate the Largs primary schools in a shared campus facility.

This early engagement is intended help inform and influence the council in developing more detailed options.

Letters explaining the background to the process were distributed to all parents, carers and stakeholders.

In addition, a short survey asked two questions: Whether the council should develop proposals to replace the existing Largs Academy with a new school located on the grounds of sportscotland’s Inverclyde National Centre at Burnside Road; and Whether the council should explore the option of including the early years and primary education provision as part of this new development, to create a campus design which includes education and sports facilities.

On the first question, the community council voted in favour by eight votes to one and, on the second, the vote was six votes to three, which reflected some members’ concerns over whether early years pupils would feel intimidated by being in a large campus.

Asked by chairman Douglas Blair what her views were, Cllr Zoe McIntyre, the council’s youngest member who is a sixth year pupil at the Academy, said a lot of pupils were a bit indifferent because they didn’t know enough about the proposals.

“I think it’s a good idea but not the inclusion of early years and primary schools — there is such a big age range there already.” On the question of a shared campus, including Brisbane, Kelburn and St Mary’s, North Ayrshire Councillor Tom Marshall said the intention was that St Mary’s should have its own head teacher and identity.

Councillor Margaret Wood said her daughter was one of the first to go into Brisbane Primary and although there had been meetings against bringing pupils together there, everything had worked out fine, although it had been a big deal at the time.

North Ayrshire Councillor Alan Hill said that given the close proximity of the school at present, “if you were a seagull flying over you would think there was a shared campus already.” Mrs Wood said the sports provision on the site of the proposed new campus would be a good thing especially for pupils with disabilities.

She said: “Our schools are not geared up to help children with disabilities. A lot of children with disabilities are not gifted academically, so the provision of sports facilities will help them.” The responses will be considered by the council cabinet on 23 September, with a full statutory public consultation taking place later in the year.