The scene of the stormy meeting
ANGRY parents attended a consultation in the Collegiate Grammar School last week, arranged by the Western Education and Library Board, on a proposal to amalgamate the school with Portora.
The Collegiate – parents, staff and the board of governors – are opposing the move, but Portora is in favour.
Having held a four-hour meeting with staff earlier (4pm-8pm), the three officers from the Board went straight into six and half hour long meeting with the parents.
There are three second-level schools in Fermanagh, delivering education to, mostly, Protestant pupils – the Collegiate, Portora (which is a voluntary grammar school) and Devenish College.
If implemented, the proposal will result in the ‘closure’ of both the Collegiate and Portora, and a brand new ‘area planning-type’ school erected on a shared campus.
During the meeting, parents were told by an officer there was no guarantee that funding would be secured for a new school, even if the Collegiate and Portora were to ‘close’.
The principal of the Collegiate, Elizabeth Armstrong queried why the south-west college was not in the area-based plan.
Pat Hughes (Finance) insisted that area-based planning was the way ahead. He said the money was not sufficient to maintain schools ‘made in the current fashion’.
But, Ms Armstrong insisted that area-based planning would not work in Fermanagh. And, she claimed the board ‘is not listening’ to the schools.
Sinead McCartan, the board’s development appraisal officer, explained the proposal would mean that the Collegiate and Portora would be discontinued and a new school started in September, 2015.
She stressed that no decision had been made by the board, and that it was up to the board to decide whether or not to send it on to the Education Minister for a decision
However, she and her colleagues were told repeatedly that the parents had no confidence in either the minister or the board, given the history of Devenish College.
Rosemary Watterson, who looks after the consultation process, quoted a figure of 600 pupils to make a school viable.
At present, the Collegiate enrolment is capped at 504.
She told the meeting there were between 1,700-1,800 pupils in the Controlled sector attending second-level schools in the county and that if the Collegiate’s enrolment went up to 600, this would have a detrimental impact on the other two schools.
The Western Board is due to meet next month and, if approval is given to the proposal to amalgamate, this will go out for public consultation.
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