Parents' anguish after 75m Dargavel school roll blunder

By Andrew Picken

BBC Scotland News

Families have said they face splitting their children between different schools or moving home after a council miscalculated the number of places needed for pupils.

Dargavel Primary in Bishopton, Renfrewshire, opened last year with a capacity of 548.

Renfrewshire Council then admitted as many as 1,500 primary school places might be needed after a planning error.

The council has apologised but parents say they have been left “devastated”.

People living in the newbuild village of Dargavel say they warned Renfrewshire Council for years that the delayed primary school was going to be too small.

A report commissioned by the local authority in 2017 suggests that plans to add 1,400 homes to the development on the site of a former munitions factory would result in 854 primary school places being needed.

Last year, council officials admitted “significant errors” had been made with its forecasts and between 1,100 and 1,500 primary school age places would now be needed in this area over the next decade.

The saga has left Laura Digby, who lives less than 500 yards (457m) from the school, worrying about the future for her two-year-old son Noah.

His sister Orla, 10, attends Dargavel Primary and is due to leave the school in 2026, when Noah is meant to start there, but the increased demand on places means the family faces years of worry.

Laura said: “The news was pretty devastating, I’d only just had a baby so I knew as soon as they came out with that there was going to be problems with Noah potentially getting a place in the school.

“I can see the school from my front door, when he’s old enough to walk on his own I’ll be able to watch him go from the window – it’s one of these reasons I moved here.”

The 39-year-old said she would start “looking at alternatives” if Noah does not get into Dargavel Primary and Orla does not a get a place in the catchment high school.

She added: “I wouldn’t want to move from here, I’ve really enjoyed it, it is a great community – it has just been seriously let down by the council.”

David McLaren is another parent worried about the situation and whether his four-year-old son Blair will be able to join his brothers, Rory and Finlay, at Dargavel Primary.

He said: “There’s a lot of concerns; going from the primary school – do we get our youngest in the same school as his siblings – then in a couple of years’ time when oldest Rory is going to high school, is there going to be space in that school, is the quality of education going to be there because of its size.

“We’ve got friends who are already talking about moving away, purely from an education perspective.

“It is a difficult task for them [the council] in terms of being able to predict the future but I think the fact they were being advised by the parent council that their calculations are incorrect, and the fact they didn’t listen to that is very disappointing.

“And now the cost to the taxpayer is going to be significant too to rectify that.”

A recent report by Renfrewshire Council at options to address the problem said the cost of a new primary school in Dargavel, capable of accommodating 800 pupils, would be up to £45m.

In addition, an expansion of Park Mains High School in Erskine, to accommodate 400 extra pupils, would also be required with an estimated cost of up to £30m.

Alan Kelly, chairman of the Dargavel Primary Parent Council, said many parents were now worried that Park Mains will not have enough capacity and said the situation is “causing people a lot of stress and anguish”.

He added: “There is not suitable school provision for all the children who are going to be here – the council has massively let the community down.

“Going back to at least 2018 there were community groups voicing strong concerns that the school is not big enough, the number of houses significantly increased from about 2,500 to 4,000 and Renfrewshire Council kept the plans the same – that is where it has gone wrong.”

An independent review into the circumstances of how that roll-projection error was made is due to be published later.

A spokesman for Renfrewshire Council said: “We apologise sincerely to the Dargavel community and fully acknowledge their frustration over the issues with school capacity in the area, due to significant errors previously made when calculating projected pupil numbers.

“Our focus is on working with the community to put in place the best possible solutions for primary and secondary school provision.”

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